It is a pleasure to welcome the children back to school after the Christmas holidays. We hope you had a good Christmas holiday. The children have returned well rested and excited to share their holiday news.

Our topic this half term will be “Amazing Adventures“ and we will be focusing on "Toys ”.

We will be finding out about toys and games from the past, looking at how they have changed over time. We will investigate and decide if a toy is new or old. We will learn how to create our own toys.

This term, the children will design and make their own toy. If you or your child has any old or new toys, please bring them in for us to share with the class.

Home learning

Home learning is an important part of your child’s learning as a whole. This give them opportunities to practice skills learnt at school and extend their learning. Your child will receive homework every Friday. It should be completed every week and returned to school by Wednesday.

Spellings

As your child learns a range of strategies for reading, their spellings improve tremendously. Your child will have a spelling sheet with selected words for them to learn. This list will be given out to go home on Fridays and the Spelling Test is on Wednesdays. Please ensure your child practises the new spellings given for the best chance to get them right.

Reading

Reading plays a significant role in your child’s education. Please could you ensure that your child reads at home every day and kindly record comments in the reading contact book. Remember to put the book each day to enable us change them for their continued reading pleasure. To help develop comprehension skills, you can ask your child questions about the characters and setting (place where the story is set) from the book. Also you can check their understanding by asking them to explain what a section of text means or what selected keywords could mean in a text. For their reading enjoyment, see below, a child friendly and useful website: https://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/short-stories

Phonics

Every child has a daily phonics lesson where new sounds are taught in the lesson along with “CVC words” and “Alien words”. Please support your child by practising any words and blends that are sent home. We focus on applying these sounds in our reading and writing. Phonics is a major part of your child's learning and helps them in all areas of the curriculum so continue to support them with this.

In June this year, your child will take a phonics test and this will involve a combination of “Alien words” and “Real words”. Your child will need to apply their phonics knowledge to sound out these words.

Labelling Personal Belongings

Please ensure that you label all of your child`s personal belongings including clothes, plimsolls and school bags so that if they happen to be misplaced, it will easier to find them.

Please check your child`s book bag daily for information from school. Should you have any concerns about your child please do not hesitate to contact me. Please feel free to come and talk to me or ar-range to meet me before or after school.

Thank you for your continued support,

Mr. Ocansey and the Year 1 Team.