Welcome to Neil Armstrong Class!
Welcome to our class page. We are a wonderful Year 1 class and our teacher is Miss Nadin. Our amazing teaching assistants are Mrs Dowthwaite, Mrs White and Mrs Wilkins who support us at different times during the week. Every other Tuesday, we are very lucky as we get taught by Mrs White during Miss Nadin's PPA (Planning, Preperation and Assessment) time.
We hope you enjoy seeing all of the fantastic things that we do in Neil Armstrong Class.
Alongside our Class Page, we also share information and updates on Class Dojo. Please make sure you are connected on there so that you can see what we have been getting up to. Please feel free to send me a message on Class Dojo or via my school email which you will see below.
znadin@dovedale.derbyshire.sch.uk
Please see the Powerpoint below with information all about Year 1.
Our Targets
Reading
Your child will receive a reading diary and a wallet containing 2 books. The first book is a black and white ‘storybook’ – this will be a copy of the book your child has learned to read in their Read, Write Inc phonics group. They will know this book and should be able to read it fluently – this is their book where they can show off their great reading skills to you! The second book is a ‘Book Bag Book’ – this book will be matched to your child’s phonics knowledge. Although they will not have read this book in school, they should be able to read it quite easily. This book enables your child to apply their phonic skills independently and for this reason, this is the book we encourage you to focus on at home.
Soon the children will be receiving a third book. This will be a book to share together at home. We promote a love of books and reading at school and would like to encourage this at home. We do not expect children to be able to read the sharing book themselves, but we do expect them to enjoy listening to it, learning from it and talking to you about it!
In order for our phonics teaching to work effectively, it is essential that all books are returned to school. After hearing your child read at home, or sharing a book together, please make sure all books go straight back into their reading wallet / bag so they are always readily available at school. Depending on their phonics group, children will be given new reading books every 3 to 5 days.
Please note:
- Some black and white storybooks have a space for the child's name. Please leave this blank as these are not personal copies, and will be re-used.
- We are in the process of organising our 'books to share' and we expect them to be available within the next few weeks, please bear with us.
Finally, a reminder that we ask for you to hear your child read at least 3 times each week. Please sign your child’s reading diary after each read and include any comments you would like to make. If your child has read at least 3 times each week their name will get entered into our Reading Raffle!
Spellings
Your child will receive weekly spellings to learn at home. Please encourage your child to practise their spellings so that they are ready for their weekly spelling test. The spelling test will take place every Friday.
At the start of the year, the children will receive log in details for a website/app called Spelling Shed (linked below). Spelling Shed is used across the school and it allows the children to practise their weekly spellings in a fun way. The children love using Spelling Shed.
Please see the link below for other fun ways to practise spellings at home.
PE
Our PE Days for Summer 2 are as follows:
Indoor PE - Every Monday afternoon
Outdoor PE - Every Wednesday afternoon
The PE kit should include:
A plain red t-shirt (with or without the school logo)
A plain black sports jacket/zip-up jacket
Plain black or navy joggers or shorts (weather dependent)
Key dates for your diary
Summer 2
- Monday 7th June - Return to school
- W/C 19th June - Celebration Week and National Sports Week
- Friday 23rd June - Inset Day
- Friday 7th July - Picnic lunch day and Sports Day
- Monday 10th July - Dovedale's Got Talent
- Tuesday 11th July - Class swap morning to their new Year 2 classroom.
- Wednesday 12th July - Meet the Teacher Drop in after school
- Friday 14th July - Reports sent home
- Wednesday 19th July - Drop in after school regarding the reports
- Thursday 20th July - End of year celebration assembly
- Friday 21st July - Last Day of Year 1!
Please find information below on our learning during Summer term 2.
English - The main focus for this half term's literacy is poetry. We will be listening to and exploring many poems of all different styles and discussing what they make us think of and how they make us feel. We will be learning about rhyming couplets and how these help to add rhythm to a poem, before writing our own rhyming couplet poems and shape poems.
The official phonics screening checks will take place on the week commencing 12th June. Because of this, our English lessons at the beginning of this half term will have a strong phonics and reading focus to give us all that final push and show off all of the sounds that we know!
Maths - Our Maths for this half term covers a range of learning blocks as follows:
Fractions - During this block, children will recognise and find half of an object/shape before moving onto finding half of a quantity. Children will then repeat these steps finding a quarter of an object/shape and a quarter of a quantity.
Position and Direction - Children will learn how to describe turns using the vocabulary “full”, “half”, “quarter” and “three-quarter”. They will then describe position using left and right/forward and backwards/above and below. Children will end this unit by exploring ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd, 3rd etc).
