Author: Mrs Taylor

Happy New Year to Year 1 and their families.

We hope you have all had a safe and enjoyable break.

Mrs Taylor, Mrs Freeman, Mrs Bharath and Mrs Roth would like to say a big thank you for all our wonderful and thoughtful gifts. We are very grateful.

This half term, our science topic has been about animals (including humans).

Here is the vocabulary linked to the topic. Ask your child about these words and what they mean. They might even remember the actions we’ve made to help them learn these.

Being healthy has been an important part of this science learning including keeping clean (including the importance of hand hygiene), good nutrition (based on the Eat Well Guide) and exercising.

As the World Health Organisation publishes Every move counts towards better health, Year 1 enjoy trying to get their active 30 minutes at school every day. From skipping ropes at playtime to laps around the playground for brain breaks and from Super Movers active maths videos to physical activity challenges in our shared area.

Finally, this video and Once There Were Giants by Martin Waddell helped us to understand animal and human life cycles.

There are some great scientists in Year 1 and we’ve been very impressed with their learning throughout this topic.

Our Living and Learning theme this term has been relationships. Year 1 have been learning about different aspects of relationships including families and those who care for us, caring friendships and respectful relationships.

The Family book by Todd Parr supported our learning about the importance of families and that families are sometimes different to their own families.

When learning about our special people, we discussed that, at the moment, we can’t always see some of these special friends and family. Despite this, we thought of different ways to show we care for them.

Finally, throughout this topic we have been learning about how to seek help if the children have a worry about any of their relationships. This has been through the concept of Start Telling Other People. The children have discussed who they might tell and this could include a friend, a family member, an adult at school or writing it in our Living and Learning box.

We hope this learning helps the class with their day to day relationships.

In our Living and Learning lesson today, we have been discussing the NSPCC’s Underwear Rule and this week, our reading fluency text has been the ‘PANTS’ acrostic, which stands for:

More information about the Underwear Rule, including a short film and a parent guide can be found here including a parent guide for you to follow up this learning at home.

On Friday, the whole school took part in the School Games National Santa Dash 2020.

Recently, there was a parent Zoom session on phonics. In case you were unable to attend and you would like to know more, the sessions have been recorded and are available to view.

• Phonics video 1 – supports parents with children in Foundation 2 (Reception) who are learning phonics at Phase 2.
• Phonics video 2 – supports parents with children in Foundation 2 (Reception) and Year 1 who are learning phonics at Phases 3, 4 and 5, and information about the phonics screening check which takes place towards the end of Year 1.

Links to the two videos are also on our dedicated phonics page.

For your information, in Year 1, we are currently completing phonics at Phase 4 and after Christmas we will begin Phase 5. There’s lots of information here about the new sounds we will be learning and some we already know, for example ‘ai’, but with different graphemes, for example a-e, ay, a, ey, ea, aigh and eigh.

We have been very impressed with the children’s progress with phonics this term. Understanding phonics is the basis for your child’s reading and writing. Please do ask if you would like any more support about your child’s phonics learning.