Welcome to Year 1!

Notices

We will be doing a mindfulness session outside in the Wilderness Garden on Thursday afternoon. Please make sure your child has the appropriate clothing in school for this.

Thank you

This session will focus on how we identify, assess and support dyslexia in school. It will be delivered by Mrs Nicholas (SENCO).

Please complete this registration link if you would like to attend. https://forms.gle/vaMoKVmZFpj88zfX6

As the children take part in a range of cutting and creative activities throughout the term, we are currently running low on glue sticks. If you are able to donate a glue stick or two to help replenish our class supplies, it would be greatly appreciated. 

Thank you for your support!

Wilderfest postponed due to bad weather!
Watch this space for a new date

Please can you make sure you have booked your child’s school lunches on MCAS. This also includes packed lunches.

Thank you to everyone who has been able to donate to our reading for pleasure book library.

If you can donate a new Reading Pleasure book from our list below, it would be greatly appreciated. There are lots of new books added to the list for this year and as you can see we do not have many of these books.

On Friday 26th September, we have sent home reading books with the children who had their wallets in school. Please make sure that your child’s reading wallet with reading record and book is returned to school on Thursday and we will send home on Friday. 

If you would like your child to borrow a hard copy, we ask for a £8 deposit to be paid on MCAS. This includes £1 for a zippy wallet to protect the books, with the remaining £7 held to cover any lost or damaged books. Any leftover balance will be refunded when your child completes the Little Wandle program.

In Year 1, we still enjoy teaching the children about important cultural and religious celebrations, particularly when they are significant to families in our class. In the past, we’ve really valued having parents come in to share their knowledge and experiences of special festivals and celebrations. If there are any of these that you are celebrating at home, it would be great if you could come in a share some information around this with your class. Please speak with your class teacher, if this is something you would like to do.

Outdoor PE (Cherries and Pears)

Kitchen Garden or Forest School (half termly swap)

Indoor PE (Cherries and Pears)

Children need to come to school in a full Belmont PE kit that is labelled.

• Getting to know 20. For example, 20 has 2 groups of ten. 20 has 20 ones.
• One more and one less within 20
• Using a number line within 20

Creating their own story based on the book ‘One the way home’

• Children will be creating a story map for their story, thinking about the characters and who they bump into on the way home.
• Writing their own short story using their story map, making sure their story has a beginning, middle and end.

Please remember that there are no spelling tests in Year 1. These activities are designed to build confidence and familiarity with reading and writing words. As stated by Little Wandle, repeated practice of spelling helps children move their new learning into their long-term memory. In Year 1 especially, it is important to try to find time to practise and embed spelling outside of the phonics lessons.

Have a go with reading these words. You could put them on post it notes around the house and encourage your child to recognise the alternative grapheme and then read the word.

Additional activity: sentence dictation

To help children apply their phonic learning to their writing, it helps to put the sentence into context. Here are some sentences you can practise writing.

• I can see a giant white beetle swimming in the puddle.
• They can carry the huge metal elephant up the stairs.
• The mice are eating nice apples.
• The space puzzle is hard to solve.

Common Exception Words

This term, we are practising reading and writing Common Exception Words. Please support your child by helping them practise reading and writing these words. Once confident, they can try using the words in a sentence.

the,  a,  do,  to,  today, was,  is,  his,  has,  I

For your understanding, Common Exception Words don’t follow the normal rules, so you can’t always sound them out perfectly. You have to learn them by looking at them again and again, like learning a secret code! We call them exception words because they are the exception to the rule!