Hello! Welcome to the Spring term! 

Our theme this term is Explorers:- We will be looking at Paddington Adventures and The Queen’s Handbag .

We will be linking our Geography and English lessons to this and we are looking forward to seeing where this topic takes us. 

Word of the Week –  

A new word is set each Monday. We tell the children the word, we learn what the word means and we try our best to use it in our sentences throughout the week! House points are given if it used correctly! We had so much success during Autumn term with this. So many children went home and discussed the words and brought in synonyms to show us – thank you so much! This is amazing and we have noticed all the children using these words more and expanding their vocabulary. Please keep up the great work! We look forward to sharing this half terms word with you soon. Remember to check you child’s diary every Monday for the word! 😊 

WOW Moments –  

Please remember to send us in your WOW moments at home. This could be an achievement of any kind. Has your child been swimming, earnt a badge. Taken part in brownies/beavers, been litter picking to support the local environment or even shown a lovely act of kindness. We would love to share these moments with the children’s peers. We have lots more WOW moment cards we can send home! 

English   

Reading/Phonics/Spellings:  

In Phonics, the children will continue to work on the Song of Sounds. We will recap sounds they are unsure of before moving onto the next stages. They will aim to read common words by sight (particularly Common Exemption words), whilst still sounding out unfamiliar words as well as writing written answers to comprehension questions. They will learn further spelling patterns and rules, and begin to apply those in their writing. During guided reading we follow 'Reading Dogs'.  Each half term we will have a reading dog focus which their reading tasks will be based on.  In Autumn 1 we learnt to predict. In Autumn 2 we learnt to retrieve information from the text. This half term we will be focusing on Suki Sequencing. This means that she loves to put things in the right order. The children will begin to think more about the order things might happen in.   

You can support at home by asking these questions: 

Writing:  

Children will learn to write for a range of purposes including stories, poetry and real events. Grammar becomes even more important in Year 1 and Year 2.  At Silver End we follow the 'Talk for Writing' approach for teaching writing.  This has three phases: imitation, innovation and invention.  During Autumn 2, we based our writing on 'The Three Little Pigs' where we focused on retelling and writing the story.  

This half term we are going to learn to write instructions, we are using ‘Paddington and the Grand Tour’ as our book hook. We are going to learn the difference between Fiction and Non-Fiction texts, commas in lists, imperative verbs, time connectives (first, next and then), using ‘and’ and lots more! 

Maths:

We will be teaching maths through the 'Power Maths' scheme.  Power Maths is a UK curriculum mastery programme designed to spark curiosity and excitement and nurture confidence in maths.  This term in Year 1 and 2 we will be looking at Multiplication and Division: In year 1 we will be learning to make equal groups, add equal groups, count in steps of 2’s, 5’s and 10’s and looking at doubling numbers.  

In Year 2 we will be looking at making and adding equal groups, Writing multiplication sentences using ‘X’, using and drawing arrays and the 2’s, 5’s and 10’s times tables. 

You can help your children by getting them to skip count in steps of 2’s, 5’s and 10’s.  

Connected Curriculum- Theme  

Our Theme this term is called Explorers. We will be focusing on the subject Geography and linking other subject areas to these.  

The first half term we will be looking at Wonderful Weather:- investigating what the weather and seasons are like in the United Kingdom and more specifically our local area Silver End. We will be looking to create a weather report at the end of the half term and creating a weather diary in class. You could support your children by creating a weather diary at home. 

The second half term we will be looking at the 4 countries of the United Kingdom. We will be using the text: The Queen’s handbag and going off on an adventure around the United Kingdom to find out about each country and their capital city. If you have been to visit any of these countries and have any pictures of your visit or souvenirs please feel free to share them with us.  

Science  

In Science this term we will be focusing on Plants. The children will learn to name the basic parts of a plant, including seeds. They will have the opportunity to plant their own bean plant and to make observations of how they grow over time in a bean diary. Children will also learn to identify, name and describe a variety of garden and wild plants as well as evergreen and deciduous trees. Towards the end of the topic, the children will use all of their knowledge gained throughout the topic to identify, compare and classify different plants.