Welcome to the Spring Term in Year 1.

First of all, on behalf of all the Year 1 staff, I would like to say a huge thank you to the children and parents for the kind gifts and vouchers you gave us for Christmas.  You were very generous and we appreciate the kindness. Thank you.

Year 1 Team

Mrs Franklin continues to be the Year 1 class teacher and Mrs Cook teaches the children on Tuesday mornings. Mrs Sirrell, Miss Sibley and Mrs Wilson will support the children’s learning throughout the week.

Spring Term learning

English:

Phonics – we continue to use the Supersonic Phonic Friends scheme for our phonics learning.

We will revise and practise all the sounds taught so far and we will continue with Higher Level 5 Choose to Use sounds where the children will be introduced to new ways of spelling some sounds that they have already met. We will move onto Higher Level 5 Switch It Mitch sounds in the second half term, which are alternative ways for saying graphemes.

Spring 1 Focus – higher level 5 Choose to Use

Group 4- air and are, n and kn, r and wr, f and ff and ph, or and aw and au.
Group 5- n and kn and gn, or and aw and au and ore, ee and ea and e_e and ey, oo and ue and u_e and ew.

Group 6- air and are and ear, ur and ir and or, ch and tch, j and dge, ur and ir and or and er

Tricky words: their, people, Mr, Mrs, Oh, these, friends, asked, where, today, once, could, should, would, called, looked, son, says, want, after, half, only, with.

Spring 2 Focus - higher Level  5- Switch it Mitch

i- as in sixth and wild
o- as in frog and old
c- as in crisp and cement
g – as in growl and gem
u- as in underpants and tuba
ow- as is clown and yellow
ie- as in pie and chief
ea- as in dream and bread
a- as in apple and angel
a- as in apple, angel and watch
ou- as in mouldy and mouse
o- as in frog, old and monk
y- as in yellow and cry
y- as in yellow, cry and crystal
ch- as in children and chef
ch- as in children, chef and chorus
ou- as in mouse, mouldy and soup

Tricky words- does, goes, tall, call, small, laughed, why, over, above, live, please, water, because, break, work, who, any, many, move, eye.

Reading – the children will usually be heard to read twice a week using a decodable phonics book.

Writing - we will continue to encourage the children to use their phonics to spell words, and to use a word mat to learn the spellings of tricky words.  We will focus on correct punctuation (capital letters, word spaces and full stops, question marks and exclamation marks) and on combining clauses using ‘and, because or so’ to make longer sentences. We will look at how adding ‘un’ changes the meaning of verbs and adjectives and how the suffixes ‘ing, ed and er’ can be added to verbs. We will think about using a capital letter for names and for the personal pronoun ‘I’. We always encourage the children to reread and edit their writing. Our writing is based on texts from the Read 2 Write scheme which are Hermelin for the first half term and Where the Wild Things Are for the second half term.

Maths:

In maths we will be learning to read, write and count using numbers initially from 1 to 20 with a focus on teen numbers and later on numbers from 1-50 focusing on place value. We will identify and represent numbers using objects, base 10 and pictorial representations including the number line, tens frames and part, part, whole models. The children will be practising addition and subtraction within 20, including learning doubles and near doubles, fact families and finding missing numbers from calculations and word problems. Later in the term we will have a focus on measuring length and height and introducing measuring mass and capacity.

Science

Our first topic is Everyday Materials. We will be naming materials and looking at their properties and their uses in objects. In the second half term we will be looking at different animals and identifying features of different types of animals such as birds, amphibians, reptiles and mammals.

If you would like some more information about our learning of other curriculum subjects in the Spring term, please look at the Curriculum News document (coming soon).

Learning at home

Reading

The children will bring home 3 books weekly. One is a library book, chosen by the children themselves to read for pleasure.  The other two will be decodable books to support their reading fluency and comprehension. One of these books will be previously unseen and the other will have been read in class. Please record any reading at home in your child's reading record. We encourage the children to read at least four times a week; if they do, they will get a sticker put in their reading record. Once they have ten stickers, we congratulate them with a reading certificate. 

Our week

Monday

• PE (term 1 – gymnastics, term 2 -dance) with a coach from Premier Sport
• Please bring back library books.

Tuesday:

• Mrs Cook will be teaching in Year 1 on Tuesday mornings.
• Children will visit the school library and will be able to choose a book to take home. These books must be brought back the following Monday for the children to swap for new books.
• Children will have PE on this day.

Wednesday:

• Reading books and reading records will be collected in.

Friday:

• Reading books and reading records will be sent home, which will be returned to school the following Wednesday.

Other information

Please send in a named water bottle for classroom use; this is additional to the lunchtime drink. You may also send in a named healthy snack for morning break.

Your child will be provided with an afternoon snack each day to eat during our afternoon breaktime, which will be a piece of fruit or vegetable.

If you have any questions or queries, please feel free to make an appointment through the office or send an email to office@cedarpark.bucks.sch.uk and someone will get back to you as soon as possible.

Thank you!

Mrs Franklin 