Welcome to Year 1

Welcome to Year 1, after an unusual few months away we are all excited to welcome you into your new classroom and have lots of fun activities planned. 

Mrs Morrison works Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon.

Mrs Fitzhugh works 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 Mrs Helmoe-Larsen assisting.

Year 1 curriculum and useful information

Our Autumn term will start with a few days dedicated purely to our new topic and to helping the children settle back into school. We aim to help the children engage with their new topic and to allow them time to get to know their teachers and to figure out the new routines.

This term our curriculum topic is ‘Home Sweet Home’. During this topic we will be looking at our own homes, where we live, homes in the past and homes around the world. We shall also be learning about the materials that our houses are made from and looking at how our homes change over the year. We will also including the children's ideas into our plans, looking at what questions they have about where we live.  (For more information on our class topic please see our topic web in the downloads section at the bottom of the page or click on the autumn term icon)

Reading

Reading is extremely important during Year 1 as the children shall be building up their phonics knowledge and learning how to decode lots of new sounds and words building up their confidence to read out loud and to enjoy reading new books.

Once the children have settled into school and have been assessed the children shall be bringing home:

-a book related to their phonic's level and the sounds they are learning,

-a book of their choice from their colour banded books,

-a book of their choice from the library.

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. Books can be changed in class on any day but we all change books together as a class on a Monday and Thursday.

•  We constantly monitor all of the children's reading through a variety of ways such as: in phonics lessons, in whole class guided reading sessions, 1:1 reading with both the teacher, teaching assistants and parent helpers (when it is safe enough for volunteers to return) and general reading from the interactive white board, and class books.

Homework   

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, Math's, DT, Geography, History, outdoor activities or even PE games.

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.

If you have any concerns at all, especially after the last few months, please feel free to email or call the office to arrange a phone call with one of 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.

Here's to a wonderful Autumn term.