WC 21/01/19 

English - We are continuing to adapt Jack and the Beanstalk to create our own fairytale. We have changed the setting and character and will be creating a new story map to go with this to support us in writing our tale next week. 

Maths - This week we will be comparing, ordering and looking for patterns within numbers to 20. Our focus will be on using a range of comparative vocabulary e.g. greater/fewer, more/less, bigger/smaller.

Challenge - can you compare quantities of items at home using this language? 

Science - we are looking at the season winter. We will be going for a winter walk to explore what we can see in the environment as clues, talking about the weather and day length. You could go on your own winter walk and see what you discover. 

WC 14/1/19

English - we are looking at the fairytale Jack and the Beanstalk. We will be doing lots of work on becoming familiar with the tale and beginning to adapt it to write our own. Have a look at out story map and ask your child to try and act it out and retell it to you! We will also be working on our sentence formation and learning what a noun and verb is. 

Maths - we are looking at numbers within 20, representing them with objects, numerals and in words and counting to 20 by making groups of 10. 

Science - we will be investigating the season autumn, thinking about what the weather is like and what we might see. 

WOW DAY - Princes and Princesses 

On Thursday 10th January we had our wow day where we dressed up as Princes, Princesses and knight and took part in lots of activities! We made shields, learned a royal dance and even cooked some vegetable soup and soda bread. In the afternoon we had a royal banquet where we danced and enjoyed the food that we had made in the morning. We had a fantastic day and thoroughly enjoyed being royalty for the day. Take a look at our pictures below. 

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 Thursday 10^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. Our PE day is on a TUESDAY. Please ensure your child brings in the correct kit for this.

TLCs will be taking place on Thursday 17^th January 2018 – if there is a problem with your appointment please make sure that you come and speak to us so that we can rearrange this for you.

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!

Ms Sargeant and Mrs Stewart

Welcome to Giraffes!

It is hard to believe that the Summer is over and it is time for Hedgehogs 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 24^th September, 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 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.

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 8.45 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 (Mon, Tue, Wed) and Mrs Stewart (Thu, Fri)