Welcome to Year 1!
Meet the Year 1 Teaching Team:
(Photo of staff to follow)
Rabbit's Class
Miss Perkins
Mrs Morrison
Mrs Ireland
Squirrel's Class
Miss Wilman
Mrs Farrugia (Monday -Thursday)
Mrs Clark (Friday)
Autumn 2
We hope you have had a lovely half term! We are looking forward to welcoming everyone back to school this week. We are excited to begin our Christmas Nativity performance rehearsals, dates and information will follow. Some children may have lines to learn but we will inform you of this. We will be updating the website half-termly. Please check the communication books on a regular basis as we will stick in the sounds and spellings which we are working on in phonics.
Important Information:
We will be sending out our new home learning activities for the half term, linked to our toys topic. These activities are designed to be completed by the children or as activities to complete together at home, to enrich their learning around our topic. The activities are optional and they can complete as many as they would like to. They can bring them into school to share with their class and we will display their home learning in the classroom until the end of the half term.
Our P.E days will be on a Tuesday afternoon with a P.E coach outside and alternate Monday mornings with class teachers in the hall.
Our Library day will be on a Friday afternoon, where children will be able to return and pick a new library book from the wide selection in the school library. They will also learn library skills throughout the year during these sessions.
Children will be able to change their spot books daily and their reading records will be checked by a member of staff.
Reading
Your child will be read with once a week by a member of staff or an experienced volunteer and they will also join in with small guided reading groups with their teachers weekly. Children will be able to change their spot books daily or when needed. Members of staff will move them onto new spot book bands as they make progress throughout the year. The book bands will link to their phonetic knowledge, the sight reading of tricky words and their ability to understand and answer questions about what they have read.
Reading with your child at home is a fantastic way to support their learning and progress. We suggest that a 'little and often' approach is best, i.e five minutes, five times a week. As well as decoding the words, ask them questions to check their understanding. In addition to listening to your child read, please read to your child as this will support them to behave like a reader, copying what they see and hear. We recommend that you share favourite stories, allowing them to join in with predictable phrases. Also, visiting your local library is a great way to discover new and exciting books.
Phonics and Spellings
Throughout year 1, the children will be revisiting and learning phonics phases 2, 3, 4 and 5. They will have daily phonics sessions, including games and on a Friday children will use the sounds which they have learnt that week to write in their phonics books. They will also learn to read and spell the 'tricky words' and high frequency words. We will be sending out handouts at the beginning of they year to remind you of the phonics phases and tricky words. It would be beneficial to practise reading words containing the sound patterns which we are learning each week, identifying them in books and spelling words (we will contain our weekly phonics sounds and tricky words in our fortnightly newsletters in the communication books).
The children will use the sounds which they have learnt to carefully segment and blend words. For example:
'chair' ch-air
'shelf' sh-e-l-f
'homes' (children will recognise the split vowel digraph o_e)
Here are some websites for phonics games and resources:
https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/freeIndex.htm
https://www.teachyourmonstertoread.com/
http://www.letters-and-sounds.com/
Topic- Toys
English
Our English learning journey will begin by introducing our topic 'Toys'. We will begin by reading and exploring the toys in the story 'Lost in the Toy Museum' by David Lucas. We will be creating a lost poster all about the teddy called Bunting. The children will have a 'teddy day' where they will be allowed to bring in and share their favourite teddy (date to follow in a letter). We will use this as a stimulus for descriptive writing about their favourite teddy.
Our next book led learning journey will be 'Traction Man' by Mini Grey. Traction Man is a superhero who saves the day! The story is told through a child's imaginative play with their toys. The children will create an advert for the toy 'Traction Man', using imaginative description. They will also design a new super hero. Once we have followed the story of Traction Man, we will complete our topic by creating a sequel. We will then be inviting parents in (date to follow) to share with you our new Traction Man stories.
Finally, we will celebrate the lead up to Christmas by reading and exploring the story 'Christmas at the Toy Museum' by David Lucas.
Maths
We will begin our half term with children developing their fluency with counting to and back from 20 and beyond. They will make numbers to 30 using concrete resources and find one more and one less than numbers. We will then move onto addition and subtraction within 20. We will also be exploring and using our number bonds to 10. We will be doubling and halving amounts, working on mental strategies. At the end of the half term we will be exploring weight and volume.
Here are some helpful website to support your child's learning in maths:
http://www.ictgames.co.uk/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/subjects/zjxhfg8
Foundation Subjects
Science
We will be learning about different types of materials and describing properties of materials. We will be looking at the types of materials which an item is made out of and we will begin to explain why these materials are used for different items. We will be carrying out exciting investigations, linked to our topic. For example- 'Which material is best for Traction Man's Scuba suit? Why?'.
Computing
We will be learning how to control a mouse and creating pictures on the computer.
Geography
We will comparing our school to other schools.
History
We will be learning about toys in the past and present. We will be comparing toys now and from the past. We will be linking this to our Science learning about materials. We will identify and explain how the materials used to make toys have changed over time. We would love to hear about the toy's which the children's parents or grandparents played with. We will be creating toy timelines and we will even have a delivery of old toys to play with!
P.E
Outdoor (P.E Coach)- We will be learning how to hold a hockey stick correctly and how to control a ball.
Indoor (Dance/ Drama)- We will be learning dances and songs for our Nativity performance.
PSHE
We will begin our first unit of 'HEART SMART'. We will learn about what it is to be 'Heart smart' and how to 'Let love in'. We will send home a new home learning task, linked to our topic.
ART
We will be using a variety of materials to create different pieces of Art, including old and new teddy pictures and Christmas Arts.
Music
We will be learning our songs for the Christmas Nativity.
D&T
We will be designing, creating and evaluating pop-up Christmas cards.
R.E
We will be learning about the Christmas story.
Long Term Study
We will continue our year long term study- exploring the flowers and wildlife at Emsworth Primary school and record and reflect on the changes throughout the year.
Thank you for your support and we look forward to a brilliant half term. Please ask a member of staff if you have any questions.