Year 1

 Year 1 Home Guide
Summer Term 2013             

Here is our final Home Guide for this year. As in the previous guides, it contains information about topics that we shall be covering this term and suggestions for things you can do at home with your child to extend their learning.

We shall be testing pupils on spellings every Monday starting from Monday 22nd April. We have included lists of important Maths and Science vocabulary.

This home guide is for the whole of the Summer Term. 

Reading
During the week we will do guided reading with small groups of children at a similar stage of learning. The books chosen are selected to meet specific learning objectives and we will note these in the guided reading record which is sent home with the reading book each week. Please look out for these in your child’s book bag so you can support their reading at home. Children need to return their guided reading books every Monday morning as we need to use the sets for other groups.
For your information, the school does not follow a reading scheme.
In addition to the guided reading book, the children have free choice of two library books each week to take home; at times the chosen books may be too difficult for independent reading. If this is the case, then please read it with them. If it is quite easy, they will still be developing skills such as fluency, accuracy and expression.  Please ensure all books are returned every week.  Whenever the children are reading, our priority is to develop a love of books and see reading as a fun and enjoyable activity. Please come and talk to us or Catherine Dowler, the literacy co-ordinator, if you have any queries.

Handwriting
The children’s handwriting is improving enormously.  We put this down in part to the weekly handwriting session, and so will be continuing these throughout the Summer Term.

Spellings
Our spellings are taken from the THRASS Scheme, and we work our way through the keywords for English phonics.  The weekly spellings are listed below. Please following the instructions on the spelling sheet and use the say, look, cover, write, check method for learning spellings. The expectation is that children should not just learn words for the weekly spelling test, but should be beginning to use these words in their writing in school. Please help your child learn the words. We suggest your child practises their spellings for five minutes a day.

Literacy
These are the topics we will be covering this term in class, and suggested activities for parents and children.  This term we will be focussing on storytelling, fictional texts and film, with a final poetry unit on “growing up” as part of our preparations for their transition to Year 2.

Narrative:
Children will be consolidating their understanding that stories have characters, settings and events; use stories and role play to provide ideas for writing; express personal opinions about stories; develop and use simple success criteria to evaluate their own stories.

Storytelling:
Children will learn a story off by heart, and the actions to accompany it.  They will use this embedded language and structure to write their own story.

Fiction: Literacy Evolve Narrative Unit 4 (Fantasy Settings):
• Man on the Moon.
• Something Else.
• Sam Sam (film animation).

Read a variety of stories with your child preferably with a make believe setting or theme.
• Discuss the features of a fantasy story: common opening sentence, story language, characters, structure and endings.
• Summarise and sequence the story with your child (order events in the correct sequence).

Recount:
Following a trip, children will write a recount of their experience using connectives that lead the reader through the day in chronological order.

Poetry: Literacy Evolve Unit 3: Growing Up.
In this unit, the children will listen and respond to poems which relate to their own experiences, and recognise and talk about patterns in different poems.

Maths Topics:
The maths curriculum is designed to revisit key maths concepts throughout the year, therefore the children will be building on, and extending, the skills they learnt in the Autumn and Spring Terms.  Therefore the children continue to develop their counting skills, describing and explaining patterns and relationships involving numbers and shapes in greater detail.  They will continue to use more formal methods of recording. They will use games to extend their knowledge and use of number facts and consolidate their understanding of the number system. 

Key Number objective for this term:
• To count, calculate and partition numbers with confidence. 
• To continue to secure number facts and understand shape. 
• To handle data and measure. 
• To calculate, measure and understand shape. 
• To secure number facts, relationships and calculation.

Activities:
• Get your child to use maths in everyday situations e.g. counting out apples in the supermarket. Ask them simple questions such as ‘How many more will we need if we want 6 apples?’
• Allow your child to experiment using money and help you to choose coins when paying for items.
• See if your child can read the numbers on the back of football shirts.
• Get your child to say one more or less than any number to 10.
• Encourage your child to spot odd and even numbers on doors as you walk down the road.
• Play games that use dice and counting, such as Snakes and Ladders, Ludo etc…
• Play dominoes with your child.
• Talk about the symbols +  - = with your child. Encourage them to explain what they mean.
• Ask your child what number the big hand is pointing to on a clock.
• Choose two numbers below 10. Add them together. Change the order and add them again. What do you notice about the answer? 

Useful websites:

http://www.ictgames.com/resources.html
http://www.primarygames.co.uk/html

Key Vocabulary:
Count on, count back, add, subtract, plus, minus, before, after, more, less, most, least, bigger, smaller, altogether, equals, between, next, edge, corner, face, side, greater, less than, fewer, difference between, estimate.

Science
Our topic for the first half term is Plants and Growth.  In this unit children will develop their understanding of how plants and other species grow and develop.  They will be growing their own bean plant to bring home, with the idea that they begin to understand what plants need to flourish.

Suggested activities:

- Discuss what it means to be a living thing and use your environment to stimulate their interest in the natural world.  E.g “Is a tree alive, how can you tell?”.
- Plant seeds in a yogurt pot at home and see if your child can explain what they observe over time and what is keeping the plant alive.

