Welcome to Year 1 at

Willaston Primary Academy

Welcome to a brand new year, our names are Mrs Morrison and Mrs Fitzhugh, we shall be working closely together to share the teaching duties throughout the week. 

Mrs Morrison shall work Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon

Mrs Fitzugh shall work Wednesday, Thursday and Friday morning.

We also have the wonderful Miss Pickup teaching on a Friday afternoon, teaching RE and PSHE.

In class we shall have Mrs Burgess and Miss Rowlands assisting and Mrs Gidman shall be helping with class interventions.  

In Year 1 we shall start to become more independent, looking at the different ways we can learn and having fun whilst doing it. We are all looking to an exciting and creative year. Our first curriculum topic is ‘What is a home sweet home?’. Through this we shall be looking at homes throughout history and around the world, learning about our local area and we shall also be touching upon the gunpowder plot. We shall also be looking at the artist LS. Lowry as well as learning about plants and materials in science.  I hope the children will find it all really interesting; we have lots of fun activities planned. (For more information please see our topic web in the downloads section at the bottom of the page or click on the autumn term icon.)

Below is brief summary of some of the key things you may find useful to know about Year 1.

Our Autumn term will start with a couple of days dedicated purely to our new topic to help the children engage with their new topic and teachers.

Useful Information

• Please remember to label all of your drinks bottles, clothes and sports kit to avoid them being placed in lost property.
• PE will take place on a Monday and Thursday for this half-term. Please ensure your child has he correct PE kit -this includes daps/pumps/trainers, particularly when we are out on the field or playground.  For the first half term we shall be doing catching, throwing and hitting and parachute games.  
  Reading
• Children should read as much as possible at home both from the reading scheme and from books they enjoy from home or from the library. In Year 1, children are encouraged to read for a minimum of around 3 times per week for approximately 10 - 15 minutes. Please try and re-read the books and talk about them in more detail. They should look at the language or punctuation used, how it is laid out or what the characters are like as well as using their phonics to decode and look up any new words. Your child should be changing their reading books around once/twice a week. It is very important that the children do not just read a book once and then move on as both the repetition and deeper questioning will help your child's reading development. 
• Please be aware that we aim to ensure that all children are benchmarked a minimum of once per term. We constantly monitor all of the children's reading through a variety of ways such as: Guided reading; 1:1 reading through our parent helpers, teaching assistants and teachers; phonics; and general reading from the interactive white board, and class books
• Writing equipment- Pupils shall be provided with pencils, rulers, rubbers and pencils sharpeners. Within class we have a selection of colouring pencils and felt tip pens.

Homework

Homework is given on a Wednesday and due in on a Monday    

A creative topic grid will be given out at the beginning of a term, this shall contain a range of activities. You can do these throughout the term sending any work or finished projects into class to be shared.  The grid could contain art, English, Maths, DT, Geography, History, outdoor activities or even PE games.

There shall also be some other homework given our during the term (but not every week) that will be linked to phonics, English or Maths.  If your child needs support we are very happy for you to help, but please could you put a note on it to say how much guidance was given.

Spellings within Year 1 shall be linked to both the children's phonic's phase as well as the Year 1 common exception words. (Please see link below). 

If you have any concerns at all, please feel free to approach any of our Year 1 team for a chat in the playground, write us a note or make an appointment to come and see us. We are always happy to discuss any concerns or issues, similarly, if we have concerns or worries about your child, we will let you know. We feel it is important that your child is happy in the classroom so that they might achieve their full potential.