Hello and welcome to the Chestnut class page!
This term our topic is ‘Me in my world!’ We are going to continue to become familiar with traditional tales through looking at ‘Little Red Riding Hood!’ We will also be looking at the book ‘Dear Greenpeace’. Dear Greenpeace is a book which is written in letter form.
As part of our topic we will be learning about our local area. We will be studying our surroundings through photographs and will identify significant landmarks and physical features in our environment. We will use maps to identify the journeys we take and create maps based on these journeys. We will also look at where we are in the UK and identify cities using a map. In science we will look at daily weather patterns and how the weather changes over the four seasons. If you want to find out more about our topic click here.
As part of English we will be looking at the fairy taleLittle Red Riding Hood. Initially, we will spend some time getting to know the story. Children will read it, answer questions about it, act it out and respond to the text with letters and diary entries. Children will be retelling the story before writing it themselves. They will be innovating the story so that they make the story their own. Later on in the term we will be looking at a story calledDear Greenpeace.This book is entirely in letter form and it tells a story of a girl who wishes to keep her pet whale in a pond so she writes to Greenpeace, however, they insist that the whale cannot live in her pond. Children will develop their letter writing skills using this book and shall write their own letters. We will continue to focus on using capital letters, full stops, finger spaces and using conjunctions such as ‘and’ and ‘because’ to join our ideas together. The book has a great vocabulary so we will use this book to revisit using adjectives and the children will use these in their response writing and story writing.
In maths, we will begin the term by revisiting fractions. Children will be finding a quarter of an amount. Children will use counters and cubes to find a quarter of numbers within 20. Children will then use their knowledge and understanding of fractions to help them with telling the time. We will be looking at a clock face and the meaning of the hands before telling the time to o’clock and half past. Children will be estimating duration of time, recording time and using a calendar. We will then move on other elements of measure such as identifying money, comparing weight, length and measure and measuring weight length and measure. Children will be solving a range of problems around this topic. If you have a chance to practise the 2, 5 and 10 x table at home with your child this would be great for their learning in school.
I will continue to send spellings home every Friday so please help your children learn them! These are a mix of key words that children should know by the end of Year One and some words using their phonics. I will be checking them the following Friday. Please continue to practise these at home!
Please make sure you read with your children every day. By the end of Year One children should be reading at a level 18 (Turquoise), to reach this children need to be reading regularly at home. Unfortunately there isn’t enough time in the day to read with every child every day during school time, so it is really important that you read with them at home! Being a strong reader supports them in all of their subjects and gives a great foundation for their learning!
If you feel you are able to spare an hour a week and would like to support some of our children with their reading, then we are always looking for reading volunteers, please let me know if you are interested!
Your children will also get homework every Friday, this will alternate between literacy and maths each week, please return it by Wednesday so I can have a look before they get sent home again!
This term we are lucky to have Stapleton Cricket Club coming in each week! This will happen on a FRIDAY afternoon so please make sure your children have trainers in their P.E kit!
If you have any questions or concerns then I am always available at the end of the day!
Miss Mortished
