We are so excited to begin this wonderful year of learning, exploring, and growing together. Year 1 is a special and exciting time as the children move from the Early Years into Key Stage 1, building on their early learning and developing greater independence.
Throughout the year, we’ll be learning through a range of engaging topics, creative activities, and hands-on experiences across all areas of the curriculum. Our aim is to foster a love of learning, curiosity about the world, and confidence in each child’s abilities.
We look forward to working closely with you to support your child’s learning journey and make this a happy, successful year for everyone.
Information For Parents & Guardians
Our PE days are Tuesday and Friday, please ensure your child has the appropriate kit (white t-shirt, blue jogging bottoms/leggings or shorts and trainers). Children can come to school in their PE kits.
Reading
Reading books are changed weekly, in-line with Little Wandle. Each child will take part in weekly guided reading sessions, focusing on decoding, prosody and comprehension. After reading the book in school, they will take the book home. The idea behind this is the children will take home a book they are familiar with and given the opportunity to understand any words they may find difficult to read and understand. Therefore, you may find that your child can read their book quite easily, which is what we aim for.
We ask that you try to read with your children as often as you can to develop fluency, ideally 10 minutes every night. If you could sign your child’s reading record after each read, we can then celebrate extra reading in class. Reading books will be changed on a Thursday.
Phonics
Year 1 have a phonics screening test in the summer term where they will be tested on reading 40 words; a mixture of real and pseudo words (alien words). Information and workshops relating to the screening will take place throughout the year.
For more information regarding phonics and the phonics scheme used at St Mary’s, please head over to the Little Wandle website:Letters and Sounds
Spellings
Each week, Year 1 children will receive six spellings to learn at home. These spellings are linked to the Little Wandle phonics scheme, which supports the sounds and words the children are learning in class. The spellings will be sent home every Friday, ready for a short spelling test the following Friday.
Practising these words regularly at home helps children to strengthen their phonics knowledge, improve their reading and writing, and gain confidence with spelling patterns. We ask that children bring their homework books into school each Thursday so we can stick in the following weeks spellings.
What are we learning about?