It really feels like we’re in the swimming of the year now, especially as autumn has well and truly arrived! We’ve had a great week in Year 1, and the children are settling in brilliant! Of course the highlight was our walk around Shepherd’s Bush on Wednesday- even if we did come back to school a little bit soggy! 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!

Reading Books and Homework Books

The children are now in the swing of getting reading books and homework books each week! We just want to remind you that these 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 on Mathletics to complete each week. The children’s login details can be found stuck on the inside front cover of their homework books.

Poem

Every term, each year group must learn and recite a poem. As our class is named after Julia Donaldson, I have chosen a poem called Noisy Garden which is just one verse long (with some interesting vocabulary!). Please do read it aloud to your child and see if they can learn the lines over the course of the half term. Next week, we will be listening to the children reciting the poem and there will be house points for anyone who knows their whole poem!

Autumn 1 poem The Noisy Garden by Julia Donaldson

What we have been up to

In English, we continued our learning about Daisy Eat Your Peas. We learnt what plurals were and had a go at recognising words that were plurals by spotting the ‘s’ at the end. We also practised using full stops and capital letters this week!

In Maths, we continued practising our counting to twenty including completing number tracks. We absolutely loved challenging ourselves to complete harder and harder number tracks! We also continued to practise our number formation, this week focussing on 6, 7 and 8!

In Art, we continued exploring line. This week, inspired by Zaria Forman, we created giant underwater pictures in teams. We used different types of lines to create beautiful wave patterns.

In RE, we continued to learn about Islam. This week we focussed on learning about the Qur’an and discussed 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!

Have a lovely relaxing weekend.

Kindest regards,

Mrs Hayes

Despite being a full week of school, the children have remained positive and happy, so you should all be very proud!

Reading Books

You will see a Book Bag reading book in your child’s bag today. Miss Hana and I have read with all the children this week and chosen appropriate reading levels as a result. These books need to be returned by Thursday of next week.

Homework

Homework was sent out yesterday in green homework books. This week homework is learning common exception words (red words). Please return homework books to school on Wednesday next week. There won’t be a spelling test on these words but please do practise them with your child. As mentioned yesterday, Mathletics hasn’t been set this week but will be up and running for next week.

Poem

Every term, each year group must learn and recite a poem. As our class is named after Julia Donaldson, I have chosen a poem called Noisy Garden which is just one verse long (with some interesting vocabulary!). Please do read it aloud to your child and see if they can learn the lines over the course of the half term. Autumn 1 poem The Noisy Garden by Julia Donaldson

Library Books

You will have seen a library book in your child’s bag this week. Please return these on Wednesday each week so they can take out a new book next Thursday.

Playground Rules

Today, we talked about our five main playground rules: Play nicely with your friends, Respect all equipment, Talk through any problems, Tidy up promptly, line up quickly and quietly. We chatted about the importance of the whole school adhering to this rules and always playing kindly and respectfully.

What we have been up to

In English, we have started our unit on the book Daisy Eat Your Peas by Nick Sharrat and Kes Gray. Firstly we acted out the story before ordering different pictures and telling the story to one another. We then looked at correcting sentences about the story by adding in missed off capital letters and full stops.

In Maths, we continued practising our counting to twenty and also focused on counting and drawing objects to match numbers. This half term, we will be focusing on our number formation so any work on this at home would be very useful. We have uploaded a copy of the school’s number formation sheet for you to print out and use.

How to form Numbers

We began our Geography unit on Where do I live? Looking at a maps on the local area of Shepherd’s Bush. We then used IPads to find out information on the area’s key landmarks.

In Art, we focused on line. Using Bridget Riley’s paintings as inspiration we practised making lines with string on card before drawing six different types of lines in boxes.

We welcomed a special visitor to help with our RE learning this week. Mrs Ghoul spoke to the children about what it means to be a Muslim to start this term’s topic on Islam.

In Science, we started learning about My Body. We named different parts of our bodies before reading labels and sticking them in the correct place on a giant picture of a body.

Have a lovely relaxing weekend.

Kindest regards,

Mrs Hayes

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 the children will have Gymnastics on Tuesday mornings. For the first half term, the children will also have a Dance lesson on Tuesday afternoons. On these days, the children will need to wear the 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 English, we came up with some rules of our Year 1 classroom and thought about how rules help us to learn. We also helped our teachers to get to know us better by writing about something that we love. Finally, we strengthened our fine motor skills by completing a carousel of activities to help us do this, such as playing with playdough!

In Maths, we practised our counting to 20 and completing missing number tracks. We also counted different objects and practised some of our skills from Reception. This half term in Maths, we will be focusing on Place Value within 20 before moving on to learning about addition and subtraction.

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!

From next week, each class will be following their usual timetable. You can see a copy of our class timetables on this page.

If you have any questions please feel to get in touch. I can be contacted via my email: v.hayes@ststephensce.lbhf.sch.uk

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

Kindest regards,

Mrs Hayes