Year One Newsletter Autumn 1

Welcome to Year One. We hope you have all enjoyed the summer holidays and are ready for the year ahead. It has been lovely to spend time really getting to know the children this week. They have already made a fantastic start and impressed us with how very grown up and independent they are.

In Birch Class Mrs McMillan will be teaching on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, with Mrs Walker teaching Birch Class on Fridays. In Hazel Class Mrs Ward will teach Monday, Tuesday and Friday and Mrs Walker will teach on a Wednesday and Thursday.

Our Class coffee mornings will take place at 9.00am on Monday 8th September for Hazel Class and 9.00am on Tuesday 9th September for Birch Class. This will give us the chance to provide you with more information about Year One and to answer any questions you might have. Do let us know if you are unable to attend and we will send any information shared on parent mail.

The children will be bringing a reading book home this week, as well as a sharing book for you to read together. We will be changing the children’s books weekly and we will be explaining more about how this will work at our coffee morning. In the meantime, please ensure your child has their reading book in school everyday

We will continue to use the reading records that the children used in Reception. They include all of the phonics which was covered in Reception, as well as the phase 5 sounds that will be covered in Year One. You may notice that there is also a list of the common exception words which children need to learn how to read and spell by the end of Year 1 , this is something that you can support your child with throughout the year.

Our PE this half term will be taught by Mr Richardson and will be focused on using space which is part of our fundamental movement and team games unit. The children will also be developing their balance bike skills using some of our balance bikes in the outdoor area.

We are very lucky to have both Mrs B and Mrs Kirk supporting in Year One this year. Both members of staff are familiar to the children as they have both worked as lunch time supervisors in school. They both have an excellent understanding of the Year One curriculum and routines.

We are working hard to support the transition from Reception to Year One.

The children will have opportunities to access the play based learning and continuous provision in Maple Class. They will also be using our outdoor provision with lots of new equipment that we have purchased to support the children’s learning and development. We are working hard to ensure that the children are happy and settled and as ever communication between home and school is key. We are really looking forward to working with you to ensure that this is another great year for your child at Havannah First School.

We are usually available before and after school, so please do not hesitate to pop in or contact us by telephone or e mail if you have any queries or concerns.

English

Fiction

• In English, we will read a range of Traditional Tales, predicting what might happen, identifying the structure of the stories and looking for patterns in the texts – ie. repeated phrases and refrains.
• We will practice applying our phonic knowledge to write labels, lists and captions.
• We will write short sentences to retell a familiar tale.

Non-Fiction

• We will start to look at simple information texts and make our own fact file; using our knowledge from Science and Geography lessons to help us!

Geography

• In Geography lessons, we will get to know our local area.
• We will find out where we live and where or school is located.
• We will make our own maps and explore the features of the area we can see around our school before learning about our nearest city, Newcastle upon Tyne.

MATHS

This half term we have a number focus in Maths. Children will learn to:

• Sort, count and represent objects
• Read and write numbers 0-10 correctly and in words.
• Count one more/ one less
• Count with 1:1 correspondence
• Compare groups, using the language of equal, more, greater, less, fewer
• Compare numbers
• Order groups of objects
• Order numbers
• Use ordinal numbers

SCIENCE

In Science lessons, we will investigate ‘Which plants might Little Red Riding Hood see on her way to Granny’s house?’ We will:

• Identify and name a variety of common wild and garden plants, including deciduous and evergreen trees
• Observe closely & compare and contrast familiar plants; describing how we were able to identify and group them.

RE

In RE lessons we will explore the theme of belonging. Thinking about the families, school and clubs we belong to. We will also explore baptism in Christianity.

PSHE

We will start to teach the children about the Zones of Regulation, discussing feelings and emotions and developing self-regulation strategies.

Computing

This half term we will focus on e-safety in our computing lessons. We will learn through stories and activities about why it is important to be safe online and how to be a safe digital citizen.

Art

In Art lessons, we will explore line drawing, experimenting with a range of mark making tools and techniques.

Music

In Music we will start to build our skills in listening and appraising and we will learn some new songs.