St Joseph's Catholic Primary School

  Next half term our RE

theme is

Families and Celebrations.

 We will be learning about the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple and looking at the Signs and symbols of Baptism. So any photos or artefacts from your childrens Christenings would be helpful for this topic. We will also look at Light and candles and their place within this Sacrament. 

We all enjoyed our Christmas lunch wearing our Christmas jumpers.

Thank you to all who attended our Y1 Christmas Craft afternoon. I think everyone enjoyed the activities and the children went home happy with their bag of Goodies! I think you will all agree that our Photographers were also very good.

Don't forget to read every day at home with an adult!

What books do you have at home that you love to read? 

Maths

We will be working on Length and Height, weight and volume - as well as continuing with operations, calculating problem solving and reasoning.

P.E.

P.E. lessons are every Tuesday and the children need:

White T-shirt with school logo

Black shorts

Black Pumps

P.E. uniforms are taken home over the holidays

Ear rings need to be removed before coming to school. Children are not allowed them in for P.E. sessions.

Thank you!

Reading Incentive!

As mentioned at the Parent Information Evening - to promote reading in Y1 we will be allowing the children to take home a small soft cuddly toy animal of their choosing - once they have read to you and had their reading log book signed 3 times. They can then "read " to their pet as well. When they have 3 more signatures for reading to you they can then exchange that pet for another one !  Please encourage them to take care of their pet for the time they are responsible for it and I apologize in advance for them badgering you to hear them read - just to change the pet! Please discuss the book with your child.  Can they tell you what happened in the story? Did they like it? Why? Who was their favourite character? They will be answering more questions about stories in class and the ability to understand what they have read is so important. Please continue to hear your child read as often as possible as we will not be able to devote as much time to individual readers due to timetable constraints and a wider curriculum this year.

We are hoping to start Guided Reading Groups in the next couple of weeks. 

Y1 have been sorting practically - (continuing our Maths theme) and becoming more Eco aware!

They then moved onto sorting with picture cards and heard all about the 'Eco Friendly' creations that some of their classmates have made at home.   

It also fits very timely with our class work in RE on Creation and caring for our planet. The activity prompted a lot of discussion which I am sure they will want to tell you about at home too.

Thank you for all the lovely Christmas cards, gifts  and good wishes we have received. We hope you all have a really good Christmas and we look forward to working with you all again in 2020.

WE ARE ALL LEADERS!

Year 1 are learning about the 'Leader in me'. We are looking at effective habits in our life to help us to be the best we can be. We are all leaders!

These are the 7 habits we are learning about each week. We are learning a new habit every two weeks.

Ask the children in Year 1 what habit they are learning about and what it is helping them to do.

In keeping with the idea that we are all Leaders: the children have all been  assigned roles in class to continue to synergize. As  we have only started mid -week they will continue in the same role next week - but after that they will ahange on a weekly basis.

Homework set Friday 13th September

Each child will take home an envelope with laminated number cards which have the written word on one side and the numeral on the reverse. Please use them in play. Turn over a number and send the child to get that amount of lego bricks or pencils etc.  By using the cards they will consolidate their counting skills, begin to read the number name as well as the numeral and eventually learn to spell the words too. They will enjoy sending you to collect the said number of items and playing teacher - but they will need to know them in order to check them. Start by using  a few of the lower numbers and include more as your child learns them. Please remember all children progress at different rates and it's not a race! These are for keeping at home and using throughout the year. Any queries - just ask.

Homework

Homework is sent home on Friday and returned by the following Wednesday. Children are encourage to read at home everyday and look for learning opportunities out of school.

Please send in Spelling books by Wednesday - so we can add the next lot of spellings. The children take home their Big Maths sheets so you can see how they have got on and they can practice for next time on the back if you wish. The numbers have to be the correct way round to get a tick. I know this may seem harsh- but to be marked correct in tests that's the rule applied. Twenty seconds is all they get - so it's not very long. Once they have got full marks for 3 consecutive weeks - they move on to the next sheet with 17 sums on it! They do have 30 seconds but it looks far more daunting and will take time to build up their speed again. We have quite a few who have moved on to this stage and some who are still on the first sheet - so don't worry as they all advance at different rates.

Class Library System

As a school we are trying to promote reading and in line with this -

Our class library is proving very popular. Children can select a book and take it home to read with you or for you to read to them and then change it next week for a different one. The more books they are exposed to then the greater their vocabulary will be.

A  special shout out to Elsie Anderson who brought in a Smarties tube full of coins to add to our fundraising for Macmillan.

Non-fiction Books:  we will be concentrating on this genre of books over the first half term. Please feel free to send in any books that meet this description eg simple cookery books or books about animals, birds etc that might be interesting to share with the whole class. If you attend the library it would be good to show them that it is in a different section so they realise that there are different cagtegories of books.

We will continue to use our phonics and we will be expanding our written work and concentrating on writing sentences complete with capital letters and full stops. We will also try and remember to leave finger spaces ! Any opportunity to get your child to commit pencil to paper is to be encouraged - from a diary of their own to writing your shopping list for you. Or maybe they could send 'Thank you'letters for gifts received over the Christmas?  It is important that they see a need for being able to write and to write with different purposes in mind.

As always we will be concentrating on punctuation, trying hard to remember to put Capital letters at the start of each new sentence and for the names of people and places.  Full stops and finger spaces will also be on the agenda. Lists, fact files and instructions are also to be covered - so if you come across any child friendly simple instructions that they might like to bring in - eg how to play a game or assemble a toy that would be lovely.

In science we are going to be investigating "Seasonal Changes" ( and hoping for some snow!). We will be investigating plants and seeds and watching them grow.

We will be monitoring the weather daily and looking at signs/symbols to record it. Let's hope it will prove to be more variable - rather than raining non-stop !

Why do hedgehogs hibernate?

We are going to continue raising money for MacMillan Cancer for our class charity.

We will use our Penguin Money Box in class to collect any loose change you might have.

The MacMillan Coffee morning was a big success- thanks to all who donated prizes, sent in buns, bought tickets and came along to support us last Friday. Huge Thanks also to the PTSC Members who gave up their time to make the drinks, sell cakes and raffle tickets etc. We could not have done it without you.

Total raised   £405.35