Autumn 1- Splendid Skies
Welcome to the new school year at East Hanningfield Primary School. I hope that you have all enjoyed the summer holiday and are looking forward to an exciting start to the school year. We have a busy half term planned with the early years children settling in and getting to know their classroom and the year ones will be deepening their learning and gaining knowledge from lots of fun science and geography lessons. The children will have the opportunity to use the outside classroom everyday so please make sure they are dressed appropriately with a coat, gloves, hat on colder days.
Our whole class topic this half term is “Splendid Skies”
This topic will allow us to learn lots of interesting information about the weather and seasons. Here are a few of the topic books that we will use this half term.
Early years
This term I will be spending lots of time getting to know the children and playing with them, during this time I will also be taking observations of them and completing their ‘baseline assessment’. This will help me to discover what the children already know and their next steps. The new Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum bands the different stages of learning as birth to three, three to four and children in reception. We will discuss this at parents evening which is held in October.
Phonics
Early Years
This term the early year’s children will be beginning their phonics sessions; we will start with phase one phonics lessons which will help them to train their ears to identify different sounds. This includes hearing a rhyming string, alliteration or the initial sounds in words, for example the ‘h’ in hen. We will then move on to phase two which is when they start to learn the letter sounds, we follow the jolly phonics scheme. After learning a new sound your child will bring home a sheet to help them practise writing that sound. They will also learn how to read the phase two tricky words (these are words that you cannot phonetically sounds out) they are; no, go, into, the and I.
Year 1
This term the year one children will be revisiting the phase three sounds to ensure that they can read digraphs and digraphs confidently within the context of a word. It’s very important that the children can confidently recognise the taught phase two and three sounds because during the phase four lessons they will use this knowledge to read words with a consonant blend and cluster. They are the words like lamp, nest, train, burnt, strong.
English
Early years
This term the children will be enjoying fun opportunities to explore mark making with a range of media. The children will be labelling pictures and objects with their initial sound.
Year 1
This term the children will be practising sentence writing. They will be writing for a range of purposes including recounts of event and writing letters. They will also complete weekly reading vipers lessons with Mrs Thomas on a Tuesday, the story they will be reading is ‘The Secret Sky Garden’ by Linda Sarah and Fiona Lumbers. The children will also start handwriting lessons to ensure they are forming their letters correctly, later in the year the children will begin joining so they will work hard to ensure their letters start and end in the correct place.
Maths
Early Years
After their settling in period the children will start math lessons by focusing on their ability to match objects that are the same, this will be through a range of fun activities including matching odd socks, objects and then objects and numerals. We will then move on to sorting objects by colour, size or shape. We will be practise counting carefully and lining objects up as we count them.
This term we will also be singing lots of fun maths songs and completing number challenges in the maths zone.
Year 1
We will be continuing to follow the white rose curriculum and this term, our blocks this half term are place value and addition and subtraction.
Science
The children will have regular outdoor learning sessions which will usually be every Thursday and will start on Thursday the 16th September. On outdoor learning days please send your child to school in old comfy clothes that cover their arms and legs. This term the children will be learning about seasonal changes and different weather types that are associated with them. In addition to identifying common plants and tree and learning if they are evergreen or deciduous.
Religious Education
This term the children will be learning about “How the universe come to be?” focusing on the Christian religion.
PSED (Early years)
The children develop their personal, social and emotional skills throughout the year by learning how to self regulate their feelings and emotions, we use the zones of regulation to help support this. They will be building new relationships with their peers and will be learning how to access the different areas of provision (deconstructive role play, writing area, reading snug etc).
PSHE (Year one)
This term the children will learn about families and friendships and making new friends, safe relationships and ‘managing secrets’ and later in the term respecting ourselves and others.
PE
In PE this term we will be developing our gross motor skills and developing our running skills. The children will also be learning how to play a range of playground games.
Geography
This term the children will be learning about seasonal and daily weather patterns. Later in the term we will also be exploring the local area and will venture out around the village.
Art
The children will be completing collages and will learn how to create different effects using watercolour paint.
Promoting a love of reading
The early years children will dip in and out of the topic and they will have set challenges to complete during play and learn. I have selected our half terms 'excellent eight' books. The children love having activities linked to books and find it really motivating. To ensure coverage of the early years curriculum there is a great range.
Beegu and Owl Babies are two high quality texts that offer lots of opportunities for role play and discussion about feelings. 100 steps is about Sir Captain Tom Moore and will teach children about the past.
Do you love bugs is a book about the world. The Little Red Hen is a traditional tale. The colour monster is a book about feelings and promotes self regulation.
My name is not refugee will promote discussion about different diversities and cultures. We're going on a bear hunt is a well loved book and it has lots of repeated phrases so the children can join in.