Spring 2

We hope you all had a wonderful half term. We had a very successful half term learning about hot and cold places, and how animals adapt to different climates. The children especially loved building igloos out of sugar cubes or marshmallows!

The children are improving their fluency within reading and are becoming increasingly confident. This term we will be continuing with ‘Floppy’s Phonics’, consolidating previous sounds and practising ‘alien’ words. Games including these can be found on Phonics Play.

https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/

This half term’s topic will pose the question “What do aliens think of life on Planet Earth?” The work will based on the book ‘Beegu’ in which Beegu the alien crash lands on Earth and has to adapt to her new environment. We will use supporting texts to encourage discussion and comparison.

Our Maths lessons will focus on addition and subtraction to 20. After this we will introduce length and height and mass and volume. The children will be given opportunities to practise these skills practically, with lots of fun activities and hands-on experiences.

In English, we will cover a variety of different text types, including narratives, instructions and information texts. We will also continue to practise spelling Common Exception Words.

In Science, we will be investigating and observing common plants, and making comparisons between the seasons. We will also explore our senses and carry out experiments. We will finish the term with a DT project in which the children will make healthy meal using their new knowledge of plants!

Our P.E days this term will continue to be Mondays and Wednesdays. Please ensure that children come in wearing an appropriate and warm PE kit and earrings are removed on these days.

Please remember to hand in your child’s Shared Learning book either each Monday, to be marked and celebrated in school, or on the Monday before the half term.

Thank you as always for your ongoing support.

Autumn 1

Welcome back to the new school year!

The children have settled well and are becoming familiar with the routines and rising to the challenge of the Year 1 expectations.

For the first couple of weeks we will focus on the topic ‘How do I feel?’ We will be working with the children through discussion, role-play and a range of activities to be able to identify and talk about the different feelings we have and how this impacts on our learning.

Our learning challenge for the rest of this half term is a science based topic focusing on animals. The children will be sorting animals and looking for similarities and differences.

Our focus text this half term will be ‘Dear Zoo’ by Rod Campbell, ‘The tiger who came to tea’ by Judith Kerr and ‘Augustus and his smile’ by Catherine Rayner. We will be writing lists, labels as well as re telling parts of these stories in pictures, words and sentences. The children will continue to build their knowledge of phonics, concentrating on different spellings of the same sounds and spellings that can represent alternative sounds.

Our Maths learning will include ordering and writing numbers and completing number operations using addition, subtraction and equals signs. We will be exploring mathematical language and making pictorial representations of number problems.

Home readers will need to be handed in on Mondays and will be given back out by Wednesday each week. We ask that parents please record the date and title of the book each week, when writing a comment in the reading diary.

P.E will be on a Monday and Wednesday afternoons. Please make sure your children are wearing their P.E kit when they come into school. If your child has earrings these will need to be removed before school on P.E days as they cannot participate with earrings in.