Year 1 Classes

Welcome to Year 1!

New to Year 1

This term our line of enquiry is….

What is a living thing?

This half term our learning will be based around the book ‘Anna Hibiscus’ by Atinuke.

As scientists we will be learning about what a living thing is by exploring plants, animals and humans. We will be using our scientific skills to observe plants, learning which are wild plants and which are garden plants. We will be learning to tell the difference between deciduous and evergreen trees as well as learning to name the different parts of a plant. We will be furthering our scientific knowledge by learning about animals, including humans. We will be learning to name and identify some common UK mammals, birds, amphibians and reptiles, name different body parts and explore the human senses.

Reading

This term the children will be engaging in a range of fiction and non-fiction texts, where possible linking into our Power of Reading book. We are practicing our VIPERS reading skills, focusing this term on the vocabulary and retrieval domains.

We will be learning about a new author each half-term and will be focusing on their books throughout this time during our Author Mornings. This half-term, our focus author is Viviane Schwarz. We will be reading various Viviane Schwarz books and will be participating in some learning activities surrounding these.

At Northfield St Nicholas we love to read!

Every child will take home a school reading book that is linked to their reading assessment. These booked are changed regularly.

Remember to read at least 3 times a week at home and record this in your school reading log to show your class teacher.

Every week children have the opportunity to visit our school’s ‘Lost Library’. In Year 1 our library session is on a Monday morning.

During their weekly library sessions children can change their existing library books. These are taken home for them to enjoy in their home setting!

Remember to bring your library book to school on your library day so you can change it!

Word of the Day!

Each week we learn five brand new words to expand our vocabulary!

This half-term our words are:

Week 1	Colossal Anxious Dangerous Mysterious Eerily
Week 2	Cautiously Lurk Glisten Delectable Infectious
Week 3	Urgently Devour Splendid Alarmingly Majestic
Week 4	Frantically Disgusting Grotesque Precious Sparkling
Week 5	Gigantic Tiny Magnificent Luxurious Immense
Week 6	Protective Filthy Prancing Lonely Roaming

Can you be a Word Wizard and write a sentence for each word for each week?

Reading Wednesday!

Don’t forget to read every Wednesday and at least three times a week. Do not forget that we are all in a reading race against every other class in the school!

Please practise your spellings at home!

By the end of year 1 we should be able to read and write these words:

We will also be focusing on learning these spelling rules:

Writing

At Northfield St. Nicholas we teach our English curriculum through high quality texts. The texts we use link directly to our lines of enquiry and support our learning in other areas of the curriculum. Roughly, each half term we introduce a new text.

The children explore the text page by page over the half term and engage with it in a variety of ways. We use lots of drama to support us and take lots of photos – keep checking back to see what we have been up to!

We will be improving our knowledge of grammar and parts of speech, as we learn to write different types of sentences. Approximately once a fortnight, we will be putting what we have learned into practice with a ‘Big Write’.

Please continue to support your child at home with spelling and handwriting practice.

Maths

At Northfield, we adopt a Mastery approach during our lessons. Daily children will engage in four maths sessions, timetables, maths mastery and maths workshop. The children’s lessons will be based upon their gaps and will use the mastery ‘White Rose Maths’ program.

Our current unit is focused on Fractions. Here is the relevant knowledge organiser for your information:

Times tables!

Don’t forget to practice your times tables at home! We are currently focusing on the two and four times table. Please remember to log in to Times Tables Rockstars and practise at least 3 times a week.

Click the links below to sing along with the Super movers!

KS1 Times Tables Mash-up!