Peterborough Museum Trip - Thursday 3rd May

We had a fantastic time at the museum today training to be a nurse in 1911.  We met Edith Cavell and learned about all the different nurses needed at this time.  As you can see, the children have been busy cleaning, cooking, washing the sheets. operating on patients and taking care of them afterwards.

Welcome back after the Easter holiday.

This half term our topic is 'Can you make me better?' which has a dual science/history focus.  We will be learning about the life of famous nurses such as Florence Nightingale and Edith Cavell and we will visit Peterborough Museum on Thursday 3rd May to experience life as a nurse in the past.   We will find out about our bodies, focusing on the senses, naming body parts and finding out how parts of our body work and how to keep them healthy.   In English we will be reading and writing biographies and autobiographies.  We will now be paying special attention to our handwriting and spelling in our writing.  In maths we will be looking at word problems and consolidate our knowledge of larger numbers up to 100.  In the second week of term we will have a 'Healthy Me' focus week when we will think about keeping mentally and physically well. 

The week beginning 11th June all children in Year 1 will take part on the national phonics screening check - please keep working with your child on their phonics skills by reading, playing phonics pack games and allowing them to play on Teach Your Monster to Read.

It is going to be a busy but fun few weeks!

Happy New Year!  Welcome back to school for another busy and exciting term. 

Spring Curriculum

During the spring term in Year 1 the learning will focus around the topic ‘Can you train a dragon?’ This will be launched with our Wow Day on Monday 8^th January when we will be holding our own medieval banquet!

In English we will start by looking at the traditional fairytales of Sleeping Beauty and Jack and the Beanstalk. We will continue to develop our sentence writing in order to produce our own fairytale. Next we will move on to non fiction reading and writing about castles. Our daily phonics lessons will continue with lots of Phase 5 phonemes being introduced.

In Maths we will be starting with positional language and move on to adding and subtracting numbers to 20. After half term we will have a special themed 100 day where we will be looking at much bigger numbers!

For Design Technology this term, we will make junk modelling castles and investigate shapes and textures in castle art. We will look at castle location in Geography, thinking about why they were built where they were.

RE during our first half term will be an overview of Sikhism with Easter after half term. Our Curriculum 4 Life lessons will focus on keeping safe, including looking at internet safety, linking with our learning in computing.

IN PE your child will be participating in team games. We will let you know the day of the week when this is finalised - watch out for notes in your child's book bag and on the classroom door.

TLCs will be taking place on Thursday 18^th January 2018 – remember to return your slip on your return to school after Christmas.

As always, if you have any questions about the curriculum or your child's learning please do not hesitate to contact us. Thank you for your continuing support of your child's learning. It makes such a difference!

Welcome to Giraffes!

It is hard to believe that the Summer is nearly over and it is time for Squirrels to become Giraffes. We are really excited to welcome your children into Year 1 and we hope that your children are looking forward to coming back to school, catching up with their friends and learning new things.

Our topic for this term is Toys, a theme I'm sure your children already know lots about! We will be learning about the history of toys, what they are made of and we will be undertaking art and design tasks linking to toys. We have booked a special Toys Day on Monday 9^th October, for which we are requesting a parental contribution, to engage your children with a hands on, practical learning experience. Please look out for a letter in your child's book bag during the first week of term.

In English we will use toy texts such as Kipper's Toy Box and the film Toy Story to stimulate our writing. We will be consolidating our ability to read, write and understand numbers to 20 in maths, using practical resources and applying our understanding to real life situations. In RE we will be finding out more about the Christian church and we will visit our local church as part of this topic.

Your child will read weekly with an adult at school, sometimes individually, especially during the first couple of weeks when we will be checking your child's book level, and at other times in a group. We will write in the reading log when we have read with your child. We will check your comments in the diaries and count your child's reads weekly, usually on a Monday. We look forward to seeing how much you have enjoyed reading with your child and to seeing their cars zoom along our reading road! They will receive raffle tickets if they read regularly and work towards certificates for 20, 50 and 100 reads! Your child will also have daily phonics lessons and we will closely monitor your child's progress through our phonics scheme.

PE will be on Wednesday afternoon but please ensure that your child has indoor and outdoor PE kit in school at all times as sometimes we may need PE shoes or kit for other activities.

Homework will be handed out on Wednesdays and should be handed in on Mondays (not the first week of term). Work handed in after Monday may not be marked until the following week.

We will ask you to supply the following items for your child this term: an old sock to make into a ‘Sock Thing’ and an old toy (theirs or yours) to help us with our non-fiction writing and to go in our class museum before half term. Watch out for notes in book bags explaining when we need these items.

We really look forward to getting to know you and your children better as the term progresses. If you have any comments, questions or concerns we are always available in the Giraffes' outdoor area from 8.50 in the morning and we can chat after school when we have said good bye to the children. Please bear with us at home time as we get to know your faces and those of friends and family who pick up your child. It might take a little while for us to check that each child is going home safely with the correct person at the start of term.

Here's hoping for a sunny September and lots of fabulous learning experiences!

Miss Sargeant and Mrs Stewart