Year 1
Welcome to Summer Term!
We hope you have all had a lovely Easter break and are ready to learn lots this term! We are very excited to have you back and have lots of exciting things planned for you – hopefully we will have glorious weather and we can get outside for lots of active learning 🙂
PHONICS SCREENING CHECK – JUNE 2022
The phonics screening check is coming up and the children are busy practising as much as we can in school. They are super ‘Phonics Detectives’ and we do ask you to encourage them to do this at home (looking for the sounds in words to help them segment/blend it for reading). If you use this language, even if you don’t fully understand what it means, the children will know what you mean and they know what to do 🙂
There is a phonics meeting at 3pm on Wednesday 4th May to give you all the information you need in the lead up to the check. Miss Dodd also runs a phonics club every Wednesday morning – 8:30am-9:00am, for all Year 1 pupils. Please do bring your child along, if you can.
English
This term in English, we will be focusing on the book ‘The Fox and the Star’ by Coralie Bickford-Smith. The book tells the story of Fox, who lives in the forest. One night he loses his only friend, Star, who until then lit his way through the trees every night. Forced to confront the blackness of the forest alone, Fox mourns his friend before learning how to enjoy life and the world again without his former companion.
We will be turning our classroom into a rainforest and inviting the children to use role-play and drama to retell the story, create story maps and perform rainforest poetry!
Our class will also have the opportunity to design and describe their own ‘Wild Things’. The children will become active learners, making meaningful connections through strong cross curricular links to Science, Geography and Art, in particular. We are so excited to get started!
Maths
In maths this term, we will be learning about multiplication and division. We will learn how to group objects together, make equal groups and make our own arrays. We will continue to practise our adding and subtracting skills with numbers up to 100. The children will use their knowledge of tens frames and part whole models to work out problem solving and reasoning questions. We will also be developing our mental maths skills through lots of number bond practise and counting in 2s, 5s and 10s.
Phonics & Reading
We are continuing to use our new phonics scheme ‘Little Wandle’ with children being taught a discreet 20-30 minute phonics lesson daily. Phonics activities will also be available daily through our Continuous Provision.
We will listen to the children read each morning and change their books once a week . They will take home a book for pleasure and an appropriate phonics book too. Please ensure your child brings their book bags in every day to allow us to change their books accordingly and read with the children throughout the week. Children will also have ‘red and green words’ in their bag. Please practise these often – children will receive new words, once they are fluent with their current ones. Furthermore, to continue to promote the love of reading, we will have a choice of two stories every day and on entrance to the classroom each morning, children will vote for which story they would like to be read to them at the end of the day.
Please continue to read with your children at home and log on to their Bug Club page 🙂
Theme
This term, our theme question is ‘What is a Golden Jubilee?’. The children will be learning all about our Royal Family, ahead of the Queen’s Golden Jubilee this month. At the end of this half term, we will be having a whole school theme week which will include dressing as royalty, making royal menus, making our own scones ready for a ‘Great British Bake Off’ style competition and having a whole school afternoon tea party to celebrate our wonderful queen! 🙂
Important information
* Our PE day this term is Wednesday so please make sure your child comes dressed in their PE kits.
* Please make sure your child has their book bags and a water bottle in school each day. Water bottles can be kept in school or taken home each day.
* Our fantastic online reading resource, Bug Club, is made available for the children to read quality books throughout the week. Your child has their own login with their username and password so they can access this at home too.
