Welcome to Autumn Term 2.  Our Topic this term is Winter Festivals. We will be learning about significant national events and celebrations including Bonfire Night, Remembrance Day, Diwali and Christmas. We will be studying the origins of Bonfire night and learning about Guy Fawkes and The Gunpowder Plot. We will learn the historical origins of Remembrance Day and what we are remembering. We learn about the Hindu festival of Diwali and the Hristian festival of Christmas. We will be enjoying lots of fun activities to help us along the way. In December we will be preparing, learning and practicing a nativity performance and would love you to come along and enjoy the fruits of our work on December the 10^th. Times will be confirmed nearer the date. 

In English we will be improving our sentence writing to include simple punctuation as a standard and extend it to using commas to add more information. We will be learning and using lots of new vocabulary to make the text come alive. We will be writing different text types including information booklets, posters, instructions, newspaper articles and diary entries. In Phonics the Year 1s will be learning Phase 5 which is alternative ways to make already known sounds. The Year 2 children will be working on suffixes and prefixes, and grammar.   

We will use our daily phonics lessons to help us to read and write. Cursive handwriting will be a daily focus.

In Maths, the Year 1 children will be counting and recognising patterns in 10s, comparing quantities to 10, composition of numbers 0-5. The Y2 children will be  comparing, ordering and partitioning 2 digit numbers, addition and subtraction facts within 10 and calculating within 20.

 Other Business:

PLEASE TRY AND LISTEN TO YOUR CHILD READ AT LEAST 4 TIMES A WEEK. We will change the books when you have indicated they have been heard read their school book, which will be closely matched to their phonics, multiple times at home. Please record this in their dairies. The current advice is for children to re-read the same text multiple times and that they be 80% fluent with it before it is changed. This helps with their fluency and confidence.  

As always, we are looking forward to a very exciting and busy term. Any questions please do not hesitate to speak to us after school.