Autumn Term 2019

Hello and welcome to the Year 1 page!

Below I hope you will find some useful information about life in Year 1.

Important information about our school routine:

• Year 1 children will register in Ms. Challenor's classroom (the classroom opposite the library, next to Mrs Jones' room) in the mornings. They should be in the classroom by 8:55 am, as register closes at 9:00. Home time is 15:20.

• We are so lucky to have a number of adults, including volunteers, who read with our children multiple times weekly. Please ensure your child has their reading book and yellow reading record in their bag every day so that we can help support your child with their reading progress! 

• PE lessons are on Monday and Wednesday afternoons - please ensure that children have the correct kit in school. The kit is plain black shorts/leggings/jogging bottoms, a plain white t-shirt and trainers or pumps.

• During 'Active Maths' and 'Active English', which we enjoy doing several times a week, children should wear pumps or trainers.

•  Homework is set on Fridays and should be handed in the following Thursday. Children also receive spelling homework, which is set and due in on the same days.

• We want to be a healthy school, full of happy children who know how to make good choices when it comes to nutrition. Therefore, snacks brought in from home for morning breaktime must be fresh fruit or vegetables (e.g. cucumber, tomatoes or carrots) and drinks in bottles should be water. Please save those chocolate bars for treats at home!

Topic

Our topic this half term is...

What makes me, me?

We will be starting a brand new year at school by exploring and celebrating what makes each of us unique. We will look at 'My body', creating self portraits in Art, whilst also learning about our body parts and our senses in Science, and how we have grown and developed since we were born.

We will also talk about 'My family', exploring how people's families are different, how families celebrate together and the homes families live in. This links to our History lessons, where we will be looking at 'Changes in Living Memory', discovering the differences and similarities between our lives and those of our grandparents. Many of us have members of our family that have four legs, fur or scales - our pets! Through Science, we will learn about different types of vertebrates and how to properly care for all members of our family, including our beloved pets.

Whilst learning about 'My School', in Geography we will learn about where our pupils travel from to get to school, how they get here, and learn more about the village that our school is in. We will also look at how schools in different parts of the world are similar or different to Castle Primary School!

English

Ms Challenor will be teaching Year 1 children their English lessons daily. 

We will be reading some fantastic stories based on our topic, 'What makes me, me?'

We will continue to focus on the foundations of written language: creating our own sentences, sequencing them to create narratives and texts from a range of other genres, learning to spell the most common English words, applying our phonics and spelling rules for Year 1 and using basic puctuation with increasing confidence.

Phonics and Spelling

Phonics is a really important part of our Literacy learning in Year 1, and children will build their skills in both reading and writing. Children have already made a super start in Reception, and we will continue to follow the 'Letters and Sounds'  framework in Year 1 that the children have started to learn previously. We will also be learning the Year 1 spelling rules from the National Curriculum.

Phonics and spelling across the school will be taught four times weekly. Regular sessions will allow the children to gain new skills which they can then apply to reading and writing across the curriculum. 

May I recommend the website 'PhonicsPlay' if you would like to practise your phonics at home? The website has lots of free games and printable resources, as well as a subscriber area too. Click on the image below if you would like to visit the site!

Maths

Ms Challenor will teach Year 1 Maths each day. We will be focussing on counting skills, the number system, the concepts of more and less and understanding mathematical symbols. Our Maths lessons will be very hands on. Children will work with a wide range of concrete apparatus (such as cubes, counters, Numicon, Base 10 equipment, buttons, shells, bundles of wooden sticks in tens, etc).

As they gain in skill and knowledge, children increasingly learn to use pictorial represatations of mathematical concepts, including number lines, hundred-squares and the part-part-whole model. Finally, they will begin to learn other written methods. As well as number skills, we will also be developing our knowledge of geometry and ways of measuring length, time, capacity, volume and mass. 

Year 1 children will also learn important number facts by heart. We will start with bonds of 10 (the pairs of numbers that total 10) and the 2, 5 and 10 times tables. We need to know the whole operations off by heart. 

Reading

We LOVE reading in Year 1! Children should keep practising every day so that they become more and more fluent at word recognition. We know it can be really tricky for young children at first, but the more they practice, the less hard it gets. Nothing beats that proud feeling when it starts getting easier! It is also important the children develop their comprehension skills and can understand and respond to the texts that they read.

What do we need to remember to bring to school?

Please make sure you bring your PE kit (including pumps/trainers), reading book and reading record into school.