Welcome to Year 1
Teacher: Miss Coy and Mrs Patel
Support Staff: Mrs Pasarica, Ms Arelache, Ms Cahill, Mrs Stalham, Ms Herrero, Ms White, Mrs Altayar, Miss Safa
Welcome back!
We hope you all had a restful Spring holiday. We are looking forward to another brilliant term of learning. The class has made so much progress over the past two terms in their transition to a more formal style of learning instead of play-based learning. Even with our more fixed timetable, we do still provide opportunities for ‘discovery time’ and extra playtime.
Equipment and uniform
Learning is thirsty work, so please ensure that your child has a water bottle in school with them every day. We will of course make sure that your child is given a drink if they forget their bottle. In order to assist with this, we will welcome any donations of unopened packs of paper cups, so that we can always have a ready supply.
The children may wish to start wearing a summer uniform to school now. This can include the blue and white gingham summer dress, a grey skirt with blouse or tailored shorts with blouse/shirt.
On hot days, please apply suncream before school. If you wish to send your child to school with an extra suncream, please only send small bottles with your child’s name clearly written on the side. Children may also bring a sun hat and sunglasses to wear during their time outside.
School trip
Our school trip to Cuffley Camp is on Thursday 22nd May. Please see the letter that was sent previously for details.
PE
Our PE days for this term will be Tuesdays and Fridays. Please send your child to school in their PE kit on these days.
Reading
Our wish is for our children to become confident, independent and happy readers. In school, we will continue to teach reading through our phonics and English lessons. Your child will also read with an adult once a week, or in some cases several times a week.
During the Spring term, we introduced our new reading at home incentive whereby if a child reads at least four times at home, and has their reading record signed by an adult on each occasion, the child receives a special reading sticker in school. We were delighted to hear of the positive impact that this has had in encouraging the children to read more at home. Therefore, we will keep this in place during the Summer term.
Homework
As before, homework will be set on a Thursday and can be handed in on Monday and Tuesday the following week. Some of the homework may be online through Purple Mash or Sumdog.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to pop in to school to see one of the teachers. We look forward to continuing to work together to provide your child with the very best experience at school.
Thank you,
Miss Coy & Mrs Patel
Phonics and Reading
At Monksmead School we have adpoted a new synthetic phoncis scheme called ELS. ELS has a clear progression of reading books that are phonetically decodable. Books have been carefully aligned so that they specifically match what children have been learning in class. Children in Reception and Year 1 will bring home a phonetically decodable book, linked to their learning, each Friday. With ELS, there is a daily phonics lesson where the teacher teaches a new sound, or reviews sounds learned earlier in the week. This is shown to the class on the whiteboard. Children learn the letters that represent the sounds. They are then asked to read words and sentences with the new sounds in. Children will also practise writing the letters that represent the sounds.
Children learn to read letters or groups of letters by saying the sounds they represent. Pronounce the sounds as you would say them within a word. It is important to ensure that you (or the children) don’t add ‘uh’ onto the end, so for ‘m’ say ‘mm’ not ‘muh’ and for ‘l’ say ‘ull’ not ‘luh’. The below video gives you all 44 sounds in English.
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Please click on the links below to see the sounds the children learn as part of ELS.
| Phase 2 sounds | Phase 3 sounds | Phase 5 sounds |
To support their love of reading, children will also be encouraged to choose a 'sharing book' - this is a book that may or may not be fully decodable but can be enjoyed with parents and family members as a book to read together.
Science Knowledge Organisers - Summer 2025
Knowledge organisers for the individual topic area.
