Year 1 - Christ the King Catholic Voluntary Academy

Welcome to Year 1

Our class email address is: orange@cka.srscmat.co.uk

Parents are welcome to use this email address to contact class teachers with any questions regarding their child’s learning, homework, personal updates or details of class specific events. Please ensure class teachers have your up to date email address and that you have been added to the class mailing list. Please use the main school email address enquiries@cka.srscmat.co.uk for absence notifications or general questions relating to trips, contact information updates, school dinners or any other enquiries.

Our class Gospel value is hope. We believe hope is important because enables us to endure challenges, dream about possibilities, and strive to make a positive impact in the world.

We nurture the children’s development of hope by encouraging…

Imagination
Resilience
Goal setting
Curiosity
Autonomy

Our curriculum has been carefully designed to achieve this, based on research about how children learn best. Your learning will be broken down into small steps that should enable you to build your knowledge piece by piece and to help you to have that knowledge at your fingertips whenever you need it. We give you lots of opportunities to revisit and retrieve this knowledge throughout the year and we encourage you to think about what you have learnt before and how this knowledge helps you as a starting point for building new knowledge. Our curriculum has golden threads woven throughout it, these drive our curriculum, helping you to make links and to build knowledge. These golden threads are Communication, Sustainability and Stewardship and Freedom. It is also important that your learning is relevant to your life and can help you to make better choices as you grow and develop. Our mission statement sets out the virtues we try to display at all times in school and together, through our curriculum, we learn about a diverse range of people who give us good examples of these virtues in their lives.

We look forward to seeing you thrive this year and into the future, walking together in Christ to try and become the best that we can be – We Can and We Will follow in Jesus’ footsteps!

Below, you will find some useful information about life in Year 1

Being Prepared for each school day

In Year 1 the children will need:

A warm, waterproof coat
A labelled water bottle filled with fresh water or squash
A school reading bag
A healthy packed lunch (if required)
A pair of wellies – to be kept in school

Pencils, books and other school equipment will be provided for children by school. We have limited storage space in our classroom so rucksacks, pencil cases and other accessories from home won’t be needed.

Break and Lunch Times

Children have a breaktime in the morning. A piece of fresh fruit will be provided as a healthy snack for the children during this time. If you wish for your child to have an alternative piece of fruit please send this to school with them. Please note no other form of snacks are permitted.

In Year 1 the children can choose to have a free school dinner or bring their own packed lunch from home. The school meals are nutritionally balanced and cater for most tastes and a vegetarian meal is on the menu every day. We use ‘My School Lunch’ provided by Derbyshire County Council (please see the dinner menu tab on the website to find out more about what is on offer and see the weekly menu).

Homework

Reading

Your child will bring home one phonetically decodable book from the reading scheme. This book is designed to embed the children’s knowledge of the phonics sounds being taught in class. Please do not worry if you think your child is reading the books too easily. The is purposeful learning allowing the children to consolidate their learning, gain fluency and develop reading confidence. The children will also have an opportunity to visit the school library to choose a reading for pleasure book for you to share and enjoy together. Both of these books will be changed weekly on a Monday.

It is essential that your child continues to have daily reading practice at home. We expect the children to read to an adult for a minimum of 10-15 minutes per day. Please be sure to comment in their reading record book. We will check reading records daily to monitor reading and those children who have read will receive a house point.

Sharing a book with your child is fun! It’s a time for closeness, laughing and talking together and it can also give children a flying start in life and help them become lifelong readers. Please visit the Book Trust for some top tips for reading with your child (Tips for reading with your child | BookTrust).

Homework

On Mondays, the children will receive a short handwriting task to be completed at home, this will need to be returned the following Monday and will be a weekly occurrence. A maths task will also be handed out on a Wednesday to be returned the following Monday. The activities should take the children no more than 15 minutes to complete and is based on the work

being taught in class. Please remember that all written homework should be completed in pencil please.

Spellings

On a Monday, the children will be given weekly spellings to practise and learn. Spelling tests will be on a Monday. The children will have a spelling practice book, to allow them to ‘look – cover – write and check’ several times over the week. The weekly spellings will be based on the phonic sound of the week and common exception words from the Year 1 National Curriculum. Spelling strategies will be taught in class but they will need reinforcement and repetition at home.

Each child will also receive a bookmark with the half term’s common exception words on. We will test these words randomly during the Monday spelling test so please ensure you practise them regularly.