Place Value (within 100) - During this block, children will count from 50 to 100 and they will practise counting in tens to 100. Children will partition numbers to 100 into tens and ones. They will spend time exploring number lines to 100 and they will use this to help them find one more and one less than numbers within 100. We will end the unit by comparing numbers with the same number of tens and compare any two numbers.
Money - During our Money learning block, children will unitise, recognise coins and notes and count in coins.
Time - In our final Year 1 Maths block, children will explore 'before and after'. They will discuss the days of the week and months of the year. We will then move onto exploring hours, minutes and seconds. Children will be able to tell the time to the hour and tell the time to the half hour. This might be something you spend some time practising with your child at home before our time learning block.
PE - Our 2 blocks in PE this term are 'Athletics' and 'Sending and Receiving'.
Athletics - Within athletics this half term, the children will practise adjusting their running pace smoothly, demonstrate a variety of jumping styles, feel the effect of throwing from sitting, kneeling and standing, perform hop and jump combinations with balance and control and will throw and retrieve equipment safely. To practise these skills the children will be taking part in a range of games/activities such as stuck in the mud, cops and robbers, frogs and grasshoppers, toad in the hole and walk the plank.
Sending and Receiving - Within sending and receiving this half term, the children will practise dribbling a ball, passing a ball, receiving a ball and shooting at a target using rolling and kicking. To practise these skills, the children will be taking part in a range of games/activities such as alien invasion, rob the nest, space invaders, animal dribbling and cannon ball collect.
Science - In Science this half term, will be going on a Minibeast hunt to use observations to compare and contrast animals first hand. Throughout the rest of the learning block, the children will continue their learning around the seasons with a specific focus on Spring/Summer. They will observe changes in surroundings, temperature, rainfall, day length and will make tables and charts. The children will also explore how to stay safe in the sun as we move into Summer.
RE (Religious Education) - In RE this term the children will continue to explore the key question from last half term 'What does it mean to belong to a faith community?'. This half term we will delve even deeper into the question. The children will build on their knowledge by discovering how Christians and Muslims welcome a new baby into their faiths. They will explore traditions within Baptism/Christening/Aqiqah ceremonies/celebrations and the importance of these within each religion before comparing the two welcoming ceremonies to find similarities/differences. Children will then explore traditions and the importance of Weddings within the Christian religion. They will explore why making promises to other people is important within a Christian Wedding. The children will get to act out and be a part of a Christian Wedding.
PSCHE (Personal, Social, Citizenship and Health Education) -
Throughout this term, the children will be exploring the knowledge and learning block 'Bullying Matters'. Throughout the sequence of lessons the children will explore what bullying is and how it can hurt other people. They will recognise that their behaviour can affect others. They will identify different types of bullying including physical, emotional and online and they will understand that all of these are unnaceptable. The children will learn how to recognise when people are being unkind to them or others and who to tell and what to say - identifying how to get the help and support that they need. They will explore what it means to be an upstander and a bystander in bullying situations and they will be able to identify strategies to resist teasing/ bullying if experienced or witnessed.
Within the last 2 weeks of this half term, our PSHCE lessons will largely focus around keeping ourselves safe especially with the Summer holidays fast approaching! The children will explore how to keep safe around roads, trainlines, water, fire and the sun. They will also explore what to do in an emergency and dialing 999.
Geography - Our focus skill in Geography this half term is fieldwork. We will be using simple fieldwork and observational skills to study the geography of our school and its grounds, and the key human and physical features of its surrounding environment. We will be learning how to make observations and record these through note taking, photos and sketching. We will also develop our map reading skills by trying to both follow and plot routes to a destination within the school grounds.
Art -
Music - Our learning block for this half term is called 'How Does Music Connect Us With The Environment?'. This Unit of Work celebrates a wide range of musical styles. The lessons support the key areas of the English Model Music Curriculum; Listening, Singing, Playing Composing and Performing. Children will practise these skills using the songs: The Bear Went Over The Mountain, In The Sea, Alice The Camel, Ten Green Bottles and Zootime.
Computing - This half term, children will revisit 'Programming' however this term they will explore 'Programming Animations'. Children will be introduced to on-screen programming through ScratchJr. They will explore the way a project looks by investigating sprites and backgrounds. They will use programming blocks to use, modify, and create programs. Children will also be introduced to the early stages of program design through the introduction of algorithms.
Every Wednesday's assembly will focus on Online Safety to enable children to stay safe growing up in this digitally-rich world!
