Spring Term

Welcome back and a Happy New Year to you all.  Thank you so much for the lovely and thoughtful gifts and cards received.  We hope you all had a good break over the Christmas period.

Staffing this term: A quick update on staffing this term, our lovely teacher trainee Miss Kelly is now on her second placement at another school, however we will now welcome Miss Rachel Morley to our Year 1 team. Miss Morley will be completing her second teacher training placement with us and will remain with is until the end of Spring Term 1.

Our Topic 'Houses and Homes'

This term our topic will be ‘Houses and Homes’.   It is essentially a historical topic investigating the changes seen in houses and homes in our own, and our grandparents’ memories. We will find out about the Great Fire of London, and how buildings have changed since this event.

In Literacy we will look at the life of Samuel Pepys and explore how to write diary entries. We will explore Non-fiction texts about the Great Fire of London. In addition we will be comparing and contrasting the houses and homes in some key literacy texts this term including: Peepo by Janet and Allan Ahlberg, comparing this with Our Tower by Joseph Coelho. This provides an opportunity to explore diversity and urbanisation within a community. The house that Jack built will also provide us with a stimulus to explore pattern and rhyme in literacy.

Our Science focus this half term is around objects and materials - we will be linking this to the best materials to build houses, using the fairytale 'Th three little pigs' as a stimulus to bas this upon. Your children will learn lots of vocabulary to describe the properties of materials.

In Art and DT this term we will be exploring 3D art. We will be attempting to design and build our own houses with boxes and other materials.  We will need junk modelling items, such as cereal boxes, toilet roll inserts and cupcake cases if you have any to donate? In addition to this we will also explore the work of William Morris and experiment with making our own printing blocks to use on our very own cushion cover design.

In Music we will be following the Jolly Music scheme and will also be trying out our singing voices for our Easter Performance. 

In Computing this term, your children will continue to learn about computer safety and will begin their unit on early coding skills using Discovery Education - this is a fun and engaging program used in school.

As always, we will be planning some fantastic school trips, helping us to explore diversity and other religions within our local area. We will be visiting the Mosque this term. Details will be sent out to all parents via the usual communication. If you would like to volunteer for a school trip please make yourself known to Mrs Heap or the office.

In addition to this we have also organised a further trip to Bradford Industrial Museum in Spring Term 2 where we will take part in 'Great Grandma's Washday Workshop'. This trip will allow us to explore houses through history and the changes in technology over time. Details will be sent out to parent via usual communications. Again, if you would like to volunteer for this trip please make yourself known to Mrs Heap or the school office.

Phonics and Reading

Year 1 will continue to deliver phonics for 30 minutes a day through the Monster Phonics scheme. We will be teaching spelling in class and some words will be sent home to practise each week. Please see the below for the list of Year 1 common exception words, high frequency words and sounds. Monster Phonics books will be read in class and then sent home for children to read and talk about at home.  Please try to do some daily reading with your children at home. We will be working at reading real and alien words in school to try and prepare the children for their phonics screening which takes place in Year 1. This term is all about fluency with reading, being able to spot those split digraphs, digraphs and trigraphs in words, spelling rules, reading real and alien words by decoding accurately. 

Every morning we will have reading baskets where children will read in groups.  These groups have been organised to challenge reading, comprehension, practise phonics and handwriting skills.  There will be activities linked to the books read including word games and comprehension exercises. This means the children will have two books to read in a week.  These books may come home for children to read and talk about at home.  Groupings in reading are based on ability and this is reviewed and changed half termly. If you feel you could stay for 35 minutes one morning (8:45 – 9:20) to help with reading baskets we would appreciate your help.  No experience necessary! The more parent volunteers we have the better – please make yourself known to Mrs Heap if you would like to help this school year.

Reading books will be sent home on Friday and need to be returned by the following Wednesday so that there is time to sort out new ones for the next week.

 Spelling and Grammar

We will be teaching spelling in class and some words will be sent home to practice on a Friday. Please practice these regularly with you children at home. Your child is tested on these every Friday in school. Grammar will be taught as part of literacy so children will need to recognise words like verb, noun, adjective, suffix, pre-fix and be able to identify them. We will be using capital letters, finger spaces and punctuation during our sentence writing. This term we will be focusing on using correct letter formation and the independent use of our phonics knowledge to sound out and write words and sentences. Children will be expected to spell common exception words, use adjectives, question marks, conjunctions ‘and’, s and es endings and suffixes. Handwriting is a real focus and children will be working on correctly forming upper- and lower-case letters.

 PE

Year 1 will have PE on Monday and Friday afternoon with the focus for Spring Term is Net and Wall games and Dance. Please come to school wearing PE kit on those days. There may be some lessons taught outside in the playground so please make sure PE kit reflects the outdoor temperature.  

Outdoor Learning

Outdoor learning is suspended until Tuesday 24th February and will be every other Tuesday with Rosie and Maggie. Year 1 need to be dressed in outdoor clothing and please bring in a pair of wellies to wear if the weather is bad.

 Homework

The children will have homework books with weekly spellings, reading (2 books) and maths. Spellings will be sent home every Friday for the children to learn and practice at home - please return these by Wednesday for checking in class. Thank you for your support at home in this area - frequent revision of these trickier spellings are really beneficial for the children in Year 1. Homework is voluntary and will be given to support the learning in class.  If it becomes a battle between you and your child please leave it, but let us know. There are plenty of things you can do to help your child anyway, e.g.  reading and enjoying books together, recognising coins and notes, spotting numbers, letters and words out and about, telling the time, days of the week, months of the year, recognising shapes, and practical skills such as using scissors, tying shoelaces and zipping up coats. I have also included a suggested maths homework activity table for you to do with your child at home.

The Importance of Regular Reading

Please read the fact sheet below. This highlights the importance of regular reading with your child at home as well as in school.

Please click here to access the 200 High Frequency Words

Please click here to access the phonic sounds flashcards

Please click here to access common exception words

Follow this link for ways to help your child https://monsterphonics.com/free-resources/fun-ways-to-help-children-learn-phonics-spelling/