Welcome to Peacock Class! 

Peacock Class is made up of 24 wonderful Year 1 children and our class teachers are called Mrs Keenan and Mrs Salt.
(Mrs Salt teaches us every Monday and every other Tuesday, and Mrs Keenan teaches us the rest of the days). 
We are very lucky in Year 1 to be supported by lots of fabulous teaching assistants at different times during the week, and these are: Mrs White, Mrs Dowthwaite, Mrs Jepson, Miss Hodgkinson and Miss Chambers.

On our webpage you will find some important information such as our spellings and any important dates for your diary. These will also be communicated on Class Dojo where further, regular updates will be shared, so please make sure you are connected.

We hope you enjoy seeing all the fantastic things that we do in Peacock Class!

Feel free to send me a message any time on Class Dojo, or through my school email: 
ghardaker@dovedale.derbyshire.sch.uk

                                       

        

                                             

Key Dates 

• Monday 2nd November - Inset Day 
• Tuesday 3rd November - Children back in school
• Friday 6th November – Diwali activities during the afternoon 
• Wednesday 11th November - Remembrance Service/Assembly
• Friday 13th November - Children In Need 
• Wednesday 18th November – Art experts leading an activity in our classroom during the afternoon 
• W/C Monday 30th November - Celebration Week 
• Monday 7th December - KS1 performance to the school 
• Tuesday 8th December - KS1 Christmas Performance to Parents/Carers (pm)
• Wednesday 9th December - KS1 Christmas Performance to Parents/Carers (am)
• Thursday 10th December - KS1 Christmas Performance to Parents/Carers (am)
• Thursday 10th and Friday 11th December – Christmas Jumper Day and Grotto 
• Wednesday 16th December - Christmas Dinner Day 
• Thursday 17th December - KS1 Christmas Church Trip
• Friday 18th December - Break up for Christmas 
• Monday 4th January - Back to school 

PE Days 

Our PE Days for Autumn 2 are as follows: 

Outdoor PE - Every Monday afternoon

Indoor PE - Every Tuesday 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 learnt 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 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 in a 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 – The majority of this term will be focused on Addition and Subtraction. During this learning block, the children will use part whole models and will derive number sentences from these. They will be introduced to fact families. Children will spend time learning their number bonds to 10 before moving onto adding together/adding more and solving addition problems. The children will then look at subtracting by taking away/crossing out and working out how many are left. They will end this learning block by exploring subtraction using a number line. 

 

English – This half term we will be discovering ‘what makes a great year 1 writer’ by exploring and practising all of 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 living within the world of traditional tales! There will be gingerbread men on the loose, a senses journey through the woods in role as Little Red Riding Hood, a hunt for the Big Bad Wolf – watch out for the traps we come up with to catch him so he doesn’t come back for us little piggies, and even an enormous turnip remake! We will learn how to use adjectives and our senses to describe, develop our Talk 4 Writing skills to recite and write stories and even learn how to innovate a well-known tale to make it our own.

 

Science - 'Materials and their properties' is our focus for this half term in Science. The children will have the opportunity to explore a range of different materials including wood, metal, glass, plastic and fabric and they will discover the different properties of materials. We will be using the vocabulary: hard, soft, rough, smooth, opaque, translucent, transparent, absorbent, non-absorbent and many others! We will take part in lots of different investigations, testing the best materials for items in Teddy's House. At the end, we will build Teddy's house using the materials that we have investigated. 

 

Geography – This half term we are building our 'location and place knowledge' in geography through a study of the UK. We will enjoy exploring globes, world maps, atlases and a range of map styles and use these to locate the UK and learn the names of its four countries. We will then take a pretend 'visit' to each country in turn, discovering the name and location of each of the capital cities and some key landmarks within each country, such as their highest mountain and longest river as well as identifying the country's flag and make a scrapbook page of our 'trips'!

 

 

RE – Our key question that we will explore in our RE lessons this term is ‘How and why do we celebrate sacred times?’ Throughout this topic, we will explore special times that we celebrate (e.g. birthdays and Christmas) and how Christians celebrate the Harvest Festival. We will listen to and retell the Christmas story, explore how Christians celebrate Christmas and reflect on what matters most to us during this time. We will also compare and contrast two different Christian celebrations. We will have the opportunity to discuss our own thoughts and beliefs and ask questions surrounding these topics. 

 

PSCHE – Our main focus this half term is ‘Difference and Diversity’. In this block, we celebrate things that make us unique! We will identify in which people can be similar and different and we will recognise the need to respect these differences. We will recognise that every family is different and we will explain why their family is special to them. We will also begin to look at gender stereotypes and identify different groups and communities they belong to.

 

Art - This term, the children will explore and create artwork and sculpture using different materials/media including fabric, clay, salt dough, recycling, fabric pens and pencils. They will explore sculpture within the Chatsworth House Sculpture garden before creating their own inspired by what they see.