Welcome to

Our half-termly overviews give a broad outline of the type of work we will be doing each half term in different subjects.

The more that you read, the more that you know…
The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go…  Dr Seuss

Year 1 children are at that lovely age when they are excited and engrossed in colourful books.  They rejoice in their favourite tales and will often be eager to re-tell them, sometimes word for word.  Talking with an adult about the book is  just as important as reading itself.  This enables them to understand what they are reading and explore a variety of texts.  Simply put, the children should develop a love of reading for its own sake.

The building blocks required to help children become fluent readers rely on the daily practice of phonics. Initially, the children may struggle to read all of these new words but as we know practice makes perfect.   Your help in supporting your child to read regularly at home will embed and enrich their learning and love of reading.

In Year 1 we focus on using phonics to enable children to spell new words independently.  With regular, daily practice, children are soon able to formulate their own words and sentences to express their ideas. You can help your child by celebrating every opportunity that they take for writing lists, stories and facts.

The children will build up to writing full stories by using an approach called: ‘Talk for Writing.’  This involves the children learning actions to familiar tales to support them in remembering the story.

Each week I will choose two “Writers of the Week”. These children will then have their work published in a Big Book which will be celebrated in school.

Spelling test words are given out at the beginning of the week and the children are tested on Fridays.

Each week children will be provided with a spelling list focusing on a particular sound pattern; their spellings may include some other tricky words. Please encourage your child to learn these words at home.

You could practice them while driving/ walking, sticking them on the fridge and making a game of spelling and putting them into sentences.

These are statutory word lists provided by the government and children must learn to read and spell the words below.

In Year 1 we learn more about numbers up to 100, use addition and subtraction and use equipment to develop understanding of shape, space and measure. We try to make as many lessons as possible practical and will use the wider school environment to investigate where possible. It would really help your child if you can look for ways to help them notice and use numbers in the rest of their lives.

Learning number bonds to 10, doubling and halving and chanting numbers in 2’s, 5’s and 10’s are quick and easy things that can be practiced daily and will support your child in rapid recall of number.

We are sorting out a new format for the homework this year so apologies for the delay. They will be posted here as soon as possible. In the meantime please continue to read with your child nightly checking they understand the story.  Can they stop half way through and predict the end, can they say what type of characters are in the story and why they think that? Also as mentioned in the maths section it’s really important that our children become really confident with their counting and number recognition, a skill they need to practice whenever possible to gain speed and fluency.

Extra things you can do to get involved are:

• Grow some plants or vegetables talking about each part of the plant and how it develops
• Go to the library and borrow different books which the children show an interest in
• Practise writing stories using fantastic new ideas and words
• Talk about time during the day, what time is lunch time, bed time, etc?
• Regularly asking the children about what they are learning about in their topic and linking arts and crafts activities towards it