Welcome to Year 1! 

Welcome to the Autumn Term! It is going to be an exciting year ahead full of fun and lots of exciting learning!  

Meet the Year 1 Team

The Year 1 Teachers and Teaching Assistants are excited to meet you and are looking forward to helping you learn and grow this year!  

Our School Values

Underpinning all our learning and time together is our school values, they are also linked to our Dojo rewards. We will learn about and celebrate examples of each value daily.

This terms value is 'happiness'

We have two key questions that we will discuss this term:

What makes you happy?

How can I make others happy?

Reading at Home

It is really important to read with your child regularly and develop their love of reading. As a school we encourage children to read for 10-20 minutes on most days. We will change books on Monday in Year 1 and the children are responsible for putting their finished books in the book tray to be changed. Children will be given two reading books matched to their phonic ability and are encouraged to re-read their books to improve their fluency. There will also be questions at the back of the books to support their comprehension skills. On a Friday, children will choose a story book from the library to read for pleasure. These need to be returned on the following Friday to be exchanged for a new one.  

Please let the class teacher know if you have any questions or would like to know ways to engage your child with reading at home or further develop their comprehension skills through questioning.

Phonics

At Salisbury Road we are passionate about reading and the teaching of reading begins with Read Write Inclusive, a synthetic phonics programme, which starts in Foundation and continues into Year 1 and Year 2.

Children will have daily phonics sessions, five days a week. In each session, children will be taught a new sound and will review the sounds they already know. They will also read a RWInc phonics storybook, matched to their reading needs, everyday. 

Watch the video below to hear how to say the sounds your child will be learning across Year 1...

Follow the link to our RWInc Phonics page for more information about the teaching of phonics, through the RWInc programme, at Salisbury Road. You can also find resources to support your child's phonics and reading at home. 

English

As Writers, we will be developing our writing skills, through daily writing sessions where we will hold, build and edit sentences. We will be meeting the sentence superheroes and working hard to use capital letters, full stops and finger spaces in our writing.  We will build on our phonic knowledge to help us spell our words, spelling some common exception words correctly. We will also be making sure that we all form our letters correctly. In Autumn 2, we will start to explore different genres and we will write recounts and descriptions. 

Meet the Sentence Superheroes below; Captain Capital, Fiona Finger Space, Stan the Full Stop Man, Freddie the Phonics Frog, Suzie Sense and Wendy Wow.

Maths

As Mathematicians, we will be building our number knowledge and working within  numbers to 20, counting forwards and backwards from any given number. We will count, read and write numbers to a 20 in numerals and words. We will also be learning to find one more and 1 less of a given number using number lines to 20 and our knowledge of counting.

Homework

Homework will be set each week on a Tuesday (to be completed by the following Monday) and will mostly consist of an English, Phonics and/or a Math's activity lasting no longer than about 20 minutes. Once or twice a term, we will also embrace opportunities to set more creative homework tasks – so get your glue and paint at the ready!

PE

We will have PE once a week.  Please ensure that PE kit is in school at the start of each week and is left at school during the week. You will need a plain white t-shirt and either shorts or sports trousers, as well as a pair of trainers or plimsolls.

Spellings

We will be learning spellings daily in school with a test once a week. They will be given out on a Friday and tested on the following Friday. These words will be linked to the Year 1 common exception words outlined in the National Curriculum. They will also include high frequency words that the children will read and spell often. 

Year 1 Common Exception Words

By the end of Year 1 children should be able to read and spell the majority of the common exception words below. Any extra practice that you can do with your child at home to read and spell these words will support your child greatly in their reading and writing journey.