Owls Welcome Letter

We hope you have had a lovely time over the summer and we are sure you are now ready to start the new school year, so welcome to Year 1!

We are looking forward to getting to know you and working together, in order to have a very exciting and productive year. We hope that you enjoy the new challenges and approaches to learning that Year 1 has to offer.

Our aim is to ensure that the children experience a smooth transition from the Foundation Stage to Key Stage One. The Year 1 curriculum builds upon and extends the experiences that children have had in Reception. Learning through play and “doing” will continue to be an important part of the school day, and the children will gradually be eased into more formal learning as the year goes on so that they remain motivated, enthused and eager learners.

We continue to give stars in Owls for great work, behaviour, ideas and friendship, and anyone with 5 stars gets a dip in the treasure box.

Our topic for this term is Oceans and towards the end of the term we are hoping to incorporate a trip to the beach, so we can consolidate our learning in Science (forces, materials and sea creatures), History and Geography (our local town and boats). More information on this will follow. We are also going to be producing some Ocean inspired Art and Design and Technology work so if anyone has any clear 2 litre bottles these would be very useful (as would any other boxes, containers etc., which we can give a second life to).

For Maths and Literacy we will continue with Maths Makes Sense and Read Write Inc which the children are all already familiar with. We will also continue with daily speed sound work, with the emphasis on quick recognition and correct pronunciation which will help all children with their reading and spelling.

Reading is a part of every single subject and is the most used skill through a whole school life. You can really help your children by reading with them as regularly as you can – every day would be amazing. We won’t change the books every day as reading a familiar text can boost children’s confidence and enthusiasm in reading as well as providing an opportunity to get even more out of the text with inference. You could discuss alternative endings and ask your child to predict what could happen after the story or how the characters feel at certain points in the book. Reading a familiar text also helps with fluency and expression, so you could act out parts of stories too.

We will have time for show and tell on Fridays, and will be rotating the children in groups for this so everyone has an opportunity to share with the class their news at some point. We also have our cuddly owls Chloe and James. Each week 2 lucky children will be asked to take either Chloe or James on their adventures over the weekend and record what they do in the diary. If your child is not yet able to do this it is perfectly acceptable for you to write in the diary what your child says. Please return this to school on Monday and then your child can show and share their weekend news with the class on Wednesday.

Can we also ask that children always have a PE kit in school and a water bottle to be drunk from throughout the day – both clearly named please. We do PE twice a week in Owls (Wednesday and Friday)and often have experts in at other times of the week for sport. We encourage children to practise getting dressed at home to help them get changed quickly in school!

We will have a parents evening soon and I am looking forward to seeing as many of you that can make it – again details will follow. In the meantime if you do have any questions or concerns please do not hesitate to come and see us.

And finally…for our Science lessons this term we will be looking at sorting and labelling different materials, it would be great for the children to get involved with this by collecting some items from the beach and bringing them in for Monday. Thank you all for your continued support and help.

Mrs Gurney, Mrs Crockford and Miss Delaney

Show and Tell Groups

We will start each week with the 1^st group next to the date, and then if there is time we will move along the row. We will try and get through as many children as we can as we love to hear from the children. If anyone brings in a topic related show and tell they will get a star!