Year 1
Welcome to Year 1!
We are delighted to have your child joining us on our learning journey in Year 1 this year. Mrs Margetts and I have loved meeting you all and are looking forward to us all working together as a school family.
Start time – 8:50am Pick-up time- 3:10pm
Please arrive to Year 1 at the allocated time, using the 2 metre distances as a guide. We will open the gate at 8:50am, ready to welcome all of the children as quickly and safely as possible. As always, if we can do anything to help or answer any queries, please contact us at year1@cpa.dsat.education and I will do my best to respond as soon as I can.
Diary dates
Thursday 24th September 2020 – Reading and Writing parents information meeting via Zoom at 4pm
Thursday 8th October 2020 – Maths parents information meeting via Zoom at 4pm
Thursday 22nd October 2020 – School closes for half term at 3:10pm for our class
Friday 23rd October 2020 – Training day
Monday 2nd November 2020 – School opens for Autumn term 2 at 8:50am for our class
Parents Information Meeting presentations.
Here are links to information shared at previous parent information meetings.
Reading Information Meeting 2020
Writing Information Meeting 2020
Maths Information Meeting 2020
Our starter theme this year is a whole school theme ‘Here We Are’.
This heartfelt and thought-provoking book from Oliver Jeffers is dedicated to his son, Harland and was written in the first two months of Harland’s life. It was inspired by Oliver’s desire to make sense of the world for his son, but is also a gift to all children at this time, helping them to make sense of their world and their role in it. This book provides a powerful vehicle for children to reflect on and make sense of the world we are all living in. The words and pictures work together to help children to understand their place in the world and to move forward together in a positive and constructive way.
In addition to using the book, we will be doing lots of PSHE work around children’s feelings and helping them to make sense of what has happened, so that they feel happy and safe.
Try some meditation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bk_qU7l-fcU
English
Following on from the ‘Here We Are’ theme we will be completing a film study on a clip called ‘The Way Back Home’. A young boy builds himself a rocket and sends himself off to Space. He lands on a faraway planet. His spaceship breaks down, a friendly alien lands and he breaks down too. The little boy parachutes to earth to get some tools to fix the ship. He gets back by way of a huge ladder, fixes the machines and then they both fly off.
It is a really simple adventure (cross-genre) story. Using this film stimulus children will write character and setting descriptions. We will also write a narrative for the film.
After this we will be looking at the story Beegu by Alexis Deacon. Beegu is lost and wandering because she has become stranded on Earth. Beegu awaits rescue by her mother and explored the Earth as she waits. The people that she meets on this strange planet are strange and not very welcoming. Using this book as a stimulus, children will enjoy composing letters and posters as well as writing character and setting descriptions.
Reading
We collect books in on Fridays and send 2 new ones home on Mondays. Please don’t bring books to school every day.
This year we have a numerical system in key stage 1 which is closely aligned to your child’s phonics knowledge. This then progresses onto the coloured reading bands from Turquoise.
Please continue to enjoy your reading each day. Reading is fun and a great way to spend time together with your family, as well as developing our imaginations. Adult’s please remember to record what your child reads at home in their reading record. We will count all entries in the reading diaries weekly and award golden tickets to those who have read 20 times or more in a month.
You can also access reading using the links below:
https://readon.myon.co.uk A free resource with a selection of digital books. Access to thousands of enhanced digital books through myON and articles from myON News.
https://storylineonline.net A free resource with a selection of stories to watch being read by an adult. Storyline Online, streams videos featuring celebrated actors reading children’s books alongside creatively produced illustrations.
https://booktrust.org.uk A free resource with story books to listen to and read along. BookTrust is the UK’s largest children’s reading charity, dedicated to getting children reading.
https://openlibrary.org A free resource with storybooks to download and read. Open Library is an open, editable library catalogue, building towards a web page for every book ever published.
Phonics
As a school we follow the Read, Write, Inc programme to deliver our phonics teaching. Year 1 have been taught all the Set 2 phonemes and are currently revisiting them for fluency. We have lots of information on our schools phonics page here: http://canon-popham.vox-cms.com/site/phonics/
Here are some online phonics games that you and your child would like to play:
https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/
Spellings
As we are revisiting the graphemes of Set 2, we will begin each Monday with a phoneme focus and the children will complete a spelling quiz on the Friday of that week.
Following this we will begin the spelling patterns of Set 3 phonemes.
We use a cursive style handwriting in our school, the children have worked very hard in Reception to develop their handwriting. Work on our displays shows how beautiful their handwriting is and is often commented on when we have visitors in school. Please try to encourage your child to use this when they are completing any written home learning tasks. A good resource for this is on YouTube to see how each letter is formed. This can be found here.
If you would like to use the handwriting lines which we use in school, these can be downloaded and printed here:
Maths
We follow a mastery approach in our school. This half term we will be focusing on place value by counting, comparing and sorting objects, ordering numbers up to 20 and being able to say which number is 1 less than/ greater than a given number as well as addition and subtraction of these numbers.
www.topmarks.co.uk has a variety of online maths games that you and your child may like to play.
If you have any questions about these areas of Maths please come and speak to me.
Numbots
Numbots is an on-line programme to boost addition and subtraction skills. It is available on a range of devices, you can play online at play.numbots.com or download the NumBots app. Playing little and often will significantly improve your child’s recall and understanding of number bonds and addition and subtraction facts. These are critical foundations in maths so we are excited by the impact NumBots will have. In order to get the best out of NumBots children should regularly play for short bursts of time over the week.
Emails were sent to parents in Reception containing your child’s login details. If you have not received this email, have misplaced your details or are having trouble accessing the website, please email me to let me know.
The Canon Popham Times Table Challenge
We are continuing with the school ‘Times Tables Challenge’ award system to encourage the children to learn their times tables. In Year 1, your child needs to learn to count forwards and backwards in steps of 2, 5 and 10.
Try it!!! Can you do it? You can practise as many times as you like by following the links
PE
Our PE day is Thursday. At this time, children may come to school in their PE kit on this day only. We will be doing our PE lessons outdoors for as long as the weather allows, please ensure children come in track suit bottoms, a t-shirt and a jumper.
Online Safety
Children may well be using the internet more than usual at the moment so it is a good time to remind and emphasise how to keep safe online. CEOP have produced lots of great resources which parents/carers can access on their website: www.thinkyouknow.co.uk
We also have a Parental Controls booklet that gives guidance for parents on how to apply parent control on many different things that our children use from Netflix to settings on IOS and Android (Phones). To access this please click on the link: Parental Controls booklet 2020
As always, we are here to support you and for your child to have a memorable learning experience in our class.
Mrs. Milnes and Mrs. Margetts