Squirrel Class Y1
Through faith, love, kindness and respect our St John's family will flourish and grow.
Welcome to Squirrel Class!
We are a class of year 1 pupils.
Our teacher is Mrs Brown
Our TA is Ms Lemmon
Class Teacher's email- browd439@mastacademy.co.uk
Below we have listed some helpful things about our class that we thought you might find useful to know.
Our curriculum
We are using a curriculum for our non core subjects that has impacted well on children’s attainment and motivation nationwide. This curriculum is published by Cornerstones. Our curriculum is based on inspirational learning activities which take place in a classroom environment and allow children to learn in a way that motivates and interests them. Cornerstones will provide our children with a good level of challenge, giving them opportunities to solve problems, apply themselves creatively and express their knowledge and understanding across the full range of National Curriculum subjects. Year 1 will experience 3 Imaginative Learning Projects in a year. Each individual project is split into sections, which see children progress through four stages of learning: Engage, Develop, Innovate and Express. We are confident that our curriculum will instil in our children a curiosity and love of learning / school, that it will develop their levels of mental health and wellbeing and ultimately will provide opportunities for each of them to achieve their full potential.
Our key projects this year are:
Autumn Term: Childhood
Spring Term: Bright Lights, Big City
Summer Term: Dinosaur Planet
Core Subject Priorities
Our school priorities this year are maths, writing and challenge.
Children will be given opportunities to complete a maths challenge each day during their maths lesson.
Children will be given at least one designated writing session each week to develop this skill and their ability to write for long periods of time. Everyday children will have a handwriting lesson following the Letter-join whole school handwriting scheme, they can also login at home using the schools unique code practice at home.
Maths
Our topic focus for this term...
Number - Place Value and addition and subtraction
The children will continue to focus on addition and subtraction within 20 and place value within 50
English
The children have daily spelling tests in their Read Write Inc group but any extra support you can give them would be fantastic. The children also do a termly independent write.
Knowledge Organiser
Children may also wish to extend their learning beyond the knowledge organiser if they have a specific interest in the topic.
Please use the knowledge organiser as a starting point for any extra study. The information on these sheets should be easily recalled by the children once the topic is completed.
Other exciting games to play
https://www.letterjoin.co.uk/
Behaviour
Squirrel class are expected to follow the School’s Golden rules at all times and are encouraged and rewarded for being ‘green to go’. We follow the 4 school golden rules that every class in the school tries to follow.
We show love and play nicely with everybody in our school family
We speak with kindness at all times
We have faith and work hard so that tricky things get easier for us
We show respect by listening well
If, after a reminder, a child continues to break a rule, their name will be moved on our class traffic lights. Each colour (yellow, orange and red) has a number of possible consequences, such as loss of play time. If a child has to move their name, they given the opportunity to earn their way back to green by sticking to the golden rules and showing “green to go” behaviour.
We have high expectations of children's behaviour and if they are unable to follow school rules, they may need to be taken home for lunchtimes and brought back to school at 1.00.
Homework
Homework for English and Maths will be sent home for each week on Fridays; it needs to be returned by the following Thursday. We would also like children to be practicing reading every day, preferably with an adult who can answer questions about the book; children will bring home their current phonic book or a class book to read. We also encourage writing the Year 1 common exception words regularly.
Challenges
We love a challenge in Squirrel class. Every lesson has a challenge and every piece of homework does too.
The homework challenge is optional but we encourage children to complete it.
PE
PE takes place on a Thursday. Please ensure your child brings their PE kit into school on this day. Children may need jogging bottoms or shorts if we are outside as the weather changes. Please can children wear a plain PE kit rather than one with logos or patterns. Children must be able to take out their earrings before the lesson and are responsible for looking after these. If your child is unable to remove their earrings, they must come to school with tape on their ears or you can show your child how to apply the tape themselves before the lesson.
Supporting learning at home
Where possible, we encourage children to learn at home through everyday experiences. Linking family days out to our theme is a brilliant way to do this and children love coming into school and telling the class what they’ve learnt.
Keep In Touch
We have an informal open door policy in key stage 1.
If you wish to speak to our teacher just catch her on the playground at the end of the school day after she has safely seen all of the children in the class out to their appropriate adult.
If after school is not convenient to you: phone up the school office and request that the teacher phones you back to arrange a more mutually convenient time.
- Failing all of the above – write a note to the teacher asking to speak to them and get your child to pass it on.
Final Bits and Pieces!
We are trying to instill independence in the children in a variety of ways in school, such as classroom monitors, being responsible for their stationery and books etc.
Please ensure that your child arrives at school on time and attends every day. It is vitally important that your child has a good attendance as this has a tremendous impact on their learning.
Please also ensure that your child wears the correct school uniform every day.
Our school operates a no jewellery policy (except for stud earrings).
Long hair must be tied back at all times.
