We continue to work through the Read Write Inc. phonics programme in Year 1. This works in exactly the same way as it did in Reception with the children grouped according to their needs and level of development. In Year 1 we learn some of the more tricky diagraph (e.g. “ay”, “ee”, “ow” etc.), split diagraph (e.g. “a-e”, “o-e”, “u-“e etc.) and trigraph (e.g. “igh”, “ure”, “ear” etc.)sounds, and also some of the alternative way of writing the sounds.

Each Friday your child will bring home a reading book that is linked to the learning that they have been doing in Phonics that week.

Our first ‘Talk 4 Writing’ story of the Lent Term is ‘The Three Little Pigs’. This story is what we call a ‘Defeating the Monster’ tale. In this story the Three Little Pigs set off into the world to build themselves a house each. However, the Big Bad Wolf comes along to put their building skills to the test! This story links with our over-arching topic of where is the best place for a pig to build his house. Through our Literacy the children will explore writing their own ‘Defeating the Monster’ tales based on Little Charlie, whilst focusing on how to describe characters.

For our non-fiction strand of Literacy, the children will be exploring writing a fact file about a part of the UK that they will explore during our Geography topic.

Our fourth topic of the Year 1 is ‘Special People’. The experience of community is an essential and enjoyable part of life for people of every age and faith. The cycle of a year and the span of a lifetime contain occasions for regular celebrations as well as unexpected surprises, when people want to celebrate with family, friends and communities. All families who live or worship in a parish are part of the parish family.  As in any family there are people who have special roles within the parish.  On Sunday, in church, we meet people who do special jobs as we gather to celebrate the Good News of Jesus.  There are special people in our lives who are there to help us. Through this topic the children will get to think about the Special People both in their lives and at the church.

Word of God 

“We are God’s work of art, created in Christ Jesus to live the good life as from the beginning he had meant us to live it. “

(Ephesians 2:10) 

In Science this half term we shall be looking at Everyday Materials. Through this topic we shall be naming different types of materials, such as wood, paper, glass metal etc. We shall also be exploring the properties and features of these materials and how they can be used in our everyday life. We shall also experiment with testing different materials for different purposes and think about why some materials are better than others for certain job.

For the first half of the Lent term of Class 1 we shall be looking at our next Geography topic which is ‘Our Country’. This topic will help the children build on the geographical skills that they developed last term, whilst also learning about:

• the countries of the UK, developing learning beyond the children’s immediate environment and own locality
• the UK by looking at individual countries and their capital cities,
• the human and physical features of areas of the UK
• comparing and contrasting the capital cities of London and Brasilia