Year 1 Update – Week 4
Monday 9th September – BHS CPD Day – School will be closed to students.
Friday 13th September – DIVERSITY House Day. All children in Diversity House can come to school in their own casual clothes wearing something GREEN. No donation money is needed. All other children are to wear school uniform.
Friday 13th September – Mid Autumn Festival Celebrations – Please remind your child to bring a small amount of money to school to make their purchases. (Banana – $5, small lantern – $8, big lantern – $15, apple – $5, raisins – $5 and mooncake – $20) Please see the school newsletter for further details.
Thursday 26th September and Wednesday 2nd October – Parent Consultations – If you have not done so already please log onto The Gateway and book your appointment.
Another busy week in Year One……
In the upcoming weeks the children will start their Who We Are unit of inquiry and be investigating social skills and their interactions with others.
They will be focusing on the Central idea:
We connect with each other to create learning communities.
This week we have been continuing our thinking about red and green choices by reading stories such as; “How Do Dinosaurs Go To School” and “How Do Dinosaurs Play With Their Friends”. The children have been encouraged to identify the red and green choices that the dinosaurs were making. The children have also been reflecting on their play by writing in their play journals about their play choices and who they played with. During our circle times and class meetings we have been discussing ways in which the children can resolve minor disagreements and conflicts in their play. We are encouraging the children to “use their words” when expressing themselves when playing with their friends.
Numbers can be used in many ways for different purposes in the real world.
This week in Maths the children have been using their problem solving skills to explore how many different ways we can find to make 5. 6. and 8 using our fingers. We have also been developing the children’s number sense skills by playing games such as Snake and Ladders and using the Maths equipment to count amounts of objects accurately and identify and order numbers to 20 and beyond. The children have been practising how to form their numbers from 1 -10 correctly.
Mathletics
Please help your child to complete the Mathletics tasks set for them and have fun playing Maths Live. It is expected that an adult will support your child whilst they are completing these tasks. If you have any difficulties using the website please let us know.
Writing helps us to connect and communicate
In English this week the children have enjoyed the story, “Dangerous” . The story is about a little Mole who likes to label things. Following on from the story the children had great fun writing their own labels for the classroom. It was great to see the children having a go and seeing themselves as writers. When they are attempting their own writing we encourage the children to use their phonic knowledge to have a go at sounding out and spelling words for themselves. It is very important that the children see themselves as writers and do not feel like they have to spell everything correctly. We celebrate all of the children’s attempts at writing.
Phonics
This week we have started our phonics sessions. The first set of phonemes that we are focusing on are: s a t p o m g o c We will be teaching the children to blend the phonemes for reading and segment the phonemes for writing and spelling.
The camera words for this unit are: I the to was she are These are sight words and we teach the children to take a picture of these words in their mind.
Please see the phonics bookmark that was sent home this week for games and activities that you can play together to support our phonics teaching.
Get Ready to Talk
As we work on developing the children’s language skills, each week in the Weekly Update we will be asking you to take some time each week to sit with your child and talk about something linked to our unit of inquiry. This week we would like you to talk to your child about the types of toys and games that you liked to play when you were younger.
Golden Book awards are given to individual children to celebrate something great they have achieved. The certificates are presented in a weekly whole school assembly.
Year One will start going to Golden Book assemblies on Monday 16th September.
PTA
Beacon Hill School has a wonderful Parent Teachers Association (PTA) that supports the school in so many ways throughout the year. The PTA would love to have some new Year One parents join the committee. It is a wonderful opportunity to get involved in the school community. If you think you would like to join the PTA please contact Mrs Pickering or your child’s class teacher and they will give you more details about how you can get involved. Thank you in advance.
FMS and UOI Rotations
Thank you to all of the parents who have helped to support our first UOI and FMS sessions this week. The children gain so much from these sessions and without parental support we would be unable to run them. If there is a week where you are unable to help for any reason please let your child’s class teacher and Miss Chung know so that we can make alternative arrangements. A big thank you once again!
Student Council Five Ways to Well Being Competition
If you are interested in designing the BHS logos for our 5 Ways to Well Being please hand in your designs by Friday 13th to Mr. Thompson
