Welcome to Year 1

Mrs Moore

Year 1 Teacher
I have taught year 1 children for 11 years now and enjoy helping the children to grasp this early stage of their education.

I am the SENDCo at St Albans school so I also work closely with children and their families to support their additional needs.

In my spare time, I like to travel and be active. Most weekends you can find me walking with my dogs in the Peak District.

In year one we have a broad and balanced curriculum, which is covered over a range of interesting and exciting topics. Children are engaged and keen to learn because the teaching and learning is exciting and closely linked to topics and to the children’s personal interests.

We have 6 terms over the year and children engage in a range of learning experiences, which are tailored to the content of our topic.

We have three school trips over the year to support the learning we do in school. These trips are a valuable part of the children’s learning and help to bring the topics to life.

In year 1, the children continue to be independent and autonomous learners who can think of ways to support their learning. They develop learning skills such as how to be resilient, critical and creative thinkers, reflective learners, problem solvers and team workers.

The curriculum in Key Stage one (infants) covers:

Numeracy, Literacy, Science, Information and Communication, Technology, Design Technology, History, Geography, Art, Music, R.E, P.E. and PSHE & Citizenship.

Reading Books

At school, your child reads individually with the teacher, TA or trained parent helper 2 or more times a week depending on their level of need. Children will be encouraged to change their reading book as often as they like as all their books are a free choice within their banded colour.

If your child needs extra support then this will be given too. Please could you make a comment and indicate where your child read to and how they did in the blue book just to help us when changing books.

Free choice books

In our classroom, we have free choice books that are labelled with stickers according to their colour band. If your child is a blue level reader, for example they can take a book from the blue book basket every day if they wish.

These are new books and nice books that I hope your child will be engaged to read at home. They can return them the next day and swap them over, as they like. They have been levelled to give just the right amount of challenge.

Reading Morning

Our reading morning is Wednesday as usual, so please come along at 08:30 if you wish to sit and read with your child. It is a great opportunity to support them.

Spellings

Spellings are set on a Friday and will link closely to the sounds we have been learning that week as part of the Read, Write Inc. program (RWI) that we follow. The children have a spelling book that comes home on a Friday so you can see how they have done. Please do not use this book for practise and ensure it is in your child’s bag on a Friday.

Phonics

Phonics is taught daily as part of RWI and will help your child read and spell all the tricky sounds within words. In year 1 we focus on reading and writing the sounds in words to help with spelling.

As you will know we have a phonics screening test now in June so we prepare the children as best we can by teaching what we call ‘real and alien’ words as a way of identifying whether they can read any word by using the sounds they have learnt .

For example, this last week we have been looking at the sounds ‘ai’ and ‘a-e’ in words such as:

Real -Rain, pain, main

Alien – maip, pait, laig

Real  -Plane, same, bake, take

Alien – rafe, nake, sate

Spellings should closely match the sound focus so you can see what your child has been doing and build on it. We practise reading and spelling these words in a range of ways and through games.

Try the website ‘letters and sounds’ you will find some great games that your child will enjoy playing and you will see they are split into phases. Phase 3 is the longer phase and the one that links closely to the sounds we will be covering.

Handwriting

We are having a real push on handwriting this year and thought it best to mention to you how we teach the handwriting so you can support your child at home.

The most important thing at this stage is that your child is forming their letters the correct way round as this will help them when they are ready to join.

I always give lines to encourage them to sit the letters on the line. We do handwriting practise regularly and hopefully this will help them to get a grasp early on this year. We have handwriting certificates to encourage the children to practise; these are awarded in assembly time.

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Water Bottle

This is essential; please ensure your child has a labelled bottle in school every day.

PE days

Wednesday and Thursday in the summer term. Please provide pumps, as we will be going outdoors.

Clothing and coats

Please can you ensure your child’s clothing, PE kit and coat are all labelled.

