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Archbishop Cranmer C of E Academy

Striving for life in all its fullness. John 10:10

CEOP

Class 1

Welcome to Year  1

 

 

This page has lots of useful information about the day to day running of Class 1 and about what we get up to in our busy, happy and exciting classroom. Mrs Marshall is the year 1 class teacher and Mrs Chilton is the year 1 teaching Partner. We are also supported by Mrs Whiting who is one of our wonderful learning support assistants. 

 

We will start out Spring Half Term with a whole school writing project based on the book, 'Dear Earth,' by Isabel Otter. We also have Careers Week to look forward to in February with the return of the much loved Little City Role Play experience and our annual Off by Heart Poetry Competition. We then have all the gifts of Springtime to celebrate along with our preparations for Easter.

 

 

Throughout the academic year new information, key dates and resources to support your child's learning journey are added to our class page so please visit us regularly, and follow our Twitter feed to see what we are up to. 

 

  •  In our English lessons we will continue to embed a love of reading and literature throughout the curriculum and to build on our phonics knowledge through daily phonics lessons and activities. Comprehension skills including developing and widening vocabulary, retrieval, sequencing and inference are taught through class guided reading lessons twice weekly alongside focussed grammar and handwriting lessons and each child will also be heard read in a smaller focused reading group.
  • Reading:

    At Archbishop Cranmer Academy we view each child's reading journey as an essential partnership between home and school. In order to practise and embed their reading skills, we would ask that all children read to an adult at home ideally daily or at least three times at week and to record this in their reading diaries. We recommend that you ask your child to tell you about their books and to re tell the story in their own words. This is often a skill that children of this age find difficult but it is vital to their progress and development as a reader. It is important to check they are understanding what they are reading not just decoding words. If you are able to do this every day just for a few minutes you will be amazed how much your children will benefit from this. At school, in addition to daily phonics sessions, we immerse the class in reading and listening to texts daily across the whole curriculum. Throughout year 1 we teach the children strategies and techniques to develop their reading skills so they are able to develop their comprehension skills through class and small group discussions and also differentiated guided reading sessions. We also wish to foster a genuine love of reading and regularly change the selection of books the children can choose to read in school.

    As well as a school de-codable reading book, and a reading for pleasure book, we may also  send home some individual words for your child to practise which will aid their sight vocabulary when they come across these words in their books.

    Once your child has read and is secure in their understanding of their reading book new books will be issued by school staff. Once they become more fluent in reading, children will be benchmarked; this is the tool we use to assess reading and comprehension and will determine a book band colour for your child. Once children have been allocated a coloured book band, a message will be sent home in their reading record diary, so it is important that they bring these, along with their books, to school every day. They will also be given a bookmark with further tips on how to support your child with their reading skills.

  • A reading for pleasure book and phonics phase book will be sent home with your child each week. Your child will be given a day of the week when their books will be changed and their reading diaries checked.
  • Phonics is taught daily using the Bug Club scheme and each week digital resources linked to the sounds taught that week will be uploaded to your child's account along with ebooks with a read to me option which can be enjoyed at home. Please see videos to help with each phonics phase attached below.
  • Please see the termly overview document to see what we are up to this term in each subject area.

 

  •  .Useful information:
  • Our PE lessons will continue to take place on Tuesday afternoon where pupils will take place in a carousel of activities. We would ask that all pupils come to school in their P.E. kits on this day. Our PE will take place outside whenever possible so please ensure that your child has suitable clothing for the changing weather. We also want to utilise our wonderful outdoor area as much as possible so if you are able to make sure your child has a pair of wellingtons and a waterproof coat and/ trousers so that we can go outside all year round. You may wish to include some warmer clothing for our outdoor sessions until the weather gets warmer. Please ensure all clothing and footwear is clearly named as it is much easier to return items to their rightful owner at the end of the day. 
  • Please may we remind parents to discourage children from bringing toys or personal belongings into class - they can get lost or broken and act as a distraction during valuable learning time.
  • Chance to Shine: we love to celebrate your child's talents and achievements by giving them the opportunity to talk about what they have been up to in class. Please refer to the Chance to Shine Timetable to see which dates have been allocated to your child. Please feel free to email photographs or video clips of your child's latest achievements, new skills, sporting prowess or hobbies so we can showcase and celebrate with them.
  • Come and join us: We love to share our learning journey with you and the children love to welcome visitors into our classroom and so if you are a parents or grandparent who can spare an hour or two to help with reading or to share memories of Toys that you played with when you were younger then please contact Mrs Marshall who would love to hear from you.

