welcome to Year 1
In Year One our teachers are Miss Martin (PE Lead), Mrs Hemmerman (History Lead). Other adults who help us are Mrs Sage, Mrs Franklin and Miss Richardson. We begin working on the National Curriculum this year alongside continuous provision activities to ensure a smooth transition from Foundation Stage to Year 1. Throughout the first term, the children learn to work independently in their books, increase their teacher led time as well as extend their learning through continuous provision.
Year 1 Newsletters, Knowledge Organisers & KIRFs Documents
In Year 1 we love to read! We have a daily phonics lesson which is focused on blending new and consolidating old phonics sounds. We work really hard to apply our phonics across a range of reading material. We try to improve our fluency so that we become faster and more confident readers. We have lots of phonics books that support us when practising our sounds.
We work in smaller groups across the whole key stage, which are perfect for us and what we still need to learn. We enjoy participating in lots of engaging but challenging activities to embed each new phonics sound. We love to share and discuss the stories we have read and practise our comprehension skills by answering questions.
We don’t just use phonics when reading, we practise every day and across all subjects, segmenting words for spellings. Across the year we become more aware of the alternative sounds and the different spellings for each one.
We are enthusiastic and imaginative writers in year 1. We take pride in our handwriting and we work hard to form all of our letters correctly and in the right place on our handwriting lines. By the end of Year 1, we hope to have started joining our letters ready for Year 2. We work really hard to include all the basic writing skills in our work and practise going back and checking what we have written makes sense. We build upon our writing repertoire across the year, ensuring we can write a variety of text types.
We follow a mastery approach in maths. Mastery maths means that children acquire a deep, long term and adaptable understanding of a concept. Each new concept is taught in small, manageable, progressive steps that continually build upon current knowledge. The four main areas of maths are addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. We also learn about shape, space and measurements. By the end of Year 1 we expect your child to know their number bonds to 10 and 20 and to know the 2, 5 and 10-times tables.
As part of the mastery approach, each small step is represented in three ways. Initially concepts are represented with concrete apparatus that allow children to visually see any mathematical processes. Then children will be shown a pictorial model but moving onto abstract representations.
We work scientifically through making observations, performing simple experiments and recording observations and data. We learn about the names of plants, we learn how to recognise deciduous and evergreen trees and describe the basic structure of plants and trees. We learn the different groupings of animals including fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals and whether they are carnivores, herbivores or omnivores. We learn how to distinguish between different types of materials including wood, plastic, glass, metal, water and rock. Throughout the year we make observations on the weather across the four seasons and learn how the length of day varies.
Throughout year 1 we learn how technology is used around the world. We learn computing skills by being introduced to algorithms, creating rockets. We also use BeeBots for coding and love problem solving activities involving these. BeeBots teach us directional language which supports our mathematical skills. With lots of practice, we become more confident typing using the keyboard and controlling the mouse to create digital paintings.
P.E. is a very important part of our school life. Every week the children take part in at least one hour of P.E as well a range of active learning opportunities. We try to give the children as wide an experience as possible, including not only dance, games, gymnastics and athletics but also a great variety of games skills such as football, basketball, cricket, tennis and rounders. The school holds a sports day in the Summer term, promoting teamwork and appropriate competition.
Across our foundation subjects in Year 1 we enjoy practising skills and applying them across all areas of learning. We love to get creative, practise our fine motor skills and combine new skills to create pieces of art. We work hard at learning about people from the past and the impact these people have had. In Geography we explore maps of different countries, cities and of our local area.
We love to listen to music and create different rhythms by listening carefully to a beat. We incorporate our singing skills into days such as Anti-bullying by singing about how to be kind and creating awareness of differences. One of our favourite times of the year is Christmas and how much fun we have learning Christmas songs and performing them to our families and other classes in the school.
We share a love for celebrating our achievements across all subjects too! We are so proud of all the fantastic learning that takes place in our year group.
parents as partners
In Year 1 we recognise the importance of and value parental involvement in the life of the school. We are committed to establishing and maintaining an effective and purposeful working relationship between the school and home. We love to have you involved in your child’s learning and hearing about what your child achieves at home as well as in school. Remember, you are the most important influence in your child’s life so let’s celebrate together.
We rely on you as parents and carers to ensure the pupils complete all the homework they are set, to listen to your child read at least four times a week and to engage with the different parental meetings that we offer throughout the year.
By working together, we can make a positive and meaningful difference to the pupils’ education.
End of year expectations
The National Curriculum outlines these expectations as being the minimum requirements your child must meet in order to ensure continued progress.
All the objectives will be worked on throughout the year and will be the focus of direct teaching and investigation. Any extra support you can provide in helping your children to achieve these is greatly valued.
- Count to and across 100, forwards & backwards from any number.
- Read and write numbers to 20 in numerals & words.
- Read and write numbers to 100 in numerals.
- Say 1 more/1 less to 100.
- Count in multiples of 2, 5 & 10.
- Use number bonds and facts to add and subtract to 20 (1+9=10, 9+1=10, 10-9=1, 10-1=9)
- Add & subtract 1 digit & 2 digit numbers to 20, including zero.
- Solve one-step multiplication and division using objects, pictorial representation and arrays.
- Recognise half and quarter of object, shape or quantity.
- Sequence events in chronological order.
- Use language of day, week, month and year.
- Tell time to hour & half past.
- Write clearly demarcated sentences.
- Use ‘and’ to join ideas.
- Use conjunctions to join sentences (e.g. and, so, but).
- Use standard forms of verbs, e.g. go/went.
- Introduce use of:
- capital letters
- full stops
- question marks
- exclamation marks
- Use capital letters for names and personal pronoun ‘I’.
- Write a sequence of sentences to form a short story or recount [as introduction to paragraphs].
- Use correct formation of lower case letters (a,b,c) – finishing in right place.
- Use correct formation of capital letters (A,B,C).
- Use correct formation of digits (1,2,3).
- Identify which words appear again and again.
- Recognise and join in with predictable phrases.
- Relate reading to own experiences.
- Re-read if reading does not make sense.
- Re-tell with considerable accuracy.
- Discuss significance of title and events.
- Make predictions on basis of what has been read.
- Make inferences on the basis of what is being said and done.
- Read aloud with pace and expression, i.e. pause at full stop; raise voice for question.
- capital letters
- full stops
- question marks
- exclamation marks
- Know why the writer has used the above punctuation in a text.
- Know difference between fiction and non-fiction texts.