WELCOME TO Kingfisher Class

Years 1 & 2

Teachers:

Mrs Upson

Mrs Peters (Monday)

Ms Lake (HLTA)

Mrs Carter

Welcome:

Hello Kingfishers!! Wishing you all a happy and healthy new year. We can’t wait to welcome you back in to the classroom and share the fun and exciting activities we have planned. We hope that you will all share what you got up to over the Christmas holidays.

PE days:

Kingfisher’s PE days are on Monday and Thursday. We ask children to come in to school on these days, dressed in their PE kit. A reminder of our school PE kit:

• - White, black or blue shorts
• - Plain white or blue T-shirt
• - Plimsolls or trainers
• - White, black or blue tracksuits

Children should NOT wear football tops or hoodies for PE.

Spellings/Phonics:

Year 1 – Children will continue to work through the Bug Club Phonics scheme. They have completed phase 3 during their time in Reception, so will be moving on to phase 4 and 5. They will have 4 phonics a lesson week and will be working towards passing their Phonics Screening Test in May next year. Lots of assessment is completed throughout the year so we are able to identify any children that might be falling behind or finding things a bit tricky and put interventions in place. If you have any questions about phonics, please do see Mrs Upson.

Year 2 - As your children have all now ‘graduated’ from our phonics scheme (Bug Club) we will be following a new spelling scheme. Children will be taught 4 lessons each week around spelling and grammar. They will have a ‘spelling check’ every other Friday (less frequently than last year) but the amount of spellings will increase to 15. We will also ask children to think about ‘associated spellings’. This just means we will be asking them to think about the focus phoneme and asking them to identify other words containing the same phoneme e.g. children (focusing on the ‘ch’ phoneme) children could write down the words chicken, chimp, kitchen etc. This is a skill we will work on and build up with them.

Mathematics:

Children in Kingfishers will be taught maths explicitly for 4 days of the week. We follow the ‘White Rose’ scheme of work – they provide colourful, interactive power points to share with the children which help to deepen their understanding of mathematical concepts. Activities in the classroom vary from using the White Rose worksheets to practical activities to incorporating art and role play in to the lessons! This is how maths looks this year for years 1 and 2:

Homework:

Children are expected to read for 10-15 minutes each night. In year 1, they should be reading to an adult. In year 2 they may reach the stage where they enjoy reading to themselves during this time.

Your children will also have a ‘TT Rockstars’ sign in and we would encourage them to spend 5 minutes on this a night. They will also have a ‘Mathletics’ login – Activities are not assigned on this platform, but children can enjoy dipping in and out of different games and activities and deepening their mathematical knowledge.

Link to Safeguarding resources for parents from the NSPCC.

Link to Mathletics

Link to TT Rockstars

Link to  Spelling Activities