Spring 2024
Year 1
Happy New Year to you all!
We had a fantastic Autumn term in Year 1. I am sure this will continue this term. Please remember you can email me with any concerns or to let me know anything you think is important for me to know about your child. My email is: esmith@thorngrove.herts.sch.uk. Feel free to speak to me after school or make an appointment if preferred. Our primary concern is that children are happy in school so please do let us know if they are experiencing any difficulties so that we can offer any support that they might need.
Uniform: The children have been looking after their belongings quite well. Please continue to support this by making sure everything is named, particularly bookbags, hats, gloves and scarves. We do still have quite a few children using backpacks, which aren't quite big enough for our books. This is resulting in damaged/dog-eared books. Please do use a book bag if at all possible.
Reading Ribbon Race: Please continue to read regularly with your child, and tick their reading ribbon. This can be ticked whenever they read to you or share reading of a book with you. Any book they read counts towards this, not just school books. The children are really enjoying our 'Reading Ribbon Race' and like to see which house team is winning the race every Monday. All teams who get past 120 ticks this half term will get an extra playtime (hopefully all of the teams will achieve this) , and the winning team gets an extra 10 minutes on top of this. The children also collect House points if they have 4 or more ticks on their ribbon on Monday morning. We do have some parent helpers this term, so your child should change their book at least 1x per week. However, please feel free to come into class after school to help your child to choose a book from our book corner, if they haven't changed their free choice books.
Thank you! Mrs Smith
As readers and writers, we will continue our RWI lessons. When reading longer words , please encourage your child to put their hand over part of the word, and read the parts, before putting it together to make the word. We have also been looking at the suffixes ' ing' , 'ed', and 's' . Again, if your child is struggling to read a word with one of these suffixes at the end, encourage them to cover the suffix and add it on once they have read the rest of the word.
We are linking our handwriting practise with spelling of tricky words now. These words can't be 'Fred-Talked' so they should be spelt using letter names (like we say when we sing the alphabet). Practising spelling of your child's tricky words (the words which are on the 'Red Words' Page in their paper RWI books) can be done verbally whilst you walk to school, or on a car journey. There is no need for these to be written down. If your child can spell their words, challenge them by spelling a word incorrectly and ask them if they can spot the incorrect letter and then tell you how to spell the word correctly. In handwriting, we are focussing on ensuring our letters are sized appropriately and placed correctly on/under/within the lines.
As mathematicians, we will be continuing to learn different ways to add and subtract. We are learning how calculations don't always have to include 'the answer'/total', or as we call it in school, 'the whole'. E.g. 6+4 = 7+3. The number 10 is not in this calculation yet it is still correct. We are using balance scales to help us understand this. concept. This term our focus will move to numbers to 20 and how they are formed using ’10 and some more’. This supports the children’s understanding of place value. We will also be doing some work on measures.
We are trying to encourage the children to understand how important it is to know HOW to find an answer. Knowing number facts is vitally important, but there always comes a point when children do NOT know the answer. In this case, they need to understand HOW to work it out. This is how we structure our lessons in class; finding out how to solve something and then applying that knowledge to harder problems. Harder does not always mean 'bigger numbers'. A maths problem presented in a different way can often stump children. E.g. 1 more than 6 is ___, or 7 is 1 more than __ ,
We will regularly revisit work from last term, including 'What's the difference?', 'How many more?' and 'How many less?' Please continue to practise counting with your child regularly at home, forwards and backwards in 1s, 2s, 5s and 10s.
As scientists, our focus this term is ‘Everyday materials’. We will focus on distinguishing the object from the material with which it is made and will learn about the properties of materials such as bendy, rough, smooth, absorbent, waterproof, shiny and transparent. We will test materials for transparency and test materials to make a bridge. Later in the term we will investigate how Spring is developing in our school grounds.
As computer scientists, we will be learning more about how to keep yourself safe online. We will become digital artists using art apps. After half term, we will create a multimedia eBook!
As geographers, we will learn about 'Weather and the Seasons'. We will be comparing the 4 seasons and thinking about how the weather afffects us in our daily lives. We will also be regularly looking at the weather forecasts and seeing how the weather and temperature changes over the coming months.
As historians, we will learn about the Wright brothers, and how their amazing invention changed the world. This will also take us on a school trip to Aerozone in Stansted (Tuesday 26th March) where we will find out more about the history of the airport. Please do let me know if you are able to come with us on this trip. We will be travelling by public bus.
As artists, we will be exploring colour and will learn about how to make secondary colours using primary colours. The children will explore this using different media.
As designers, we will learn how to create sculptures using paper. We will find out about different techniques to make the paper 3D.
In Relationship and Health Education, our topics will be ‘Keeping Myself Safe’ and ‘Rights and Responsibilities’. One of our RSE lessons is called ‘Pants’. There will be more to follow on this soon.
As learners of religion, we will be learning more about friendships and will then focus on the Easter story. We will also learn about Chinese New Year and the Hindu festival of Holi.
As musicians, our topics will be 'Exploring sounds', where we willl learn about Tempo and Dynamics
We will also 'Learn to listen' and will try to combine Pulse, Rhythm & Pitch.
As athletes, we will take learn more about running and jumping in our outdoor PE sessions (Mondays). On Thursdays we will be in the hall practising balances on diffferent body parts, and will explore how we can use our body in different ways in our topic 'Wide, Narrow and Curled' . Please make sure children have long hair tied back on PE days, and earrings are removed or covered. Thank you.
Forest School will be every Wednesday afternoon. We will continue to use this time to support our Science/Geography learning and development of gross motor skills, as well as collaboraive learning with our classmates. Children will need their wellies, (named please!), and can wear their PE kit or old school uniform on that day. If you would like, your child can wear a PLAIN, blue/dark coloured tshirt on that day.