Welcome to the Crickets!

Hello and welcome!

*Meet the Crickets grown-ups*

The grown-ups in the Cricket class are Mrs Smith, Mrs Gill, Mrs Parkinson and Mrs Uzzell. Mrs Soulsby will also be working with us some afternoons. We love teaching the Crickets and we are so proud of their achievements!

If you ever have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask. Thank you! 

*Our Christian Value for the term*

Our Christian value for this term is Trust.

Trust is the very essence of faith; trust in the God who is trustworthy.

Trust is essential to human life and lies at the heart of all relationships. Trust can mean putting yourself in others’ hands. We have to trust experts - pilots, dentists, surgeons – and our wonderful teachers, teaching assistants and all of our St Faith’s family, and be trustworthy ourselves.

John 14:1 (Jesus’ words to his disciples)

‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me.’

*Our Learning for this term*

Summer Term 1

Home Sweet Home!

 Welcome to Summer Term one, the year is flying by and our Year One children are working so hard. Our amazing topic for this half term is called ‘Home Sweet Home’.  In Science we will be learning about animals and recapping our knowledge of animal classifications and learning all about carnivores, herbivores and omnivores.

In Geography, children will be learning about our local area. The children will use fieldwork and observational skills to study the geography of their school and its grounds. We will also be learning about the key human and physical features of the surrounding environment in Lincoln. In Art the children will be learning to develop a wide range of art and design techniques, particularly printing! We will be looking at the work of Angela Harding who are inspired by the countryside.

 In PSHE we learning about physical health and mental wellbeing. This includes keeping healthy; food, exercise, and hygiene routines. We will also be learning about how rules and age restrictions help us to keep us safe online. Our computing links with our PSHE, and the children will take part in three Natterhub lessons. Our RE topic is on Incarnation.

We will be visiting Lincoln Central Children’s Library with the children this term. We also have many carefully selected high quality texts for story time that link to Home Sweet Home, we cannot wait to start reading them. These include The Three Billy Goats Gruff, Sharing a Shell, On my way home, A squash and a squeeze and The whale who wanted more.

English

In English our Talk for Writing focus story is ‘The Storm Whale’. We will learn how to retell the story, write detailed character descriptions and explore new language.  We will also learn all about the suffixes ‘s’ and ‘es’ and use these in our writing.  We are looking forward to writing in a range of different styles including instructions and descriptive poems.

Maths

In Year One we follow a maths scheme called White Rose Maths. This term, we will cover:

Multiplication and Division, Fractions and then Position and Direction where we will learn about backwards, forwards, above and below. We will also learn about ordinal numbers.

We will also continue our “Mastering Number” programme, using short, practical activities to develop pupils’ confidence, and understanding of number. These are 10 minute daily sessions and are in additional to our maths lessons.  

Phonics information and reading

As always, we place huge emphasis on the importance of regular reading practice both in and out of school. Every child will be allocated a Reading Practice group and will read three times with their group each week. Books will be changed each Monday.

Please ensure that your child brings their reading practice book and reading record to school each day so that we can assess and record their progress appropriately. Hearing your child read at least 3x a week is very valuable in developing their reading skills and their love of reading! We cannot emphasise this enough!!

Our daily lessons will take the same format and build on the phonics teaching from last term. This progresses quickly and so practicing new sounds and spellings is vital.  Please practise reading both tricky words, words with our new sounds in and also spellings at home. If you have any questions, please just ask your child’s class teacher.

Homework Challenges

These can be handed in at any point up until half term and be done in any format – photos, videos, writing, drawings, or any other type of artwork. Please choose from the following:

• Go for a walk in our local area and show where you walked on a real map or draw a map of the route.
• Tell us about a different town or city that you visit where your friends or relatives live.
• Take photographs of different landmarks in Lincoln and label them on a piece of paper.
• Create a leaflet or poster to explain all about your home.
• Design the ideal home – this could be anywhere in the world!

For further homework ideas please see our newsletter.