Welcome To Key Stage One. We hope that the summer has been relaxing and fun for you and your family. As your children are still finding their feet in their new classrooms, please take a moment to check that your child has their name in all their belongings as they are still learning to take care of their own belongings!
This year Turtles class will be led by both Mrs Skelding and Mrs Shepherd. This year the government has ended the need for examination style SAT exams. Therefore, will be assessing you child in a more informal way throughout the year as they progress towards the expected standard for Year Two.
The Turtles class will have their PE days on a 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 Turtles children have forest school on a Monday in the first half term and will need to bring appropriate clothing on this day to help them stay safe. This will count as their PE session on this day and so they will not need to bring PE kit as well, just their forest schools clothes on a Monday. These should be a long sleeved top, long trousers, wellies or waterproof footwear and a waterproof jacket
The books of the month for Turtles class this term will be...
September
October
November
December
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. On a Friday Gorillas will have the chance to learn table tennis with our new PE expert Ping Pong Pete. They will need their PE kit as usual and we are really excited about the chance to learn this exciting new sport in school.
The books of the month this term will be...
September
October
November
December
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 forest school on a Monday in the first half term and will need to bring appropriate clothing on this day to help them stay safe. This will count as their PE session on this day and so they will not need to bring PE kit as well, just their forest schools clothes on a Monday. These should be a long sleeved top, long trousers, wellies or waterproof footwear and a waterproof jacket
The books of the month for this term will be...
September
October
November
December
In History this half term we will be answering the big question "Where did kings and queens live through time?" We we be learning all about the monarchy of England, how and why kings and queens lived in castles and a few key facts about some famous monarchs. Our History topic will launch with a fabulous royal day where we will be experiencing first hand how life was for a royal court with a visit from past production experiences.
How you can help at home...
Talk to your children about your experiences of the monarchy. Where were you when the Queen died? Did you watch the coronation? The Children are learning about they way some events happened within living memory and about how people are a valuable historical source.
BBC iPlayer have horrible histories which is a fabulous resource you could watch with your children. Their Monarchs song from series three is available here on YouTube and helps children learn some key dates for William the conqueror who is one of our key historical figures https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vC6okzIKQvg
For the second part of the term our Geography learning will be answering the big question "Where is my school?" by learning all about our locality and local landmarks.
We will be learning about atlases, compasses and how to plan a route around our school using a map..
How you can help at home...
Talk you your child about how our local area has changed since you began to live here. If you are new to the area talk about how it is similar or different to other places you have lived or visited. spot some local landmarks on the way home such as Morrisons, the Town Hall or Racca Green and look at the street signs as you travel to and from school.
In our English writing lessons we will begin the year by refreshing our basics of writing sentences.
We will be learning to write lists, labels and captions for a diary entry for the colour monster. We will be using adjectives to create a dark, moody setting description linked to the text, a dark, dark tale and writing a recount of our exciting Kings and Queens day.
In the last half of the term, our traditional tale will be the tale of Snow White and we will be visiting a live Pantomime at the Leeds Carriageworks in November to help the children visualise how this story can be brought to life. we will write to you with more details about this exciting visit later in the term.
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.
At this point in your child's school journey they will be working towards the two main assessment points in reading for Key Stage One. The Phonics screening test in June for all our Year 1 children and the Year 2 reading end of year expectation .
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 grouping by common property such as size, colour or shape, using comparative language to describe amounts and consolidating their place value knowledge within ten before moving on to learning all about addition and subtraction.
In year 2 we will be expanding on what they have learned throughout Year One to consolidate our place value knowledge within 100 and then we will focus our learning on all the strategies we can use to add and subtract larger numbers.
How you can help at home...
To prepare them for the coming learning on multiplication in the spring term, there are many counting songs on YouTube that support the rote learning of times tables that your child could use to help them recall these number facts at speed. Try counting in jumps of 2, 5 and 10 at home to help them practice.
There are many apps that can support your child in the rapid recall of number facts, one that we prefer in school is the white rose number app. This app allows them to focus on key arithmetic skills, picking up speed as they go.
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 "What do Christians believe God is like?" and learning all about the big story of the Bible and how God is shown to Christains through the Bible and it's stories. After Half term we will move on to explore big question "Why does Christmas matter to Christians?" Here will explore the different traditions and celebrations Christians take part in as they prepare for this important religious holiday..
Our core Christian values for the first half term will be Friendship. 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 materials through the big question "Why paper not make a good window?" 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 drawing and sketching skills though our exploration line and shape.
The artists that we will focus on will be Zaria Foreman Wassily Kandinski Bridget Riley Renata Bernal.
In DT we will be trying our hand at creating moving mechanisms by learning about windmills and how they are created using different structural elements. we will even be making and testing our own.
In Music we will be learning about Traditional music of the British Isles. We will be learning about composition, folk music and the vocal and body sounds we can use to compose.
PE this half term will focus on our fundamental movement skills in the first half of the term and then Dance and Yoga 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 use sets of instructions to carry out actions.
Our internet safety focus will be keeping ourselves safe in online relationships. In the second half term It will be learning about online reputation 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 97%. 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