Year One 2021 - 2022

Welcome to Year One

Miss McIver Miss Hartley and Miss Cohen.

PE days – Tuesday and Friday – please come in PE kit.

Please send your child’s reading pack in everyday. It will be changed once a week.

Homework – Homework will be sent home every Friday. Please return on a Tuesday.

Birthdays – please just send a cake in a box for us to distribute or cupcakes with no party bags.

Dear Parents and Carers,

Welcome back to everyone in Year One. It is lovely that we are now all able to come back together as a class into school. I am looking forward to working with you and your child in the coming year. We have planned lots of great activities for them to carry out to help them settle back into the school routines and to discuss how we are feeling through games, pictures, stories and discussions. We are excited to continue with the development of your child in their learning and to practise our skills in all curriculum areas.

The children in Year One will develop their learning through a range of activities and also have opportunities to develop key skills through free learning in our Year One garden. They will be set regular challenges to meet the objectives within lessons. This is to enhance their skills and build upon their independence whilst transitioning into Key Stage One.

In Year One we thrive upon the great behaviour of children and their eagerness to develop in learning, their caring attitudes to each other and ways in which we can all help each other to be a big class family. Each day we celebrate two children who have been a star of the day and at the end of each week we have a star of the week and superstar learner. These are great ways to celebrate the efforts and achievements of your child.

We will also have our award for three children on a Monday and Thursday where they will be able to take home one of our class bears. This will be for then stars to have a experience to take the bear home and write about what activities are carried out at home and share with the other children in class. It will be a lovely activity for children to complete.

Our school is made up of four houses which are the names of four great saints who are an inspiration to us and helped many people in their lives. Your child will be placed in a house and will earn house points for good work, behaviour, and being caring towards others. Each week as a school we count up the number of house points and celebrate the winning house. At the end of each term the winning house has a surprise celebration. The four houses are:

• Don Bosco (red)
• Joseph (yellow)
• Martin (green)
• Therese (blue

Reading everyday is really important for your child to help them to develop their reading and phonics skills. We have the reading challenge which goes throughout the school to encourage you and your child to read each day and at the end of each half term a golden ticket is given. Please sign your name in your child’s record as they will be checked each week.

Children in year one will take their Phonics screening test in mid-June and we are grateful for the support you will give your child to help the to practise and achieve to the best of their potential. It is important for your child to practise their sounds at home, and to recognise sounds in words and sentences. The children will be asked to read a series of real and alien words to test their ability to decode, using segmenting and blending with sounds they know and are learning. As they develop in their reading they will no longer need to decode each word and this will help their reading to flow.  Here are some links to useful sites to help your child to practise these skills:

http://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/freeIndex.htm

http://www.topmarks.co.uk/english-games/3-5years/letters-and-sounds

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

In our Maths and English, we will follow the year one curriculum objectives. We use a scheme called White Rose for Maths which helps children to develop their skills in Maths in a multitude of ways. It would be really helpful for you to practise counting with your child forwards and backwards up to 20/30 in 1s, 2s, 5s, and 10s. It would also help for them to work on their number bonds to 10 and then 20, also for you to practise writing as much as you can at home using different genres. Encourage your child to write sentences about a story, lists, instructions, etc. This will help them in using their phonics to write words and sentences. Help them to re-read what has been written to check if it makes sense.

As a Catholic school we have a great emphasis on how we develop the faith of children through our religion lessons. Here the children will learn through discussions, passages from the Bible and activities how they can place Jesus at the heart of all we do and to show love to one another. Our first topic is learning all about our families and how God loves and cares for everyone.

The school Praise and Worship sessions help children to develop their faith and to reflect upon a Gospel passage and worship songs. These help us to be closer to God and to ask the Holy Spirit to continue to guide and bless us in all that we do

In our Science we will be beginning by looking at materials. The children will be learning about naming the materials as well as describing their properties. They will look at planning a simple investigation to find out which material is best to make a boat and to mend a broken umbrella.

