Year 1
Welcome to Year 1!
The Meerkats
Autumn 2, 2018
Welcome back and we are excited to learn many things about Winter this term.
Our theme this half term is ‘Why is it cold?’
Who was Rupert Peary?
Which animals live in the North Pole?
Which animals live in Antarctica?
What are the Aurora Borealis?
Parents Information & Meeting Information
Powerpoint from the Reading Information meeting on 26th September can be found here.
Powerpoint from the Maths Information meeting on 3rd October can be found here.
Powerpoint from the Writing Information meeting on 9th October can be found here.
General Information 
Friday 16th November 2018 – Pyjama day (Children in Need)
Friday 30th November 2018 – Christmas Fayre 3:45pm
Wednesday 12th December 2018 – KS1 Nativity 2:30pm
Thursday 13th December 2018 – KS1 Nativity 6:00pm
Friday 14th December 2018 – KS1 Christmas party – bring party clothes in a named bag
Tuesday 18th December 2018 – Christmas lunch
Thursday 20th December 2018 – Break up for Christmas holiday
Children need to bring their P.E. kits on Monday to be kept in school until Friday. Year 1 will have their P.E. session on Thursdays.
On this days can you please ensure that long hair is tied back and that earrings are not worn.
It would also be helpful to label your child’s PE kit with their name.
Reading books will be changed on Tuesdays & Thursdays.
Please make a record of every time your child reads because if they read 20 times within a month, they will receive a golden ticket.
Key Stage 1 parents who help their child to read 20 times a month will be entered into a monthly prize draw.
Oxford Owl Library (The library is a fantastic e-book resource, you just need to register your e-mail on the site to access a range of books for free)
Phonics
In year 1 we continue to build on the phonics sessions that have taken place throughout your child’s time in the reception class.
We follow the Read, Write Inc scheme for the teaching and learning of phonics.
At the end of Year 1, all children have to undertake the Year 1 Phonics Screening. Working 1:1 with the teacher, children will read 40 words, some of which are real and some of which are pseudo (made up/’alien’) words containing the 40+ phonemes they have learned during their first two years in school.
You can support your child at home with their phonics by reading as much as possible with your child and investigating some of the phonics links given below:
| Deep Sea Phonics | Dragons Den | Buried Treasure | Obb & Bob |
| Learn to Read | Spelling | BBC Words and Pictures |
EGPS
Spellings
Weekly spellings will be given out on Tuesdays. Your child will be tested on a selection of these the following Monday.
Also during the week, your child will complete a short dictation exercise containing the weekly spellings.
Please support your child at home by helping your child learn their weekly spellings.
Grammar and Punctuation
Below are links to some of the sites which the children enjoy learning from.
| Sentence building | Past tense | Nouns | Spelling |
| Contractions | Conjunctions | Spelling | Punctuation |
| Sentences | Prefixes and Suffixes | Word types |
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, children need to learn to count forwards/ backwards in steps of 2, 5 and 10 in order to achieve the award.
Try it!!! Can you do it? You can practise as many times as you like by following the links
English
This half term we will be looking at the stories The Snowman by Raymond Briggs and One Snowy Night by M Christina Butler and Little Penguin Lost by Tracey Cordoroy. Using these books as a stimulus, children will be writing character and setting descriptions, as well as sequencing story plots and writing their own winter stories. We will also be writing our own fact files about different Arctic and Antarctic animals.
Take a look at the BBC Bitesize Literacy for KS1 website for some fun things to do.
We use a cursive style handwriting in our school, please try to encourage your child to use this when they are writing at home. A good resource for this is on YouTube to see how we do this. This can be found here.
Maths
This half term we will be securing our knowledge on place value by counting, comparing and sorting objects, ordering numbers up to 20 and beyond as well as addition and subtraction of these numbers.
If you have any questions about these areas of Maths please come and speak to me.
Make maths fun by having a go at some Maths games by clicking here.
Topic
During our topic, we will learn about the climate of the North and South Pole and the lives of the polar explorers Robert Peary and Roald Amundsen and their different expeditions to the ends of the Earth! We will learn about the different polar animals that live in these regions and make clay models of these. We will also complete art and design projects to produce polar bear art and Northern light silhouette pictures as well as a exploring the season of Winter. Additionally we will be completing a number of Christmas crafts.
Topic Homework
We are continuing with our topic approach to homework this year and in addition to their reading book, weekly spellings and Maths homework, children must also complete at least 1 homework project based upon our topic. Your child will receive their homework sheet the second week back this half term.
Topic homework will be shared during our Pride In Our Learning session. Each of the projects have been designed to allow children to develop their creative and critical thinking skills.
Remember that you can work with your child on homework and it’s a fun activity to do with your child.
We hope you enjoy completing some of these homework projects with your children.
Other information
Our curriculum page for Year 1 can be found here.
Please provide your child with a labelled water bottle to take outside during playtimes.
We also advise that you ensure all your child’s school clothing is clearly labelled too as well as making sure that your child does not bring toys from home into school. This would be greatly appreciated.
As always thank you for your continued support. It really makes a difference to your child’s learning and if you have any questions or comments please feel free to speak to us at any time.
Mrs Milnes, Mrs Margetts and Miss Hartshorne