Welcome to Year 1

Welcome to Year 1

Our Staff

The Year Group Lead is Mrs Dawson
Ash Class Teacher is Miss Colverson and Teaching Assistant Mrs King
Beech Class Teacher is Mrs Dawson and Teaching Assistant is Miss Bell 
Hazel Class Teacher is Mrs D'cruz and Teaching Assistant Mrs Caprice 

Click here for an introduction to Year 1 'Meet the Teacher' Presentation

Year 1 have PE twice per week, on a Monday and Wednesday. The children's  PE kit is to be bought in at the start of the term and will remain in school for the duration of the term. PE Kits will be sent home at the end of the term. Earrings are to be taken out on the day your child has PE. 

Click here to see the end of year expectations for Year 1 

Year 1 Pupil Offer 

As well as accessing our broad curriculum, our pupil offer outlines the additional opportunities your child will have whilst in Year 1. 

Phonics

We follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised programme for phonics. More information can be found at Little Wandle: https://www.littlewandle.org.uk/resources/for-parents/

Daily phonics lessons in Year 1

We teach phonics for 30 minutes a day. Children in Year 1 review Phase 3 and 4 and are taught to read and spell words using Phase 5 GPCs with fluency and accuracy.

Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised (Phase 4)

Review of Phase 3 graphemes and consolidation of the 42 graphemes through blending and segmenting CCVC and CVCC words with consonant clusters as Phase 4 of L&S Revised.

Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised (Phase 5)

The purpose of this phase is for children to broaden their knowledge of graphemes and phonemes for use in reading and spelling.  They will learn new graphemes and alternative pronunciations for these and graphemes they already know, where relevant.  Some of the alternatives will already have been encountered in the high-frequency words that have been taught.  Children become quicker at recognising graphemes of more than one letter in words and at blending the phonemes they represent.  When spelling words, they will learn to choose the appropriate graphemes to represent phonemes and begin to build word-specific knowledge of the spellings of words.

Daily Keep-up lessons ensure every child learns to read

Any child who needs additional practice has daily keep-up support, taught by a fully trained adult. Keep-up lessons match the structure of class teaching, and use the same procedures, resources and mantras, but in smaller steps with more repetition, so that every child secures their learning. These children urgently need to catch up, so the gap between themselves and their peers does not widen. We use the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised assessments to identify the gaps in their phonic knowledge and teach to these using the Keep-up resources – at pace.

Teaching reading: Reading practice sessions three times a week 

We teach children to read through reading practice sessions three times a week. These are taught by a fully trained adult to small groups of approximately six children and use books matched to the children’s secure phonic knowledge using the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised assessments. The sessions are monitored by the class teacher, who rotates and works with each group on a regular basis.

Each reading practice session has a clear focus, so that the demands of the session do not overload the children’s working memory. The reading practice sessions have been designed to focus on three key reading skills:

1. Decoding
2. Prosody: teaching children to read with understanding and expression
3. Comprehension: teaching children to understand the text.

 Assessment is used to monitor progress and to identify any child needing additional support as soon as they need it.

Assessment 

Assessment for learning is used:

• Daily within class to identify children needing Keep-up support
• Weekly in the Review lesson to assess gaps, address these immediately and secure fluency of GPCs, words and spellings.

Summative assessment is used:

• Every six weeks to assess progress, to identify gaps in learning that need to be addressed, to identify any children needing additional support and to plan the Keep-up support that they need.
• By SLT and scrutinised through the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised assessment tracker, to narrow attainment gaps between different groups of children and so that any additional support for teachers can be put into place.

Statutory Assessment

Children in Year 1 sit the Phonics Screening Check. Any child not passing the check re-sits it in Year 2.

Homework in Year 1

Daily Reading

We encourage all children to read at home daily and a note to be written in their reading record book. If the school book has been completed then please read and share any other books or comics that you have at home. These can also be record in the reading record and count towards the number of daily reads.

Phonics

Every Friday we will send home a phonics book with the sounds we have learnt during the week.  

Please practise these with your child at home and see if they can come up with any other words that have these sounds in. Please ensure that the phonics books are returned by Friday the following week so new sounds can be given. 

Curriculum Website Links

The below websites may be useful for supporting your child further with their learning:

• Phonics Play (Phonics games) http://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/
• Oxford Owl (Online reading books) https://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/
• Letter Join (Handwriting) http://www.letterjoin.co.uk/
• Spelling Shed https://www.spellingshed.com/en-gb
• TT Rockstars https://ttrockstars.com/ 
• White Rose Maths Reasons Problems https://whiterosemaths.com/resources/classroom-resources/problems/
• Educational Top Marks Games https://www.topmarks.co.uk/