Our topics for this term is Mae Jemison, Christopher Columbus and Ernest Shackleton. We will be looking at how to make comparisons between a hot and cold country and what was the same and different about their missions and journeys. In Autumn 2 we will be working on discussing the Changes within our living memory. We will be making lots of comparisons between what the world is like today and what it was like in the past. It will be helpful if you can talk to your child about changes which have happened and if you have pictures to share from you growing up or their grandparents to look at the differences.

We are looking forward to continuing an excellent working partnership with parents and encourage you to discuss any concerns with us. For the present time, you will be able to bring your child into the playground but not into the school building. The children will all line up in the playground and the year one staff will bring them into class and will also line them up at the end of the day to safely dismiss them.

As we look forward to the new term we remember our Mission Statement and we place ‘The Gospel and the love of Christ at the heart of all we do’.

If you need to get in touch please phone the school or email me a.mciver@holyname.manchester.sch.uk.

We thank you for all your support and look forward to a great year in year one.

Miss McIver, Miss Hartley and Miss Cohen.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

• The start time for year one is 8.55am the children will stand on the line when the whistle is blown before going into school. and it is really important that you are on time to allow time children to do their reading and have their bagels.
• At this time to help children to remain safe we will be washing our hands throughout the day. You can help by reminding them to wash their hands counting to 20 or singing happy birthday twice.
• We finish at 3pm and we will come out the same way which we go in. Please pick your child up promptly and ask at this time that it is just one parent who collects your child to help with social distancing. If someone else is collecting your child please inform us in the morning or call the school office and give a password to safeguard your child.
• If you would like your child to have milk please make a payment through Parent Pay each half term.
• Our PE days are Tuesdays and Fridays. At this time, we ask that your child comes dressed in PE clothes with their school jumper on top with trainers or appropriate sports shoes. We ask that school jumpers are worn and not hoodies.
• We will celebrate birthdays in our class. We ask that you please send in a cake still in its box for us to distribute. Please do not send in party bags.
• Children will be given homework for English and Maths every Friday. Please complete this and return it back to school by Tuesday.

September 2021

Dear Parents/Carers,

Your child has been given a reading pack for them to read with you at home. Please ensure that your child’s pack is in school every day as they carry out reading at the beginning of each day and their books will be changed each week.

It would be great if you can read at home for five minutes every day. When you read, write a short comment with a signature in the reading record each time you read with your child or just write who has read in the comments box.

We have the school reading challenge where children are encouraged to read at home every day and each half term we celebrate which child and class reads the most at home. It is really important for your child to be reading as much as they can as it helps their understanding of a range of texts. Your child’s reading record will also be signed by the class teacher each week.

When reading with your child:

• Discuss the pictures and what they think is happening in the story.
• Encourage them to segment and blend words which they are unsure of.
• Ask them questions about what is happening and what they think will happen next?
• Use the questions which are at the back of the book to help them to think about what is happening in the book.
• Ask your child to find given words in the text and can they find a given sound?
• Encourage your child to make predictions about what they think is going to happen in the story.

There are also sound mats and word mats in your child’s pack.

Practise saying the sounds and reading the tricky words with your child. Ask them to think about how they can create words with the sounds and sentences with the words. It would be really helpful if your child could practise writing down the words and sounds and to create short sentences with them.

If you have any questions or would like any further information, please do not hesitate to ask.

Thank You for your support and hard work.

Miss McIver, Miss Hartley and Miss Cohen.

Useful Websites

These websites will help us with our work throughout the year.

• Lumio Education
• Computer Circus
• Mewan – Primary Place
• Sumdog
• Multiplication.com
• BBC Bitesize (KS1)
• BBC Schools
• Crickweb (KS1)
• Woodlands Junior
• Woodlands Junior (KS1)
• Primary Games
• ICT Games
• Primary Safe Search