Greetings on our ‘Red Card to Racism’ day – it brightened our day to see all the children resplendent in red today.

Homework

Hopefully you will have seen the Parentmail about homework moving forward. All spellings are now linked to the speed sounds being taught in the new phonics groups and there are story books to match. Any questions, please do get in touch.

An appeal for stamps

Next week in Geography, the children will be sending themselves a postcard! You should have received a Parentmail this week asking for all the children to bring in one 2^nd class stamp each. Please send this in to school by Wednesday in a named envelope.

What we have been up to

In English we have been imagining we are the Bird in Yeti and Bird, imagining we are writing a letter home to his mum in which we describe Yeti’s home with all its majestic woods and frozen mountains.  We have carefully planned what we wanted to write and today we wrote some incredible letters full of beautiful description.

In Maths we are continuing our work on adding together two numbers up to10 using numicons, counters and Part Part whole models. The children started to write out our own addition number sentences. This week’s Mathletics tasks are linked to this topic.

In Science, we loved our practical lesson on the sense of taste, trying out different food items to predict and then confirm if they were sweet, salty, sour, bitter or bland. You may want to test them out on their taste buds during meal times!

In our final RE lesson on Islam we learnt about Mosques and discussed the similarities and differences between Mosques and churches.

In Geography, we looked at the difference between rural and urban areas and decided that we lived in an urban area! Don’t forget to bring in a 2^nd class stamp by next Tuesday (now Monday for Donaldson as the time of our Geography lesson has changed) for our final lesson in our Where we Live topic so that children can write their addresses on postcards to send home.

In Computing, the children became digital artists. The children created their own artwork using Busy Things and learnt how to use the fill tool to create stunning artworks. I have attached some of them for you to admire!

Next week, is Black Voices Week with the theme of Reclaiming Narratives and we will be planning lessons linked to this important topic – more next week!

Enjoy the last weekend before the half term break!

Kindest regards,

Ms Lowrey and Mrs Wordsworth.

Spellings homework- Week 7

What a wonderful week we’ve had in Year 1! The real highlight was World Mental Health Day on Thursday. The children really shone in all of their beautiful yellow outfits (well done for finding something yellow!). We really enjoyed World Mental Health Day, particularly when Mrs Wordsworth led us in a yoga session- we truly found our Zen!

Phonics groups

This week and last, we have been busy assessing the children’s reading and Phonics. They all did brilliantly – well done Year 1! On Tuesday next week, (15^th October), we will be splitting the children into their new Phonics groups. There will be five groups in total, taught by: Mrs Allen, Mrs Wordsworth, Ms. Lowrey, Miss Joanna and Miss Lulu. Mrs Wordsworth’s group will also be taught by Miss Stefania on Mrs Wordsworth’s non-working day (usually a Thursday). There is nothing to worry about with which group your child is in, we simply do this so that we can tailor the teaching to the pace that the children will benefit from working at. All the children will be taught the same things by the end of the year, and the groups are extremely fluid. If you have any questions about the Phonics groups, please feel free to get in touch with your class teacher.

There will also be an adjustment to how the homework is set next week, so keep an eye out for a Parentmail next week with more details!

What we have been up to

In English this week, we began our new unit on Yeti and Bird. Our books for the rest of the half term all star different monsters. So on Monday, the children had a go at describing different monsters. We then got to know the story of Yeti and Bird and ordered the story.

In Maths, we began our new unit on Addition and Subtraction. The focus for now is on Addition. This week, we have been introduced to the Part-Part-Whole model and the children even had a go at writing number sentences using a Part-Part-Whole model! Addition and Subtraction can be quite a challenging topic so any extra practice at home will be hugely beneficial.

In Science, we had a wonderful time exploring our sense of smell! The children had to smell different items and predict what they were. We also talked about our favourite smells such as mint, roses and….wet dog!

In Computing, we continued to learn about the keyboard. This week we challenged ourselves to write whole words on Busy Things.

In RHE, we discussed what it meant to be a good friend. We then made friendship flowers where the petals highlighted the qualities of a good friend such as playing together nicely.

In Geography, we learnt about the continents. This week we had to label a world map with the names of the seven continents and remember the name of the continent in which we live – Europe. We also learnt a new song to help us recall the names of the continents which you may want to practice at home (be warned – it’s rather an earworm!) – Seven Continents Song (youtube.com)

In R.E., we learnt about how Muslims pray (Salah) and how they prepare for prayer through Wudu (washing). We learnt why some Muslims use a prayer mat so that the space is clean and designed our own prayer mats.

Finally in Art, we learnt about how we can use different types of lines to make our drawings look more realistic. We drew a still life of some fruit and vegetables being careful to add lots of different types of lines to make our drawings look exactly like the objects we were drawing!

Coming up next week..

