I hope you all had a lovely summer holiday. In Goldilocks base we are already busy learning and getting used to being in Year 1. I will be teaching your child for the majority of the week, and Mr Osborne will be teaching the children on Wednesdays. I will, however, still be in school and be interested in seeing what the children are doing. We are very lucky to have Mrs Gibson and Miss Munro in class to support your child’s learning as well as helping with the transition from Reception into Year 1. We begin our day with assembly, and then go straight in to active time. When your child comes into school in the morning they’ll need to change into their trainers ready for this. I have been really impressed with the children’s confidence in coming in to school in the morning. You can see how grown up and independent they are becoming! We then move into our ‘readers workshop’ where the children rotate around different activities throughout the week, which includes a guided reading session with myself. This is followed by our daily literacy lesson. This term we will be using a range of stories with familiar settings to support speaking and listening, reading and writing work. We will also spend time looking at some non-fiction such as labels, captions and instructions. It would be very helpful if you could continue to read with your child on a regular basis, discussing what they have read as well as helping them sound out new words. There are many opportunities to support your child with writing at home, such as getting them to help you write shopping lists, leaving messages to each other, sending postcards and emails as well as story writing. On Monday afternoons we also meet with our year 6 reading partners and share our school library books with them. After break time we have our daily numeracy lesson, and this term we will be working on counting, reading and writing numbers up to at least 30. We have already made a great start exploring and comparing numbers, and we will be continuing to improve our counting skills as well as learning lots of number facts. Any opportunity to practice counting at home is really useful. Practising number formation with your child at home would be really helpful, as well as counting steps, spotting front door numbers and playing games like snakes and ladders. Solving problems and making measurements through cooking, comparing containers in the bath and finding totals of small amounts of money are all fun ways to get children involved in learning. After lunch we will be continuing to work on phonics skills each day to help with reading and spelling. The children will revisit phonics they have previously learnt as well as starting to learn different spelling patterns for phoneme sounds we already know.
Much of our learning will happen through our topic work, which combines subjects such as science, art, history and geography. Our first topic of the year is Journeys, and we have already spent an afternoon exploring and coming up with a range of questions which have provided the basis of our learning. We will be looking at different types of transport, making maps, how transport has changed over time as well as investigating making things move using push and pull forces. Look out for information about our topics on the class blog on the school website and on the topic board in our classroom. Across the school we are working on developing personal, emotional and social skills through work on feelings, how to work with others and ways to deal with problems. The children will be learning about the rights they have as a child, but also, the responsibilities they have. As a class we have discussed that the children have the right to learn and be happy and safe but also the responsibility they have to make sure everyone else can enjoy those rights. All of our rights and responsibilities are on display in the classroom so we don't forget them! We have now heard all the children read and have given them a new book. Please feel free to come in and change your child's reading book when they have finished - they are in the same place as last year - and if you are not sure then just ask. It is so important to hear your child read at home as this will help them to consolidate their skills as well as develop confidence. Sharing non fiction books is also a really important part of their reading development. We are in the process of sorting the children's tricky words, which will be sent home shortly. Now they are in year 1, the children do need to be able to read and spell their tricky words as this helps to develop their vocabulary and confidence when attempting new writing tasks. To help support your child you could play games with the words such as pairs, snap or activities such as writing them in a steamy mirror or in the sand. Of course, there will also be links on our blog to interactive games, if you do not have your code to access education city please ask me. It just leaves me to say if you have any questions or queries then please do come and see me, and to thank you for your help and support. I will be updating the blog regularly so keep an eye on there to see all the exciting things we get up to in year 1. I am very excited about the next year, and I hope you and your child are too!
Best wishes, Sarah Burge, Doreen Gibson and Becki Munro