Dear Parents,

I hope you and the children have had a lovely Christmas and a happy new year! I am really looking forward to this half term and seeing the children continue to grow in independence and enjoy their learning. They did fantastically well last half term- well done year 2 children!

Reading Books – We have a new reading scheme which links with the phonics phase that your child is on. We will be checking reading records before children change their books to check that they have finished so please try to remember to record when they have read and finished. We will also be asking children questions when they change their book to check that they have understood what they have read, as this is just as important as being able to read it. The new books have some questions that can be asked while reading on the back cover. As always, we encourage frequent reading sessions at home with lots of talking about what is being read to develop understanding.

PE – PE will be on a Wednesday and Thursday this half term. They will be doing gymnastics. Mr Pearson will be teaching in Class Two on Thursday afternoon. Please ensure that we have a labelled PE kit in school at all times. Please also label ALL items of uniform. We often lose a significant amount of learning time looking for mixed up uniform and PE kits.

Snacks – Children will continue to have access to school snacks in a morning. They can bring in their own fruit for snack if they would like to. A reminder that snack should just be fruit. We are a nut free school (we have a child in school with a nut allergy). Please do not allow children to bring anything into school containing nuts. All children should also have a water bottle in school each day.

Homework –Homework will be given at the start of each half term with tasks to do each week. When children have completed a task they should hand in their homework book. We will be sharing homework and doing show and tell every Friday. Children will also be given spellings to learn for a small test each week. The test will take place on Friday morning.

Thank you for all your support.

Miss Spence

Below is an outline of the work to be covered over the next half term (Spring 1- 2020)  Year 1

Subject

Topics

English

For the first few weeks of the half term children will be writing a recount of their favourite day of the Christmas holidays. We will focus on writing correctly punctuated sentences; writing events in the order that they happened; thinking hard about spellings of trickier words; using conjunctions to make sentences more detailed and we will be looking at how to proof read and uplevel our work.

We will then be looking at some different dinosaur non-fiction books. We will work towards writing an information report about a dinosaur. We will focus on writing correctly punctuated sentences; writing in the correct tense; thinking hard about spellings of trickier words; using conjunctions to make sentences more detailed and we will be looking at how to proof read and uplevel our work.

Maths

In Maths we will continue to work on multiplication. We will look at multiplying from pictures and arrays; multiplying by 2, 5 and 10. We will also look at division. We will look at  sharing into equal groups and grouping into equal groups; dividing by 2, 5 and 10 and odd and even numbers. We will continue to work on our addition and subtraction methods throughout the half term. We will also look at fractions. This will look at finding and recognising halves, quarters and thirds; unit and non-unit fractions and equivalent fractions.

Science

This half term children will be learning about living things and their habitats. Children will learn to explore and compare the differences between things that are living, dead, and things that have never been alive; identify that most living things live in habitats to which they are suited and describe how different habitats provide for the basic needs of different kinds of animals and plants, and how they depend on each other; identify and name a variety of plants and animals in their habitats, including microhabitats and to describe how animals obtain their food from plants and other animals, using the idea of a simple food chain, and identify and name different sources of food.

Topic

This half term we will be learning about Kenya and then comparing a small area of Kenya to a small area of the UK. Children will explore geographical similarities and differences between Kenya and the UK, looking at the geography of a small village in Kenya compared to Kildwick. They will identify the continents of the world and where Kenya and the UK are on the world map. They will also build on their simple fieldwork and observational skills to study the geography of their school and its grounds and the key human and physical features of its surrounding environment.

Art / DT

This half term children will be doing some landscape art linked to our Kenya topic.

P.E.

PE will be on Wednesday and Thursday this half term. We will be doing gymnastics.

R.E.

In RE this half term we will be looking at some of the pillars of Islam and why they are important to Muslims. 

P.S.H.C.E.

In PSHCE this half term, we will be looking at different ways to be healthy.