Don’t forget that on Thursday next week it will be our Movie Night. This term the film being shown is Inside Out 2! Don’t forget to purchase your child’s ticket via Parentmail.

On Friday, it is Show Racism the Red Card Day when children can come into school wearing something red!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Kindest regards,

Mrs Wordsworth and Ms Lowrey

It’s been another busy and exciting week in Year 1! The children have been working incredibly hard on all of their learning and they’re really getting into the swing of things.

Harvest festival

It was wonderful to see many of you at the church on Wednesday to celebrate Harvest festival.  The children were behaved and sang beautifully. Thank you to all those who donated harvest gifts.  These generous gifts will be donated to the Upper Room, a charity that has close links with St. Stephen’s.

Parent readers

As you will have seen via Parentmail, Year 1 has requested for any parent/carer volunteer readers. This would ideally take place in the afternoons or first thing before 9.20am. You would, however, need an up to date DBS which enables you to work with children on a 1:1 basis which we can organise via our school office.  If you are interested, please email l.wordsworth@ststephensce.lbhf.sch.uk  or o.lowrey@ststephensce.lbhf.sch.uk  if you would like to volunteer.

Busy Things

In your homework books we have included the children’s Busy Things logins. This is an educational website run by the London Grid for Learning, with lots of educational games. If your child would like additional games to play on the computer, this is a really great place to start especially for revising what we have been doing in school.

We will not set homework on Busy Things, and using it is completely optional.

What we have been up to

In English, we have finished our unit on The Smile Shop by becoming writers ourselves and writing a new version of the story, making sure we described all the wonderful things in the shop with adjectives.

Maths, we continued our unit on Place Value, which we should finish next week. We were introduced to the greater than and less than signs and used them to compare both objects and numbers. The children all really grasped this concept brilliant and we were super proud of their learning! We were also introduced to the number line! Today, the children completed an end of unit quiz on the topic- they did brilliantly! Well done, kids!

In Science, we continued learning about the senses – this time focusing on touch. We had to feel a mystery object in a bag before describing how it felt. We then had a guess about what it could be!

In Geography, we continued learning about the United Kingdom. This week we revised the four countries of the United Kingdom and their flags which the children have now mastered. We then went onto learning the capital cities of each country and their landmarks – a heads up that this element was super tricky for the children and would benefit from reinforcement at home. One answer really made us laugh about the legend of who is rumoured to be lurking in Loch Ness… ‘Sherlock Holmes’ came the answer!

In RE, we continued to learn about Islam. This week we learnt about Aqiqah, which is how Muslims celebrate new babies being born. We had to create our own Aqiqah card!

Art was an amazing lesson this week! We were thinking about colour and using different media and materials to colour. First the children drew around some 2D shapes, making sure they overlapped. They then coloured them in using paint pens, colouring pencils, charcoal and pastels. The results are brilliant!

Finally, in RHE we have reminded ourselves that hurt feelings aren’t always so easy to see and how important it is to make ourselves feel better, just as we do when our hurt bodies.

Have a wonderful weekend enjoying what might be the last of the warmer weather this year!

Kindest regards,

Ms Lowrey and Mrs Wordsworth

It’s been another busy and exciting week this week in Year 1! It was so lovely to see so many of you last night at Family Supper. We hope you all had a great time.

Upcoming Trip- volunteers needed!

As you will have seen via Parentmail, Year 1 will be going on a trip in November (see Parentmail for full details). Each class needs 3 parent volunteers to join us on the trip. If you are able to volunteer please email Mrs Wordsworth (l.wordsworth@ststephensce.lbhf.sch.uk) to do so.

Homework and Reading Folders

Thank you to all those who returned their homework and Reading folders this week. Please can we ask that the green homework books stay in the blue folders, and the reading books and records stay in the clear folders. As Year 1 continues, there will be more elements to the homework, and it’s important that the items stay in the correct folder so that they don’t get lost.

Property

Also, on the subject of things getting lost, we would be grateful if you could please ask that you talk to the children about looking after their belongings. We have noticed that a lot of children are getting to the end of the day without jumpers and cardigans and with no idea where they are! As you can imagine, it is tricky for us to keep to keep track of thirty children’s belongings and we want to encourage the children to be responsible for their own belongings and begin to build their independence. In school we encourage them to put their jumpers straight in their bags or on pegs if they want to take them off but I suspect many of them end up in the big playground after PE or are dropped on the floor rather than being carefully placed inside of their bags. We feel as though a chat from home about looking after belongings and valuing our things may help the children to be a little bit more responsible with their jumpers! It’s also a great help if you make sure that all of your child’s belongings are named, as this increases the odds of them being returned to your child 10 fold!

