Welcome back to the spring term in Key Stage One. We hope that the Christmas break has been relaxing as you all certainly deserved it after such a long Autumn term.
Mrs Skelding and Mrs Shepherd will continue to lead this class throughout the Spring term and are excited to welcome the children back.
The Turtles class will have their PE days on a Monday and Friday this term. These PE sessions will be outdoor weather permitting and mean that you will need to provide your child with suitable clothing and footwear on these days.
The Turtles children will have the chance to work with the Ping Pong specialist during Spring half term 2 and I will write to you with more information about this closer to the time.
The books of the month for Turtles class this term will be...
January
February
March
The Gorillas class will have their PE day on a Monday and a Friday this year. These PE sessions will be outdoor, weather permitting and mean that you will need to provide your child with suitable clothing and footwear on these days.
The books of the month this term will be...
January
February
March
The Giraffes class will have their Monday and Friday this year. These PE sessions will be outdoor, weather permitting and mean that you will need to provide your child with suitable clothing and footwear on these days.
The Giraffes children have our Ping pong specialist each Friday as part of their PE. We are super excited to try this new exciting sport in school!
The books of the month for this term will be...
January
February
March
In History this half term we will be answering the big question "Why do we remember Florence Nightingale and Edith Cavell?" We we be learning all about why these two women changed the face pf healthcare and all about how hospitals have changed over time. To further our learning we have a fantastic trip to the Thackray Medical Museum in Leeds booked where we will be learning all about the human body and the adventures of Florence Nightingale.
How you can help at home...
Talk to your children about your memories of how healthcare has changed since you were little. Discuss what life was like during the pandemic and all the ways we try to control infection now. Help them to remember our healthcare heroes and the praise and thanks we felt for them during "Lockdown".
For the second part of the term our Geography learning will be answering the big question "Where would you prefer to live: Knottingley, England or Tulum Mexico?" by comparing what life is like in our country to place that is very different.
We will be learning about the continents and oceans that make up the world and why warmer countries like Mexico are closer to the equator.
How you can help at home...
Talk you your child about different places you have visited that are different to where we live. Talk about the different plant and foods you might find in other parts of the world and why those grow better there than here in our temperate climate.
In our English writing lessons we will strengthening our writing skills through a variety pf genres.
We will be learning to write alternative endings to a contemporary story with our book "The eyebrows of doom" by and creating our own fact files about the digestive system linked to our healthcare and hospitals work using the book "Amy get's eaten" by Adam Kay
In the last half of the term, we will be looking again at character descriptions now that we have learned more technical skills to use in our writing, using the book "The last stop on market street" by Matt De La Pena as our stimulus. We will then be using all our learning from science to create some amazing shape poems based on animals.
Reading is something that we at St Botolph's are incredibly passionate about. We can not stress enough how important it is that children are fluent and literate readers as early as possible to ensure that they can access all areas of learning.
We are still working towards the Phonics screening test in Year 1 which will be held in June. It is essential that the children bring their books to school everyday as we now have a team of volunteer readers that will listen to children read as much as we can in school time. This practice, in addition to the work you are doing at home is essential to the development of the children's speed and fluency in reading.
To get our children where they need to be by June all children in Year One will undertake a phonics assessment and will begin to flourish in their Read Write Inc groups as soon as possible after our return to school. To better prepare them we will be sending home a variety of resources to help you support your child in learning and recalling the sounds they will need to be fluent in to pass this national test.
How you can help at home...
Please support your child's reading journey by recording home reading in your child's reading record, to help us keep a track of how they are doing at home.
Mrs Skelding and Mrs Groves will be leading some further sessions for parents to explain more about the program and the assessments that your child will have this year and we will let you know the dates of these closer to the time
In our school we follow the White Rose scheme of learning to plan and deliver our maths lessons. This scheme allows children to experience a wide range of strategies to use across the different operations and pushes the children towards mastering the subject by allowing children to use what they know about number relationships and patterns in different ways, helping them solve problems.
In Year 1 the children will be learning about place value to 20 and beyond and using these skills to add and subtract. We will also begin our first year 1 learning on measuring length and mass.
In year 2 we will be expanding on what they have learned throughout Year One to consolidate our knowledge about money, multiplication, and measuring lengths, weights and temperatures.
How you can help at home...
We have our Keys stage One parents course run by White Rose Maths beginning in January and we are looking forward to seeing many of you there. We will be learning some new strategies and some great ways of helping our children at home. If you have not already completed your forms to attend, please see you class teahcer.
In school we answer ten simple arithmetic questions each morning. why not make this a part of your learning at home too?
Our RE lessons this term will focus on the big question "Who is Jewish and what do they believe?" and then furthering our understanding of the big story of the Bible in our Easter unit of "Why does Easter matter to Christians?" Here will explore the concept of salvation and why this is a happy and sad time for Christians.
Our core Christian value for the first half term will be Trust . We will explore this theme in our daily worship sessions as well as learning about British values and protected characteristics through our in class worships.
Our science work this term will be learning all about animals including humans through the big question "?" We will be learning to Identify the different materials that things are made from and learning that different materials are used because they have different properties.
In our Art lessons we will be exploring painting and colour though our exploration of colour mixing in the topic Splash of Colour.
The artists that we will focus on will be Jasper Johns and Clarice Cliff
In DT we will be trying our hand at creating moving mechanisms by learning about moving pictures and how they work using levers and sliders. We will also be learning all about food technology in our work designing a healthy smoothie.
In Music we will be learning about classical music through the theme animals. We will be learning about soundscapes and composition in our music from space unit
PE this half term will focus on sending and receiving in the first half of the term and then fitness in the second. We will be learning to catch and throw with accuracy, exploring how different body positions effect our stability and improving our flexibility and core strength.
Our PE kit is a plain white t shirt with plain navy or black bottoms. These can be leggings, shorts, skorts or track suit bottoms. Please ensure that children remove any earrings, have their hair tied up if it is collar length and have both an indoor and outdoor kit with appropriate footwear with them as PE will be outdoors as the weather permits.
In computing the children will be learning all about computer networks and using a computer for different purposes as we explore basic mouse skills.
In the second half of the term children will be learning more about algorithms and how computers are used to capture, store and sort data in our rockets to the moon module. In the second half of spring we will be focussing on computer networks and systems and learning how computers actually work
Our internet safety focus will be keeping ourselves safe in privacy and security. In the second half term It will be learning about managing online information by thinking about our digital footprint and how our information is used and kept safe online.
Finally, Thankyou for your continued support in helping the academy in trying to achieve it's attendance target of 96%. Every school day counts and we have such an exciting curriculum planned it is important that your child does not miss out.
You will all by now have been given the parental expectations around attendance and have seen the policy that the academy follows on holidays in term time. In each case where there is a request for a holiday under the clause of exceptional circumstances, the head Of School will follow the Academy and Trust policy. Please note that the Head of Schools decision is final and there is not appeals process for holidays in term time under the current policy.
Please also remember that we follow the Wakefield policy on healthy school life and your child must have only water, no flavoured waters or fizzy drinks in water bottles as we move into the summer where they will certainly need to drink throughout the day.
We are looking forward to another fantastic term and can not thank you enough for all of your support and help in getting our children off to a flying start this year.
Yours in learning
Mrs Groves and the KS1 team