 

Spring Termly Overview

Class Timetable

Chance to Shine Timetable

Reading Information for Parents

Computing:

To consolidate and build on your computer skills please find the codes for our Ilearn 2 activities for you to use: Mouse and Keyboard Skills:

Use the code MK44

Digital Art:

Use the code YXF4

Text and Images:

Use the code J6W3

Comic Creation:

Use the code 45TT

Music Creation:

Use the code 47M5

Programming:

Use the code PRW4

Digital Design:

Use the code DTQ4

Esafety:

Use the code ET3W

 

Go to the end of this powerpoint to find a game aimed at practising reading numbers written as words.

How to help your child to be ready for Year 1 and for help with blending sounds.

All you need to know about phonics - Bug Club Phonics - Pearson

Sophie Thomson, Head of English and extended curriculum at Pearson, explains on this video the basics of phonics, how they work and provides practical guidance to help your child learn to read at home.

Help with phonemes...

Still image for this video
Here is a short video to help you with the pronunciation of the sounds we teach the children. An important tip is to avoid adding an uh to sounds as this can make blending sounds more tricky.

Phonics terminology and definitions:

Pure Sounds – pronouncing the sounds of letters and combinations of letters correctly, for example not saying ‘muh’ but ‘mmmmm’. Avoid trying to say an ‘uh’ at the end of the sound. I uploaded a video to the Facebook page showing how to pronounce the sounds in Phase 2 and Phase 3.

Oral blending – hearing a series of sounds and merging them together to say the word, for example an adult says ‘b-u-s’ and the child says ‘bus’.

Blending – children see a word, say those individual sounds in the word and then merges those sounds together to hear the whole words like
c-a-t makes ‘cat’. This is vital for reading.

Segmenting – the opposite to blending. Children break up the word into its component sounds. This is vital for spelling and writing words.

Phoneme – The smallest unit of sound. There are approximately 44 in the English language to learn.

Grapheme – the written form of a phoneme. They can be made up of different numbers of letters for example 1 letter – s, 2 letters – ai, 3 letters – igh.

Digraph – two letters that make one phoneme, for example oo, oa, ee

Trigraph – three letters that make one phoneme, for example ear, igh, air

Split digraph – perhaps you know this as the’magic e’? It is when a digraph (ie) has been split and a consonant has been placed in the middle. The ‘ie’ is still making the sound despite a letter in the middle. There are five split digraphs to learn
i_e like in time
a_e like in cake
o_e like in joke
e_e like in theme
u_e like in tube

Decoding/decodable – being able to ‘sound out’ the word into its componant phonemes.

Polysyllabic – a word that is made up of more that one syllable.

Tricky words – there are words within each of the phonics phases that cannot be decoded and sounded out. These words just need to be learnt by sight. Sometimes a tricky word taught within a phase can become a decodable word once your child moves up the phases, for example ‘out’ and ‘like’

High Frequency words – these are words that occur most often in books and stories. They can be both decodable or tricky words.

Non-words/Alien Words – Words that can be decoded but are made up and do not make sense. These words really test phonics skills. If a child has good phonic knowledge they will be able to decode both real and alien words.

Sound buttons – a button drawn or placed under each individual grapheme. Every time the button is pressed your child makes the sound and then blends all the sounds together to read the words. The word ‘cat’ would have three dot sounds buttons and ‘moon’ would also have three but the ‘oo’ would have a longer line button underneath.

CVC – Consonant, vowel, consonant. These can be simple three letter words like ‘mat’ but also the word ‘rain’ is a CVC word as the ‘ai’ is a vowel digraph in the middle. This is the same for words like moon, chain, sheet. The ‘ch’ and ‘sh’ are a consonant digraph and one sound. The word ‘boy’, for example, even though has 3 letters is not a CVC word as it only has two phonemes b-oy. This is the same for words like cow, tie, say.

Alliteration – words that begin with the same phoneme (snake, sock, scissors, star)

Letter formation – the way each individual letter is formed. Children will need to learn where they need to start for each letter.

Recommended reading lists for Year 1

 

Best Books for Year 1 | Ages 5-6 Recommended Reads | BooksForTopics

https://schoolreadinglist.co.uk/reading-lists-for-ks1-school-pupils/suggested-reading-list-year-1-pupils-ks1-age-5-6/

 

 

Parent/ Carer Reading Comprehension Questions

Please use the powerpoint slides below to help your child practise their phonemes. Start with Phase 2 and practise each phase until they are confident with all their grapheme/phoneme knowledge up to phase 5.

Non negotiables for core subjects Y1

Writing end of year expectations

Playdough is brilliant for building muscle strength that is needed for pencil grip and letter formation. It is easy to make and can be used in many ways: try rolling it into lengths and use these to form letters or numbers. Or write words using sounds and use the playdough as 'sound buttons' to press as they say each sound.

Diary Dates 2025

 

First Day of the Spring Term Monday 6th January 2025

Parents Appointments TBC

Chinese New Year Week Week Commencing 27th January

Careers Week Week Beg 10th February

Half Term - Monday 17th February

End of Spring Term - Friday 4th April 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Contact Mrs Marshall