What we have been up to

In English, we have begun our new unit based on The Smile Shop by Satoshi Kitamura, a lovely tale set in a busy market. We played detective and looked for clues in images from the book and predicted what happened next.  We have also written some beautiful sentences about how the main character is feeling and how a smile costs nothing!

In Maths, we continued our unit on Place Value, which we should finish next week. We were introduced to the greater than and less than signs and used them to compare both objects and numbers. The children all really grasped this concept brilliantly and we were super proud of their learning!

In Geography, we continued learning about the United Kingdom. This week we revised the four countries of the United Kingdom, but also learnt their flags. This is a really challenging topic for Year 1, so if you do get a chance to practice at home it would really benefit the children.

In RE, we continued to learn about Islam and we read some traditional Muslim stories and thought about their messages. We then drew a picture from our favourite story and said how they made us feel.

In Science, we continued our learning about the body. For the next few weeks, we will be investigating our senses each week. This week we investigated sight! The children had to play ‘eye spy’ to spot different items.

In Computing, we learnt about the keyboard. We first of all had to spot the letters of our names and then even had a go at writing a sentence on the computer!

In Art, we continued our drawing unit by focusing on making lines. This week, we used our learning about lines to create a group-art work inspired by waves. We used a range of different lines and media to create huge artworks, all whilst listening to Debussy’s La Mer!

Finally, in RHE, we thought about the different feelings we might have in a day. We talked about what we could do if we ever feel sad or worried and then cut out and stuck a picture of how we were feeling on that day.

Have a wonderful weekend and fingers crossed we get a break from the rain!

Kindest regards,

Mrs Lowrey and Mrs Wordsworth

It really feels like we’re getting into the swing of things now and we’ve had a great week in Year 1, with the children settling in brilliantly!

So many highlights this week including our super sunny walk around Shepherd’s Bush on Wednesday! It was great to see the landmarks of the place we live, like Westfield! Thank you so much to all the parents who kindly donated their time to come with us for our walk!

Another highlight was our delicious Ethiopian lunch on Friday to celebrate Ethiopian and Eritrean New Year – so many delicious dishes to choose from. Big thanks to Miss Lulu, Miss Hana, Yasmin’s mum and all our amazing volunteer cooks.

And thank you for so many of you coming to our Maths/English meeting on Tuesday morning. You should by now have received the presentation used at the session via Parentmail.

And keep your eyes peeled on Parentmail for details of another trip taking place this November – volunteers always welcome!

Reading Books and Homework Books

This will be the first week of books going home. Books are not due back on the same day of the week so that you have a full week for both at home.

Homework books are returned to school on Wednesday and new homework is given out on Thursday.

Reading books are returned to school on Thursday and new reading books are issued on a Friday.

This week Mathletics has also been set for the children to complete. The children will have two activities on Mathletics to complete each week linked to their current topic. The children’s login details can be found stuck on the inside front cover of their homework books.

What we have been up to

In English, we completed our learning on The Shopping Basket. We designed our own dream shopping baskets full of doughnuts, lollipops and balloons.  Then we wrote some amazing sentences describing them.

In Maths, we began practicing our number formation to 3. Some children are reversing their numbers which is completely usual at this stage and practice makes perfect! We carried on with our Place Value work counting from different numbers, looking at 1 more of each number and even counting backwards!

In RE, we continued to learn about Islam. This week we focussed on learning about the Qur’an and how Muslims show respect to their Holy Book.

In Science, we continued to learn about the body. We carried out different actions like waving to a friend or hopping on one leg and discussed what part of the body we were using!

In RHE we focused on thinking about our feelings learning how body language can help us read how someone is feeling and respond to their feelings. We played feelings charades to read different emotions before drawing our own emotion at that moment for the display board.

Tri-borough Singing Group

Please find details below of two singing groups run by the Tri Borough music hub.

Our First Voices choir (years 1-2) is a group for children who love singing and enjoy taking part in performances. The students learn fun songs, rounds and musical games, as well as increasing their confidence when performing and developing fundamental musical skills.

Registration – Tri-borough Music Hub (speedadmin.dk)

You can also contact Evie directly via email (evie.asio@rbkc.gov.uk) if you would like to discuss further.

Have a lovely relaxing weekend.

Kindest regards,

Mrs Lowrey & Mrs Wordsworth

What a week we’ve had! It’s been the first full week of lessons in Year 1 and the children have coped admirably with all of the learning. I’m sure they’ll all be ready for a restful weekend tomorrow.

Firstly, a massive, enormous, heart-felt thank you to our incredible FOSS team and all of you! Every parent, grandparent and carer who turned up, baked, sorted uniform, organised, rallied, walked and enjoyed one of the many amazing events.  Through your participation and support we continue to be able to offer so many wonderful experiences for the children.  Thank you!!!!

