Sycamore (Year 1)

Welcome to Year One - 2024-2025

Miss Bailey, Mrs Mitchell and Miss Rucaj would like to welcome you to Sycamore Class!

In Maths, we follow the White Rose curriculum, which involves using concrete and pictorial methods to solve fluency calculations, problem-solving and reasoning.

We are also developing the children's maths mastery in daily arithmetic sessions, whereby the children will develop a solid foundation in subitising and visualising numbers and amounts.

In English, we are following the Pathways to Write Programme and linking other selected texts to our Connected Learning topics with fun and interesting fiction picture books. We will be covering units which include: diary writing, recounts, letters and instructions. There is a key focus on grammar, spelling and punctuation, and we will be learning spellings within our phonics and English lessons. In addition, it would benefit the children to be able to spell all the common exception words for Year 1 (the link is below).

In reading, children will read phonic decodable books according to the phonics they are learning and are able to apply it.

We have lots of fun things in store this year with our Connected Learning topics.

These will include subjects on:

What can we find in our school?
What would you put in your own museum?
Where would you travel?

Each of these will have a focus to try and solve over each term.

Although there is no formal homework in Year one, we do have a termly home learning project which can be found linked at the bottom of this page, and on SeeSaw (log in information can be found in the children's reading records). In addition, we would appreciate you reading daily with your child and encouraging them to complete any activities sent home.

Seesaw will also be used by us to post: Home learning challenges, reading challenges and class information. Your child can then choose whether to bring their work into class or respond via Seesaw.

Please contact the office (on 01233 614660, or email on office@john-wesley.org.uk ) if you need to arrange a meeting with us or have any questions.

The children also have their reading logs which you can write notes in to communicate with us.

Other

Reading

Read a book you haven't read before. (Oxford Owls has some good free books to read online!)

Read and follow some instructions (perhaps to bake a cake!).

Put your books in alphabetical order.

Rank your story books from most to least favourite.

Choose a word or a sound to hunt for - how many times can you find it?

Read to your toys - they love books as well.

Writing

Keep a diary every day. This is a really good way to get your feelings out and can be a really good piece of history.

Make up a story about one of your favourite characters from a book or a film.

Draw and write your own comic book.

Write the lyrics to your favourite song, but change them a little bit!

Use big chalks to practise writing on the pavement.

Use different writing tools, like felt pens, crayons, chalk or paint to write with.

Maths

Play Countdown. Can you make a target number using only random numbers?

Counting - How many toys do you own?

Sorting - Can you sort your toys into groups, based upon certain criteria (i.e. soft, fluffy, metal, plastic)

Sorting - Can you order toys from largest to smallest? Heaviest to lightest?

Find and write down all objects with numbers on them in the house. How many do you have?

Measure and record the length of a bean plant as the days go on.

Bake a cake.

How many small containers of water fit into one large container?

Other

Build a den from blankets and pillows. Use it as a reading area.

Make something using real tools. (With supervision!)

Learn computer science.

Learn a language as a family.

DIY Science Experiments.

Make a treasure hunt around the house.

Useful Weblinks

This list is not exhaustive, but these (mostly) free websites can help to continue to develop skills at home. Please let the class teacher know if you have found a good website we could add to our list!

GENERAL

Games for various subjects:https://www.ictgames.com/

Help for home learning: http://www.primaryhomeworkhelp.co.uk/

CBeebies: https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies

Scratch Jr: (programming): https://www.scratchjr.org/

Hour Of code: https://hourofcode.com/uk/learn

ENGLISH

Purple Mash (School Login Required): https://www.purplemash.com/login/

Education City (School Login Required) https://www.educationcity.com/

PHONICS

Cued Articulation JWS Phases 3 and 5 https://youtu.be/9E2LN7_x7EY

Letters and Sounds:http://www.letters-and-sounds.com/