Class One Newsletter – Summer Term
Class One Newsletter- April 2018
Welcome back, we hope you all had a lovely Easter break. It’s lovely that the new term seems to have bought the nicer weather with it! Hopefully it lasts for our ‘Explorers Day’ at Great Notley Park on Tuesday. Please remember to check the weather and dress children appropriately. If it is hot please send caps/hats, water and apply sun cream!
The children have all settled back into their routines well. We have an exciting and busy term ahead.
English | In English we will be continuing to develop our skills by reading and writing fantasy stories, where the children will explore the world of superheroes, describing their favourites, looking for superheroes in their own lives and finally writing a comic strip adventure story about a superhero and a baddie! We will continue to develop our phonic skills, looking at how different sounds are written in different ways, whilst practicing and applying our existing knowledge within our writing. We will begin to learn how to join our writing, focusing on how to lead in and out of letters. We will continue to read in class as often as we can. This will be through group guided reading sessions, reading one to one with an adult or reading with our friend in five. |
Maths | We will continue to follow the Maths Curriculum, developing our use of number, becoming faster with our mental recall of number facts. We are finding halves and quarters of shapes and amounts, beginning to recognise the links between halving and doubling. We will be learning to tell the time on analogue clocks and show the time by correctly placing the hands on a clock face. As well as spending some time on money, the children will learn to recognise the value of all coins up to £1 and use their addition and subtraction skills to ‘buy’ items and receive change. |
Science | In Science we are thinking about Nature, looking at plants, trees and what could be growing in our garden. We will be spending time in the school allotment and hopefully grow some of our own vegetables! |
Topic (History/ Geography) | Our topic is Explorers. We will be learning about what explorers do, considering what sort of equipment they would need to take on expeditions. We will be learning about many famous explorers including Sir Francis Drake, Neil Armstrong and Christopher Columbus. This will link into our Class trip where we will turn into explorers for the day! The topic for the second half term will be Beatrix Potter, thinking about her life and work, particularly focusing on the animal characters she created. |
Music | In Music, with Mrs Ford, we will be developing our skills to play musical instruments in different ways. We will learn how to record our music by using digital media. |
Art | In Art we will spend time looking at plants and the animal characters created by Beatrix Potter, we will be using water colour to create paintings of these. Later in the term we will be linking textiles to art to sew a class ‘allotment’ using materials. |
DT | Our DT will be linked to our topic of Beatrix Potter and we will be making moving puppets based on her animal characters. |
PE | Mr Dyce will continue teaching class 1 athletics on a Wednesday afternoon. On a Friday we will be learning team games. |
Computing | As well as continuing to become more independent on the computers, we will be looking at simple programming through algorithms. |
RE | This term we will be thinking about special things in nature, this will link to our Science and Topic work. We will use this work to think about the religions of Christianity and Hinduism. |
PSHE | We will be thinking about how to lead a healthy lifestyle. |
Homework: Thank you all for encouraging your children to read regularly at home, please continue with this as often as you can, it does make a noticeable difference. Please try to remind the children that they must put their book on the side at the beginning of the day in order to get it changed before going home. Remember to write in their record book so that I know how they are getting on.
We will be continuing to send home a weekly sound to be learnt as a part of the children’s phonics work, in preparation for the phonics screening test in June. Spellings will be continuing.
Bags: We have noticed that quite a few children are bringing in large rucksacks. If children wish to bring a rucksack to school it must be small enough to fit on their peg. However, the school book bags are ideal as they fit in their tray and don’t take up lots of room.
Show and tell: This will still be on a Monday. Please try to monitor what your child is bringing into school. This should be something they can talk about to the class, as opposed to a toy. Encourage your child to put their show and tell in my tray on a Monday morning so that I am aware of what it is they would like to share with the class.
Weather – now that we are getting warmer weather please could all the children bring in plain water in a named bottle, sun hat and sun cream applied at home before school (when necessary).
Our class sharing assembly will be on Friday 29th June, we would love to see lots of you there.
If you have any queries, please do not hesitate to approach us at the end of the school day.
We look forward to working with you over this term.
Miss Hagger, Mrs Lawless and Mrs Martin
If you have internet access at home, these are really useful websites to support your child’s learning;
www.letters-and-sounds.com www.twinkl.co.uk https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/