Summer Term 2024 

Dear families, 

Thank you for making me feel so welcome for my first week with this brilliant class! 

Important Class Information: 

PE is on Mondays and Thursdays. Please ensure kit is named so it can be returned if lost. Please take earrings out on PE days in line with Essex County and School Policy or provide a pot to put them in if your child can take them out. Please also provide socks if your child wears tights.  

Reading books will be changed on Thursdays, RWInc books will be sent home when they have finished the learning in their groups and the class will have the opportunity to change their Library Book on a Friday, so please send that in on a Friday. 

Home Learning for Year 1 will be on Google Classroom on Fridays to be completed and Home Learning Books are to be returned by Wednesdays, please. 

Here is an outline of what we will be learning this term: 

We will continue to follow the RWInc Phonics programme and children will be taught in their respective groups for reading and writing. Please continue to support your child’s reading at home for 10 minutes every day, it is so important to help them not only gain confidence but also become more fluent. In Reception, this might mean going over the Set 1 and 2 sounds daily and in Year 1, re-reading their RWInc book bag book until they are fluent. The children will bring home a RWInc book when they have done the learning in their group and another book to read, inline with their assessed level, which is changed on a Thursday. Again, repetition helps with fluency and there are questions in the book to help check the children have understood what they have read. 

 Letter formation is part of our daily routine and in Year 1, we are learning pre-cursive writing and making a big effort to remember our capital letters, finger spaces and full stops when writing full sentences. Please encourage your child to do this at home too. Library books will still be changed every Friday for you to enjoy with your child. Crucially, we will be discovering many new stories as well as non-fiction texts and take every opportunity to question, discuss, act out, enjoy and foster our love of books. 

In Maths, we are focussing on numbers to 20 and beyond in Reception. This involves composing and comparing numbers, sharing and grouping numbers, identifying, exploring and making patterns with numbers and learning about the properties of 2D and 3D shapes. In Year 1. we will be learning about Multiplication and Division (2’s, 5.s and 10’s), Fractions, Position and Direction, Place Value, Money and Time,  Mass and Volume. I know many of you are enjoying Numbots, this is invaluable practice for your child to sharpen their mathematical skills! 

In the first half-term, we are going to have so much fun as our Science topic is plants and growing! This will take us into after half term to see how what we have planted has grown! We will also be investigating toys, old and new after half term. 

I am very excited about our Art and DT work which will be inspired by the Sculpture Artist Anthony Gormley. Watch this space for some amazing creations! 

In RE, we will think about what the cross means to Christians.

Our Music curriculum is about exploring high and low pitch.