Year 1 News
Welcome back to the second half of the Spring term. I hope you all had a restful break. The weather is getting warmer, the days longer and I am excited to share with you what Year 1 will getting up to over the next few weeks.
Our topic this term will continue with ‘Houses and Homes’ although our focus will move towards the historical aspects of the City of London and its buildings. The children will be immersed in what life was like for Londoners in 1666 during ‘The Great Fire of London’ through writing diary entries and exploring Tudor houses. We begin our term’s exploration into local architecture with a visit to St Paul’s Cathedral (Wednesday 1st March) where we have a workshop booked to consider what shapes we see within buildings. The following week (Wednesday 8th March) we will be visiting the Tower of London where the children will use role play to bring the Great Fire of London to life. The children will combine this with enquiry led learning back in the classroom to link artefacts, stories and understanding to how the events unfolded in chronological order. In Literacy we intend to plan, write, publish and assess our own and our friends’ work through poetry, recounts and stories. Our design and technology focus will allow the children to explore, plan and create their very own 3D Tudor house, so please keep those extra boxes handy, as we will be asking you to bring these into class in a couple of weeks time.
In Maths the children will be continuing their learning of addition and subtraction to 20, place value to 50 and finishing off the term with work on measure including length and height. They have been fantastic at developing their fluency, problem solving and reasoning skills by justifying their answers verbally with peers, as well as in their books, so I cannot wait to see them develop these skills further and achieve their targets this term.
As well as getting stuck into our class topics, we are looking forward to World Book Day, which takes place on Thursday 2nd March, and our Easter Hat parade, where we show off our wondrous creations and perform to you a poem we will be learning. I’m sure it’ll put a Spring in your step!
The timetable for the week will continue on from last term with Literacy and Maths sessions in the mornings, with a strong emphasis on handwriting and Phonics as well. Our Topic work will be conducted in the afternoon sessions, alongside PE, RE, Dance and Computing. The children will have weekly jigsaw sessions on a Friday, as well as verbal and non-verbal reasoning. Homework will continue to be sent out on Thursdays, with Mathletics set on a Wednesday. Spellings will go home on Fridays in order to prepare for dictation on the following Friday. We recommend practising for a short time everyday so that the children feel confident for their dictation. The children will continue having their violin lessons on a Monday so please ensure they are brought into school each Monday in preparation for this.
As ever, please ensure that all school uniform is clearly labelled as this helps everyone, especially when they change for P.E. Children should have trainers, jogging bottoms (for cold weather) and shorts (for warm weather).
I am looking forward to an exciting and eventful term this year. Should you at any point want to discuss any aspect of school, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Aisha