Hello, Willow Class. I am Mrs Hendley-Smith, your class teacher this year. Miss Shaw is your wonderful teaching assistant. We are looking forward to getting to know you all this school year and watching your knowledge grow.
We have lots of great things planned this school year, including a trip to the toy museum, linked to our History topic, where you will have the opportunity to explore toys from the past and also create a toy of your own. In our Design and Technology lessons, we will be learning about how to join different materials to make structures and puppets.
Throughout the year in English, we will be experiencing lots of different types of books, from fiction, poetry and non-fiction. You will firstly make predictions about the book before using your phonics knowledge to write labels and captions. You will then go on to write sentences with capital letters, finger spaces and full stops. We are looking forward to watching your ideas come to life on the page.
In Maths, we are building on our knowledge gained from Reception year by counting, reading and writing numbers, firstly to 10 and then moving on to numbers to 100 as the year progresses. We will use this knowledge to add and subtract, begin to solve some problems and give reasons for our ideas. We will also spend time exploring the names and properties of shapes.
In the afternoons, in Geography, we will be using maps, videos and photos to find out more about where we live, starting with exploring our local area before looking more widely at where Darlaston is. You will explore maps and use video and pictures to locate the four countries of the United Kingdom before creating your own map of our school. We will also spend a lot of time this year learning and looking for physical and human features in our local and surrounding area.
Throughout the year, in Science, we will be learning about animals (including humans), different types of materials, the weather and the four seasons. Knowledge of these will be gained through lots of investigation and exploration. Our main focus this year in Computing is to ensure that you feel confident logging on to the chromebooks and that you can navigate your way around the keyboard.
General reminders
Our PE lessons are outdoors on Friday afternoons and indoors on Wednesday afternoons.
On Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, the children have Little Wandle reading sessions in class. They will then bring this book home each day so that they can read it with you. Please bring the book to school every day. Books are collected on a Friday and a new one is given each Tuesday.
Please make sure your child brings in a named water bottle so that they have access to a drink during the day.
We look forward to an amazing year with you, where you will all have the opportunity to grow and flourish in everything that you do.
Mrs Hendley-Smith and Miss Shaw