Useful websites:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/scienceclips/ages/5_6/sound_hearing.shtml 

Useful vocabulary:
In this unit children will have opportunities to use:
Root, stem, petal, leaf, flower, soil, sunlight, water, seed, bulb, bean.
In the second half of the Summer Term we will be investigating Pushes and Pulls.  We will be looking at the forces required to make objects move.
PSHE:

We will continue to follow the scheme of work dictated by the Social and Emotional Aspects of children’s Learning (SEAL). The topic this term is ‘Change and how it affects us’.

Other subjects:

Geography: children will continue to develop their geography skills through looking at, comparing, and contrasting two different countries, and locating them, and other countries, on a world map.

History: children will learn about seaside holidays and compare the way people experience the seaside today with how they did in the past.

Art: linking in with our science topic the children will develop their drawing skills by observing growing plants.  We will also link art in with our history topic of the seaside.

R.E: children will cover the topic of ‘belonging’. We will be looking at what it means to belong to a family, community and faith.

ICT: work we will predominantly use the ICT suite working in pairs to develop basic computer skills. ICT is also regularly incorporated throughout the curriculum, through interactive whiteboard use and digital photography.

Children will also attend weekly lessons in:
• Music with Mr Morris on a Wednesday.
• PE with Morris – Mrs McMillan’s on a Monday, Miss Sutton’s on a Thursday. Please ensure children have an appropriate P.E kit which is to be kept at school for each half term, and wear appropriate footwear.
• Dance lesson with Ms Robbins on a Tuesday. The children must wear appropriate clothing e.g. vest and pants/shorts/leotards
• Library on a Wednesday (please return school library books each week to enable your child to choose new books regularly).

It is really important that the children bring back spelling folders and guided reading books every Monday morning.  This is because it ensures that we have the time to mark the homework and select new books for your children.  If guided reading books are not returned other classes are not able to use these texts, and renders the set of six books unusable.

We will all be visiting Stepney City Farm on Thursday 2nd May 2013. This will link with our science topic.

Children are expected to go to the toilet at playtimes and lunchtimes, but we always allow children to go if it is urgent.  However accidents do happen and we would be grateful if spare clothing could be washed and returned as soon as possible.

If you are getting rid of anything that you think might be useful in the class, please speak to us before you do!  We would welcome any materials that could be reused/recycled in creative activities.

We look forward to a productive, creative and happy final term with your children with the sun hopefully shining.
  
    Best Wishes

Jo Sutton        Isobel McMillan

Group 1 Spellings (10 Words)

Week 1 (to be learnt for Monday 22nd April)
push
read
road
seen
shop
show
soap
soil
sure
take

Week 2 (to be learnt for Monday 29th April)
time
told
took
tour
upon
used
wasp
we’re
wood
work

Week 3 (to be learnt for Monday 6th May)
year
zero
above
after
along
april
asked
began
being
below

Week 4 (to be learnt for Monday 13th May)
black
break
brown
cough
didn’t
earth
eight
every
field
first

Week 5 (to be learnt for Monday 20th May)
found
fruit
going
great
green
happy
heard
heart
hedge
Hello

HALF TERM

Week 1 (to be learnt for Monday 10th June)
laugh
leave
lived
March
might
money
motor
music
never
night

Week 2 (to be learnt for Monday 17th June)
noise
often
other
paper
piece
place
point
quick
ready
right

Week 3 (to be learnt for Monday 24th June)
round
seven
shout
sleep
small
sound
still
table
teeth
think

Week 4 (to be learnt for Monday 1st July)
three
today
tries
under
until
white
whole
woken
woman
world

Week 5 (to be learnt for Monday 8th July)
write
young
across
almost
always
around
August
before
better
called

Week 6 (to be learnt for Monday 15th July)
change
closed
coming
during
eleven
father
finger
forest
Friday
inside

Week 7 (to be learnt for Monday 22nd July)
jumped
little
Monday
mother
number
o’clock
opened
orange
people
please

Group 2 Spellings (5 Words)

Week 1 (to be learnt for Monday 22nd April)
Dr
Mr
Ms
no
up

Week 2 (to be learnt for Monday 29th April)
us
all
bee
big
box

Week 3 (to be learnt for Monday 6th May)
boy
buy
Dad
day
dig

Week 4 (to be learnt for Monday 13th May)
eat
end
flu
man
May

Week 5 (to be learnt for Monday 20th May)
met
Mrs
Mum
new
off

HALF TERM

Week 1 (to be learnt for Monday 10th June)
old
one
our
out
owl

Week 2 (to be learnt for Monday 17th June)
own
ran
red
sea
six

Week 3 (to be learnt for Monday 24th June)
tea
ten
too
two
way

Week 4 (to be learnt for Monday 1st July)
won
yes
away
back
bear

Week 5 (to be learnt for Monday 8th July)
blue
boil
both
buoy
Dear

Week 6 (to be learnt for Monday 15th July)
down
eyes
fair
felt
fire

Week 7 (to be learnt for Monday 22nd July)
five
foot
four
free
full