Chestnut Class – Year 1/2

Welcome to Chestnut Class! We are Year 1 and 2 children.

Take a look below to find out more about the learning, activities and experiences planned for your child this term.

Please find below an overview of our learning for the 2026/27 academic year:

Chestnut’s Curriculum Overview for 26/27

This term we will be learning:

In English Year 1 will focus on creating well-structured sentences, with an emphasis on using full stops and capital letters correctly. Year 2 will build on this by writing longer sentences and including exciting noun phrases, developing their understanding and use of adjectives.

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

In Maths both year groups will continue to work on place value, addition, and subtraction. We will continue to focus on fluency to support understanding, followed by reasoning and problem-solving activities to consolidate learning.

In the Wider Curriculum we will be making memory boxes in History. Learning about Yayoi Kasuma in Art, Harvest cooking for DT and developing fitness in PE. Whilst during RE lessons the children will focus their learning around The Bible and what does it say about God’s promises? Through lots of observation in Science the children will understand parts of plants. In Computing the children will be looking at Computing systems/networks and IT around us. Our PSHE unit this term is centered on Being Me in My World. Finally in French the children will understand and demonstrate how to greet one another.

PE lessons will be on Monday and Wednesday. 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 Adventure Play and 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.

Weekly Home Learning Tasks

Your child’s reading record and levelled scheme reading book needs to come into school every day.

Please ensure:

All children – Read every day and note this in their reading record. Please ensure you listen to your child read aloud a minimum of 3 times a week and sign their reading record.
All children – Complete weekly Doodle Maths or NumBots practice.

Doodle Maths

NumBots

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

Reading, Spellings and Phonics

Reading

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. The 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.

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 reading for pleasure book. Your child will be assessed on their book level by the class teacher and teaching assistants at regular intervals throughout the term and year. We will listen to your child read individually or within a small group every week. Please ensure you sign the purple home-school contact book/reading record each time you read with your child.

Phonics

Year 1 – 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.

Spelling

Year 2 – All children receive a discrete spelling lesson every day. Each week focuses on a specific spelling pattern or rule. You may have noticed Spellings are not part of our home learning expectations. However, we understand that many families like to complete additional work at home by practising the week’s spelling focus. Therefore, every week we will share a spelling overview on our Class Dojo page.

Times tables

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 the year, children in Year 2 are expected to know and recall at speed the multiplication facts in the 2, 5 and 10 times tables.