Welcome to Penguin 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 White, Mrs Dowthwaite, Mrs Jepson, Miss Hodgkinson and Miss Chambers. They support us at different times during the week. 
Every other Tuesday, we are taught by Mrs White during Miss Nadin's PPA (Planning, Preparation and Assessment) time. 

We hope you enjoy seeing all the fantastic things that we do in Penguin 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

Key Dates 

• Monday 7th September - Back to school
• Wednesday 23rd September - School Parliament elections 
• Wednesday 30th September - Expert group afternoon
• Tuesday 13th October - Parent's evening 
• Thursday 22nd October - Spooky disco
• Friday 23rd October - Dovedale's Got Talent!
• Friday 23rd October - Break up for half term
• Monday 2nd November - INSET day
• Tuesday 3rd November - Return to school

PE Days 

Our PE Days for Autumn 1 are as follows: 

Outdoor PE - Every Tuesday afternoon

Indoor PE - Every Thursday afternoon

The PE kit should include: 
A plain red/white t-shirt (with or without the school logo) 
A plain black sports jacket
Plain black or navy joggers or shorts (weather dependent)
Trainers or plimsoles

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 library 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 4 to 6 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. 
   

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

From the second half of the Autumn term, your child will receive weekly spellings to learn at home. We don't start them straight away as we want to give your child time to settle into Year 1 life before throwing something else at them! Once we start spelling tests, please support your child by practising their spellings at home so that they are ready for their weekly spelling test. The spelling test will take place every Friday. 

When we give the children the spelling booklets, the children will also receive log in details for a website/app called Spelling Shed. 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.   

Maths – We will be practical little mathematicians this half term, exploring the ‘shape, space and measure’ objectives. We will start off the half term by learning to recognise and identify 2D and 3D shapes and their simple properties and try and spot the shapes within our classroom environments. We will be looking at ‘length and height’, learning how to compare different heights and lengths while accurately using terms such as ‘longer’, ‘shorter’ and ‘taller’. We will also discover how to measure lengths and heights using non-standard units of measure, such as cubes, before learning how to accurately measure with a ruler in centimetres. Following this, we will be looking at ‘mass and volume’, measuring the mass of an object using the balancing scales and non-standard units (cubes) and comparing the mass of different objects using terms such as ‘heavier’ and ‘lighter’. Our final part of this unit will see us exploring ‘position and direction’, learning to describe direction using ‘right’ and ‘left’ and the position of an object using terms such as ‘above’ and ‘below’. Once we are secure in all of these objectives, we will begin exploring place value to 10, which will continue into next half term.
 

English – This half term we will be discovering ‘what makes a great year 1 writer’ by exploring and practising all the basic skills needed all of the time in our writing, such as: full stops, capital letters, sitting our letters on the line, forming our letters carefully and using our phonics knowledge to help us spell the words we need. We will be practising these through having lots of fun learning through different books we enjoyed when we were younger, such as the "That's not my..." series and "Dear Zoo". We will learn how to write simple sentences with independence and how to use adjectives in our sentences to describe. We will become mini-authors by innovating the stories with our own new animals and ideas, and even creating our own "That's not my..." touch and feel book. As well as being super writers, we will become excellent poets, learning and reciting a range of poems to enhance our oracy skills. 

Science - In science, we will begin the first half of our ‘plants’ knowledge block (that we will continue later in the year!). Our focus is all about trees. We will learn to identify, label and understand the functions of the main parts of trees (roots, trunk, bark, leaves, branches), go on tree and leaf hunts to try and identify the different trees we have in our school grounds, try and identify trees by their leaves and even learn and understand the terms ‘evergreen’ and ‘deciduous’. We will also begin our first (ongoing) science investigation of the year, making predictions and observations in order to ultimately answer the question: “do trees change?”. Ask your child how many trees they can name!

History – “Why do we remember the 5th November?” is our enquiry question for this half terms history. We will be completing a short study exploring an event beyond living memory - The Gunpowder Plot. Within this we will be given the chance to develop our historical enquiry skills; asking questions led by curiosity, using simple sources to find out about the past and even be able to answer questions using artefacts and pictures. We will find out who Guy Fawkes was, the chronology of the Gunpowder Plot, how we know about it and why and how it is remembered today. We might even get the chance to make our own Guy as well as have a virtual classroom ‘bonfire’!  

RE – In RE, we will be exploring the question: ‘Who is a Christian and what do they believe?’ We will be learning about what a Christian is, exploring some Christian beliefs about God and Jesus and also recognising objects that are special to Christians, such as the Bible, Church, the symbol of the cross, the font and more. Children will also hear and learn some stories from the Bible that show Christian beliefs about God and Jesus, such as ‘The Lost Son’ and ‘The Good Samaritan’ – see if they can retell these parables to you!

PSCHE – The core theme of our PSCHE lessons this half term is all about Health and Wellbeing. Children will explore what a healthy lifestyle means and how to maintain one, learn to identify simple benefits of a healthy lifestyle and also identify choices they can make that can improve their health. We will create our own ‘class workout’ to discover how exercise help us to be happy and healthy and also find out how to stop germs from spreading.

DT – In our Design and Technology lessons this half term, children will have the chance to make their own moving toy. We will begin by first thinking about our own toys and evaluating what they are like such as its purpose, materials and components and its audience. We will then bear this in mind when designing our own toys (either a rag doll, jack in a box, teddy, robot or toy soldier - based on the story ‘The Old Toy Room’). We will learn about different ways to make joints and work out which resource would be best for our own toy’s joints. Finally, once we have made our toys we will evaluate it just like a real designer!

PE –
Indoor focus: Gymnastics.
Outdoor focus: Throwing and catching.