Chestnut Class – Year 1/2

Welcome to Chestnut Class! We love playing and learning together, exploring and discovering as we go...

Our Long Term Plan…

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Our learning in Term 3.

This term in History, our focus will be on British Queens – including Elizabeth I, Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II. In Art, we will explore the work of Henri Rousseau, using both pencil and paint to develop our creative skills.

In Computing, the children will study Creating Media with a focus on digital painting using an application called Paintz. Within Music lessons we will continue to expand our understanding of beat and rhythm. Our Jigsaw theme for this part of the year, ‘Themes and Goals’, encourages children to identify their strengths, set goals, develop perseverance and build teamwork skills. In RE, we will be exploring the question: “What do Christians believe about the Gospel?”

In PE, the focus of our lessons will be gymnastics and in French the children will learn colours and numbers, including numbers to 5 and 10.

Lessons in Science will explore everyday materials and how we use them in our daily lives.

In Mathematics, both year groups will continue to work on place value. Year 2 will also focus on multiplication and division. Across all lessons, we will continue to develop fluency to support understanding, followed by reasoning and problem-solving activities to consolidate learning.

In English, Year 1 will focus on creating well-structured sentences, with an emphasis on using capital letters and full stops correctly. Year 2 will build on this by writing longer sentences, including exciting noun phrases, and developing their understanding and use of adjectives. Our next step is building writing stamina, a greater number of sentences within a writing lesson. They will also explore instruction writing in more detail.

Phonics sessions will begin again for Year 1, alongside reading groups, while Year 2 will focus on Spelling and Whole-Class Guided Reading, using a wide range of engaging texts.

Important dates:

Tuesday 6th January – First day of Term 3
Wednesday 7th January – Mobile Library
12th January to 16th January – St Julian’s Anti-bullying Week
Monday 12th January – Odd Socks Day
Tuesday 13th January – Years 2/3/4 – Dance Umbrella Club begins (tbc)
Friday 16th January – Inclusive Ten Pin Bowling (invite only)
Wednesday 21st January – Mobile Library
Wednesday 4th February – Mobile Library
Wednesday 11th February – PTA Discos (tbc)
Friday 13th February – Last day of Term 3

Please note:

Our PE lessons for this term are Mondays and Wednesdays (where we will be covering a dance unit at the start of the week and then a whole afternoon of Forest School.) Please send your child wearing PE kit on these two days.
Children need to have in school every day a spare pair of shoes or wellies as well as waterproof trousers for our adventure play and paddock areas in wetter weather.
A full set of (seasonal) spare school uniform clothes should be on your child’s peg every day – including underwear and socks please.
It is important that children always have a coat in school as we will be outside as much as possible in all weathers.
Contact books/reading records are required in school every day.

Weekly Home Learning Tasks

It is really important that children spend some time at home each week consolidating their learning at school and it is helpful if they have a quiet space to do so. You can find a copy of our Home Learning Expectations on the policies section of our website. In our class the expectation is:

Two reading books – linked to current phonics phase or book level and one to share together. Reading one or both of the books 5 times per week at home with a greater focus on the levelled phonics phase book.

Reading, Spellings, Phonics and Times Tables:

Year 1:

Children will bring home two reading books. One book will be fully decodable and chosen by an adult to increase fluency. This book will be sent home on Wednesdays and will need to be returned to school on Mondays. This book will be familiar as we will have read the book three times in school before going home. They should be reading the book fluently, with 90% of the words being read without the need to segment. As a result of this increase in fluency, speed and accuracy, comprehension improves as cognitive overload is reduced. The second book the children will bring home will be a ‘sharing book’. This will have an ‘s’ sticker on the front. This is a book chosen by your child to encourage a love of reading and can be changed at any time. This book will not be fully decodable, therefore this is a book you can read together. Please ensure you sign the purple home-school contact book/reading record each time you read with your child.

At the beginning of the term we will send home a list of the phonemes covered each week in our phonics sessions. We will also send home a list of words containing these phonemes. Children can then practise reading these words at home.

Year 2:

Your child will have two reading books that they use at school. One will be a levelled scheme reading book that will go home and be brought into school every day. The other will be a book that they keep at school to read for pleasure. Your child will be assessed on their book level by the class teacher and teaching assistants at regular intervals throughout the term. We will listen to your child read individually or within a small group every week.

Reading books need to be in school every day and this will be changed weekly if the book is finished. Please add the signature of parent to confirm your child has read the entire book at home, and do add any useful comments.

At school all children receive discrete spelling and grammar lessons every day. Each week focuses on a specific spelling pattern or rule.

You may have noticed Spellings are no longer part of our home learning expectations. However, we realise that many families like to complete additional work at home by practising the week’s spelling rule or pattern. Therefore, every week a list of spellings will be stuck in the Home Contact Book.

Year 2 children will be taught and assessed on their times tables alongside their Maths lessons so will not have a regularly scheduled times table test. By the end of this year, children in Year 2 are expected to know and recall at speed the multiplication facts in the 2, 5 and 10 times tables.

Login information for any online resources has been stuck into the inside cover of your child’s reading record.

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