Year 1 Newsletter

January 2015- Spring 1

Dear Parents/ Carers
Happy New Year!
Firstly the teachers and the teaching assistants would like to wish you all a
happy and prosperous New Year and thank you for the lovely Christmas gifts
that we received. We would also like to thank all parents and friends who
supported our Christmas show. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did!
We welcome your children back to their Spring Term in Y1, and look forward to
seeing them continue to develop, building on the excellent start they made last
term.
We will continue to work within the new National Curriculum which was
introduced from September 2014.
English will include a big focus on phonics in preparation for the National Phonics
Screening which takes place in the Summer Term. We will be recognising real
words and alien words and helping the children to apply their phonic knowledge
to decode new words.
We will research the work of our chosen author Nick Butterworth and enjoy
sharing some of his stories. We will be building on this and focusing on
characters, story structures and writing in a narrative style.
In Maths the children will be working on measuring, including work on weight and
mass and length and height. We will also continue to work with numbers and
whilst developing addition and subtraction skills we will also be including the
writing of numbers using both numerals and words. We will also focus on odd and
even numbers and understanding what this means. We will be regularly counting
in 2s, 5s and 10s and are looking to build on confidence and understanding with
this.
Our topic this term is based around the Nick Butterworth stories of Percy the
Park keeper. This will provide a link to work around animals and gardens. Each
week we will be focusing on a different theme which we have briefly outlined
below:
Week 1- Introduction to our author, Nick Butterworth. We will be looking at
the series of Percy the Park Keeper and the many characters that he has
written about!
Weeks 2 and 3- Animals which will include some identifying and grouping of
different types of animals in our Science work.
Week 4- Here we will be having an Art focused week where we will be creating
3D gardens using a variety of textures and materials.
Week 5-This week we will have an English focus as we examine the various
characters within the Percy the Park Keeper stories.
Week 6- This will take on a Geography focus when we use our geographical skills
in order to complete an exciting Treasure Hunt!

In addition to this we will be creating some lively Music as we visit the music
studio each week to compose and create pieces related to pitch, beat and

Homework:
Reading books will be sent home on a Tuesday and Friday - please return them to school by
Thursday and Monday respectively. These books are home readers as your child will be
reading a variety of books during guided reading in Literacy. Please acknowledge you have
heard your child read by signing and/or commenting in the reading record book. Thank you.
Keywords, which are sent home on a Tuesday, are sight recognition words. They are checked
weekly and are only changed if your child knows the word on sight (ie: they do not build up
the word phonetically).
Big Talk will be sent home on a Tuesday. Discussing the subject they will be writing about,
will help your child with their Big Writing on a Friday.
Maths homework is sent home on a Friday and should be returned to school by the following
Tuesday.
If you have any spare time during the week and would like to help in school please contact your
childs class teacher who can arrange for you to be given the form necessary to obtain police
clearance to enable you to help. If you are already DBS checked through Stockton Borough Council
and the forms are at the office then you are able to help immediately. All parents/carers who
would like to help on school trips will need to be DBS checked prior to the trip.

Important dates this term:

Consultation evenings 9th and 11th February, 3.30-5.30pm
Class 1LT Assembly Friday January 30th at 9.45am
Class 1CL Assembly Friday March 20th at 9.45am
Half term holiday break up Friday 13th February
*Teacher Professional Development Day- Monday 23rd February
Children return to school Tuesday 24th February

We look forward to continuing to work with you all this term. Thank you for your support.
The Year 1 Team.