St Mary's Catholic Primary SchoolArden Road

Henley in ArdenWarwickshire

B95 5LT

Tel: 01564 792316

September 2017

Dear Parents of Year 1 children,

CURRICULUM LETTER - Autumn TERM 1 2017

Welcome back! I hope you have all had a lovely and relaxing summer holi-day.

Our aim this term is to ensure that the children experience a smooth transition from the Foundation Stage to Key Stage One. The Year 1 cur-riculum builds upon and extends the experiences that children have had in Reception. Learning through play will continue to be an important part of the school day and the children will gradually be eased into more formal learning as the year goes on so that they remain motivated, en-thused and eager learners.

Over the next half term, Year 1 will be focusing on an exciting topic all about Traditional Tales. Our learning will be centred on a range of books such as ‘Jack and The Jelly Bean Stalk’, ‘Goldilocks’ and The Jolly Post-man’. The children will learn all about their local area ‘Henley in Arden’ and comparing it to nearby villages and cities. In science we will be carry-ing out lots of scientific experiments such as finding the best material for Cinderella’s mop and growing our own beanstalk.

Phonics We will be revising phases 3 and 4 and looking at the phonemes children learnt in Reception. We will then move on to new graphemes from phase 5 and learn tricky whole words such as ‘their’, ‘people’, ‘looked’ etc. This will continue throughout the term and then be revised towards the end of term. The children will undertake a phonics screening at the end of the school year which I will provide a meeting about in the upcoming weeks on how you can support your child in preparing for this.

English

Head Teacher: J Le Maitre B.Ed MA.

St Mary's Catholic Primary SchoolArden Road

Henley in ArdenWarwickshire

B95 5LT

Tel: 01564 792316

English continues to be taught daily, working towards a ‘Big Write’ on a Friday. The children will continue to practise the skills of segmenting and blending when reading and writing, which we will be encouraging them to do more independently and to apply their tricky word knowledge to both reading and writing. They will be reminded to use finger spaces, to form letters correctly when writing simple sentences and to use simple punctu-ation. Throughout the half term the children will have weekly handwriting sessions.Try to read with your child every day. They have been given a reading book suited to their ability and a reading diary. Please be aware that even if you believe your child is finding their reading book easy, it is vital that they understand everything that they read and can discuss what they have read in detail.

MathematicsIn maths the children will start the year by consolidating their understand-ing of numbers; we will be focusing on counting, comparing and ordering different sets of numbers. We will then move on to counting patterns, odd and even numbers, doubling and halving, addition and subtraction. We will also be learning about different shape names and properties. We very much appreciate home-learning support particularly the rehearsal and consolidation of times tables (initially 2, 5 and 10). They will continue to complete the “Beat It” and “CLIC” sheets at the end of the week and this will help the children to improve in a wide range of maths skills, as will the weekly homework in which times table targets and mathematical activit-ies will be set for each child. Any opportunities you get at home to practise the skills described above please do so and share their learning experiences with us.

PEThe children will have regular structured sessions of sport/PE. Lessons will be on a Wednesday afternoon with Mr Green. They will need a complete PE kit for these sessions including a T-shirt, shorts and appropriate train-ers for outdoor activities. The new royal blue polo shirt has replaced the gold round neck PE t-shirt and can be ordered and paid for via ParentPay. In addition to the essentials, we would also encourage parents to consider the PE hoodies and jogging bottoms for the colder months.

Home-LearningHead Teacher: J Le Maitre B.Ed MA.

St Mary's Catholic Primary SchoolArden Road

Henley in ArdenWarwickshire

B95 5LT

Tel: 01564 792316

Home-Learning books will be sent home on Friday and are to be handed in by the following Wednesday. Please ensure children complete their home-work in pencil.Please ask us if you would like to know how you can help your child at home or if you have any questions about this half term's learning.

Thank you,

Miss O’Leary and Mrs Cooke.

Head Teacher: J Le Maitre B.Ed MA.