Welcome to Year 1 at

Willaston Primary Academy

Welcome back to Year 1. We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and a great New Year. 

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.  

This term our curriculum topic is ‘Toy Town’. During this topic we shall be looking at how toys have changed over time, what toys are like around the world and also using our science and DT skills to learn about how they are made and what they are made of.  We shall also be doing a short study on Lego: learning about who invented it, where it comes from and how it is made. Linking to this, our class trip is to the Legoland discovery centre in Manchester.   (For more information please see our topic web in the downloads section at the bottom of the page or click on the spring 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.  This term we shall be doing team games, learning hockey and football skills as well as learning how to skip.
• 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. Books can be changed in class on any day but we all change books together on a Tuesday and Thursday.
• 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   

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.

Phonics words to read and practise shall be given out on a Friday. This are linked to both the phonics sounds we are studying 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.