Key Stage One Maths and Reading Meeting

You should have received a Parentmail this week inviting you to attend a meeting on Tuesday 17^th September at 9am in the Upper Hall. We will be discussing how Maths and Reading are taught in Key Stage One, and how you can support your child at home. There is no need to RSVP for the meeting, simply turn up on the day! The meeting should finish by 9:30am.

If you have any particular questions in advance please email Mrs Allen (e.allen@ststephensce.lbhf.sch.uk) and we will try to address it during the meeting.

Adults entering during drop off

We’d like to thank all parents and carers who have been supporting us in ensuring that only children enter the building in the morning. As we said in our Parentmail, this is really vital to help the children build their independence and keeps the cloakroom from becoming too busy. If you need to speak to your child’s teacher, please knock on the white doors and we’ll come and speak to you.

Helping your child learn to change

We’ve noticed a lot of the children are struggling with changing their clothes throughout the day, including taking off their own jumpers. Can we ask that you spend time over the coming weeks practising these skills with your children so that they can take off and put on their jumpers independently? By Year 1, children should be able to get completely dressed and undressed independently, only requiring support with trickier elements such as buttons. This is an important skill for your child to have, and it very important that they have opportunities to practise this at home- for example, by dressing themselves in the morning.

Library Books

This week, Year 1 took home their first library books of the year. These books are an invaluable resource and provide the children an opportunity to read for pleasure (a lifelong skill!). Please do spend time this week reading your child’s library book with them.

Our Library session is on a Thursday, so please can all library books be returned to school on Wednesday in preparation for their session.

Homework and Reading Books

We will be beginning to send home homework and reading books next week. In the meantime, please spend some time learning the Year 1 Bible Verse with your child. You can find the Bible Verse on this page.

What we have been up to

In English, we have started our learning based on the book Shopping Basket. The children absolutely loved acting out the story and sequencing the order the characters appear in. We also learnt how to make words plural and used this skill to write our own shopping lists.

In Maths, we have begun our unit of Place Value within 10. This week we have practised sorting and counting objects.

On Wednesday you may have spotted some body outlines on the floor- there wasn’t a crime scene… it was our Science learning! This half term, the children are learning about the body and our senses. This week, we had to label parts of the body. We did this by drawing around some of our classmates and then labelling the body parts using cards.

In Geography, we have begun our unit: Our Local Area. This week we used iPads to learn about different landmarks within Shepherd’s Bush. Next week we will be spotting these landmarks on our trip.

In R.E., we have begun our learning about Islam. This week we were visited by a special visitor… Mrs Ghoul! Mrs Ghoul spoke to us about Islam and the things that are special to Islam. We then came up with some questions we wanted to find out the answer to over the course of the unit. Next week, we’ll be learning about the Qu’ran.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Kindest regards,

Mrs Wordsworth and Ms Lowrey

Welcome back!

We have had a wonderful first few days back getting to know all of your wonderful children. They have settled really well into Year 1 and are already doing some brilliant learning. What a fantastic start of term!

Reading Books

This week, we have decided not to send home any reading books with the children in order to give us time to listen to every child read to ensure they have a book at the accurate level. From next Friday, every child will have a reading book to take home with them for the week so it is super important the children are bringing bags into school.

PE, Gymnastics and Dance

For Donaldson Class, P.E. will take place every Monday afternoon and Gymnastics on Tuesday mornings.

During the Autumn 1 term, both Year 1 classes will have an additional Dance lesson on a Tuesday afternoon.

On these days, the children will need to wear their PE kits to school with long hair tied up.

What we have been up to

This week, we have talked a lot about what we did over the summer as well as what we are looking forward to doing in Year 1.

In RHE, we came up with some rules for our Year 1 classroom and thought about how rules help us to learn.

In English, we read Zehra Hicks’ Flying Lemurs, which tells the story of a little lemur who remembers how brilliant he is at jumping, skateboarding and throwing custard tarts!  Then we wrote sentences about how fantastic we are all at sorts of things.

In Art, we were excited to receive brand new sketchbooks! We created a front cover for these books that showed off not only our artistic skills but also the things that we love!

In Maths, we practised counting forwards and backwards to 20 by playing lots of exciting maths games!

From next week, each class will be following their usual timetable. You can see a copy of our class timetables on this page along with our Curriculum Map and RHE (Religious and Health Education) scheme of work.

Year 1 will be going on a local visit soon to support their learning in Geography (please see Parentmail communication sent recently for further details). Each class will need 3 parent volunteers to join us for the walk so if you would like to volunteer please do so by emailing us – details below.

If you have any further questions please feel to get in touch via email shown below.

Have a wonderful weekend enjoying the last of this gorgeous summertime weather!

Kindest regards,

Mrs Lowrey and Mrs Wordsworth

o.lowrey@ststephensce.lbhf.sch.uk

l.wordsworth@ststephensce.lbhf.sch.uk