Badsey First SchoolYear 1 - Kestrel Class
Autumn Term 2021
Meet the Teacher
Miss Smith is the Class Teacher with Mrs Newman as our Teaching Assistant. Mrs Thomas will cover the class every other Thursday to support Miss Smith's planning time.
It is a good idea to have a PE Kit in school every day just in case there are extra PE lessons throughout the week!
COOL Time
This stands for 'Choosing Our Own Learning'.
To help the children with the transition from Owl class, the Year 1 classroom will be set up in a very similar way with lots of spaces for independent learning and play. We will be encouraging the children to complete independent learning tasks by setting them up as 'COOL' activities. Throughout the day, the children will spend a lot of time doing their COOL activities, interspersed with working in small groups with an adult. They will keep track of which activities they have completed throughout the week and will be rewarded for completing all of their COOL tasks at the end of the week.
As the year progresses, the size of the groups working with an adult will increase until eventually we will be in a 'formal' style of learning, which is when all children are working on the same lesson at the same time. This will help prepare them for learning in future year groups.
Reading 
Now that the term is well under way, your child has come home with 2 school reading books. These are based on their phonics level so they match the sounds they can recognise in school. It is very common for children to be a bit shy when reading with a new adult, so it may be a few weeks until we hear a child read as confidently as they do at home.
English
The theme for our English lessons this term is bugs and minibeasts!
To begin with, we will learn and write our own poem all about different types of bugs, then our Talk for Writing journey will start with a journey story all about 'Betty the Butterfly'. Here is a copy of this story to help your child become familiar with it.
After writing our own journey story where Betty will travel to lots of exciting places, we will then learn how to write instructions to look after butterflies. By this time we will be experts because we will have our very own butterflies growing and living in class with us!
When writing, the children are encouraged to write phonetically using the following sound mats:
Phase 2
Phase 3
As we teach specific spellings, these will become 'non-negotiable' and we will expect them to be spelt correctly from then on. Here is a list of the year 1 spelling words which they will be taught throughout the year.
Phonics
We will start the year re-capping and reminding ourselves of the phase 3 sounds (here) then move on to phase 4 blends (here). After this, the majority of our year will be spent learning the phase 5 sounds (here).
There will be a phonics meeting in the autumn term to help discuss how children learn to read. Date TBC.
Maths
In our maths lessons we will be learning all about the numbers 0-20. We will spend a lot of time focusing on the teen numbers as they are notoriously tricky and we will learn about the importance of the '0' in the number '10'. Focusing on these numbers will give the children the foundations and building blocks to be confident with numbers and will help them when we go onto larger numbers in the future.
We will also become fluent when adding and subtracting numbers to 10 and learn the names of common 2D and 3D shapes.
3D Curriculum
Our topic for the first half-term is ‘Our Wonderful World’ which will be interwoven across all of the subjects.
In Geography we will be looking at maps of the world, identifying countries we have heard of before and then zooming in on the United Kingdom and finding Badsey and other familiar places. After half-term, we will then continue to look at Badsey and Evesham in more detail, in particular focusing on the rivers around us and the River Avon.
In Science lessons we are looking at animals including; animal groups, where animals like to live and animal features. This will also link closely with our English lessons where we will be reading stories about butterflies and we will even have our own butterflies growing in the classroom!
Art lessons will involve looking at animal patterns and creating them using a variety of different materials and mediums.
Helpful Website Links:
Man on the Moon here
Supertato here
Commotion in the Ocean here
Giraffes Can't Dance here
https://ec1.educationcity.com/ (children require their personal username and password provided by school - please email: office@badseyfirstschool.org.uk)
https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/PicnicOnPluto.html
https://www.teachyourmonstertoread.com/
https://www.topmarks.co.uk/english-games/5-7-years/letters-and-sounds
https://www.ictgames.com/mobilePage/literacy.html
https://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/for-home/reading/
https://www.storylineonline.net/
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/b/free-ebooks/nook-books/kids/_/N-ry0Z8qaZtu1
http://www.crickweb.co.uk/ks1literacy.html