Phonic games to play at home:-

http://www.letters-and-sounds.com/

http://www.galacticphonics.com/

Abacus homework:-

https://www.activelearnprimary.co.uk/login?c=0

Reading

Helping your child with reading

Helping your child with reading

Reading with your child is vital. Research shows that it is the single most important thing you can do to help your child’s education. It is best to read little and often, so try to put aside some time for it every day.

Think of ways to make reading fun – you want your child to learn how pleasurable books can be. If you are both enjoying talking about the content of a particular page, linger over it for as long as you like.

Books are not just about reading the words on the page; they can also present new ideas and topics for you and your child to discuss.

Tips for helping your child to enjoy books:

• Encourage your child to pretend to ‘read’ a book before he or she can read words.
• Visit the library as often as possible – take out CDs and DVDs as well as books.
• Schedule a regular time for reading – perhaps when you get home from school or just before bed.
• Buy dual-language books if English is not your family’s first language – you can talk about books and stories, and develop a love for them, in any language.
• Look for books on topics that you know your child is interested in – maybe dragons, insects, cookery or a certain sport.

Make sure that children’s books are easily accessible in different rooms around your house.

As well as working with objectives from the year 1 maths curriculum, here are some tips for helping at home…

Helping your child with maths

As with reading, try to make maths as much fun as possible – games, puzzles and jigsaws are a great way to start. It is also important to show how we use maths skills in our everyday lives and to involve your child in this.

Identifying problems and solving them can also help your child develop maths skills. If you see him or her puzzling over something, talk about the problem and try to work out the solution together.

Do not shy away from maths if you did not like it at school. Try to find new ways to enjoy the subject with your child.

Tips for helping your child to enjoy maths:

• Point out the different shapes to be found around your home.
• Take your child shopping and talk about the quantities of anything you buy.
• Let your child handle money and work out how much things cost.
• Look together for numbers on street signs and car registration plates.
• Talk about the analogue and digital clock and help them learn to tell the time.

Helping your child with Literacy

In Year 1 everything starts to become a little more formal, as the freedom and play of Reception are replaced with more organised activities. Here are the topics your child will learn in their more structured English lessons.

Literacy is a daily lesson, made up of three aspects:

• Reading
• Writing
• Speaking and listening

Reading in Year 1 – your child will:

• be able to use their phonic knowledge to read words
• know all the 40+ phonemes (sounds) and know which letters or groups of letters correspond to them
• read words with -s, -es, -ing, -ed, -er and -est endings
• read a range of poems, stories and non-fiction
• be able to re-tell stories that they know
• correct their own inaccurate reading

Children should be allowed to choose a book at school to take home with them to read. You may be given an exercise book to write your comments in when you read with them. Children will also read with their teacher in groups once a week (this is called guided reading).

Try this at home:

Visit your local library and let your child choose their own books

• Read regularly to your child – even if they’re a fluent reader, they will still enjoy it
• If your child is not keen on stories, try fact-based non-fiction books or a comic to spark their interest

Writing in Year 1

• learn to spell words containing each

• of the 40+ phonemes already taught
• learn to write the days of the week
• learn to add suffixes, word endings (such as -s, -es, -ing, -ed, -er and -est) and also learn about the prefix un-
• form all lower case and upper case letters, plus the digits 0 to 9
• join clauses in a sentence using the word ‘and’
• punctuate sentences using capitals, full stops, question marks and exclamation marks
• sequence stories to form short narratives
• discuss what they have written with others

Try this at home

• Give your child plenty of opportunities to draw and write with a range of materials
• Ask your child to help you write a shopping list and then look for the items when they get to the shop
• Encourage them to write to people as much as possible: Christmas cards, birthday invitations, thank you letters and postcards are a great way of giving them a real purpose for writing

There are lots of tips on transition into year 1 and the year 1 curriculum on the following websites:

http://www.theschoolrun.com/year-1

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-curriculum-in-england-framework-for-key-stages-1-to-4/the-national-curriculum-in-england-framework-for-key-stages-1-to-4

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