Chestnut Class – Year 1/2

Chestnut Class – Year 1/2 at St Julian's Church School

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

Our Long Term Plan…

Long Term Plan 24-25

Our learning in Term 4…

This term in Geography, we will be learning all about Hong Kong! In DT, we will be designing, creating and crafting our very own Puppets.  Our learning will also cover programming quizzes using ScratchJr in Computing. In Music we will be continuing to expand our knowledge of percussion instruments and using our voices expressively and creatively by singing songs and speaking chants and rhymes.

To add to our Science knowledge, Chestnut will be continuing to investigate lots of different materials and their properties as part of our everyday materials topic.  ‘Healthy Me’ is our Jigsaw theme for this term. To add to the excitement, the children will be continuing to learn French, focusing on colours and numbers! In Maths we will be covering a range of different topics. In Year 1, the children will be learning about Place value ( within 50), length and height, and mass and volume. Whereas, Year 2 will be learning about fractions and time. We will be constantly focusing on fluency to support understanding, which will then be followed by reasoning and problem solving to consolidate learning. In RE we will be continuing to learn about Christianity, focusing primarily on the question ‘What do Christians believe about salvation?’ Incroyable!

In English, we will cover a range of styles such as, descriptive writing, Easter/Spring poetry, instructions and retelling a story. Phonics continues in Year 1, along with reading groups; whereas Year 2 continues with Spelling and Whole Class Guided Reading using a range of texts.

Please note:

  • Chestnut will be swimming this term every Tuesday! Please send your child to school with a swimming bag containing a swimming costume/bottoms, goggles, towel and a swimming hat.
  • PE lessons will be on  Wednesdays! Please send your child to school wearing their PE kit.
  • Children need to have in school every day a spare pair of shoes or wellies for our Paddock area.
  • 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:

  • Reading every day, please note this with a signature in their Reading records.
  • A weekly Maths activity on Numbots or Doodle Maths

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.

Spellings lists will be shared on this page (on the right hand side) at beginning of the term. We no longer complete Spelling tests on a Friday, instead we complete ongoing assessments. Sometimes this will take the form of a traditional spelling test, but this could also be in the form of a dictation exercise. These assessments can happen on any day, they are low stakes and often informal in nature. They will be based on previously learned spelling patterns and rules from that term, that year or even an earlier year group.

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.

Play Numbots

Play Doodle Maths

What we have read so far….

Invisible Things: Amazon.co.uk: Pizza, Andy J., Miller, Sophie: 9781797215204: BooksLeafGeorge's Marvellous Medicine (Colour Edn)The Boy Who Dreamed DragonsThe Twits (Colour Edition)News Hounds: The Dinosaur Discovery 9781526620583 PaperbackPugly Solves a Crime: Amazon.co.uk: Pamela Butchart, Gemma Correll: 9780857636768: BooksThe Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse: Amazon.co.uk: Mackesy, Charlie: 9781529105100: BooksThe Christmas Eve Tree: Huddy, Delia, Sutton, Emily: 9780763679170: Amazon.com: BooksSanta Post: The perfect Christmas gift with fun lift-the-flap letters, for fans of The Jolly Christmas Postman: Amazon.co.uk: Yarlett, Emma, Yarlett, ...

Class Teacher:

Miss Webb

Teaching Assistants:

Mrs Moss

If you have any questions or queries, please do not hesitate to contact Miss Webb on Class Dojo.

Helpful links:

BBC Bitesize

Oxford Owl 

Top marks 

Phonics play

Oak academy

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