Robins

Curriculum

Children in the Reception year follow the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum and children in Year 1 and 2 follow the National Curriculum. This means that, although we will come together as a whole class at various points of the day, the children will be taught the appropriate content for their year group in two different spaces. Reception children are taught in Dippers classroom, playing alongside Pre-School's Little Dippers and Year 1 and 2 are taught in Robins classroom.

Miss Reid and Mrs Sedgbeer structure the day to ensure that all children get the teaching time they need as well as the independent practice that allows their learning to develop. We learn through direct teaching, child-led and adult-led activities, all wrapped up in lots of play and fun in a supportive environment.

Phonics and Reading

Reception and Year 1 children have daily 20-minute phonics lessons and lots of opportunity to practise what they have learned during focused activities and during independent play.

Guided Reading with an adult takes place once a week for all children in Robins.

Year 1 and 2 children will also have the opportunity to read independently for 20 minutes every day in school. Year 2 children will work on comprehension quizzes using our Accelerated Reader program.

Story time is a very important time of our day and we will come together to foster a love of stories and reading for pleasure.

Please see the homework section below for ways you can help at home with this.

Writing, handwriting, spelling, punctuation and grammar.

Reception children concentrate on letter formation and segmenting words into phonic sounds for a large part of the year. Later on in the Reception year, they start to write sentences and sequences of sentences.

Year 1 and 2 children will explore a wide range of text types to link their writing during the year and their reading and writing skills will be developed and extended through studying these texts in depth. The children will be expected to write independently, editing and improving their writing as part of the process.

Year 2 children will also have a daily 20-minute Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar lesson every day focusing on important tools to help improve their writing.

Handwriting sessions take place several times a week for all year groups, starting at basic letter formation in Reception to joining in Year 2.

Maths

In Maths, the children will develop their skills through a mixture of direct teaching, including formal written lessons, investigations, practical activities and games.

Reception children are taught separately to Year 1 and 2 children but even within these groups, children are supported in their own maths journey and will receive the help they need to become secure in place value, calculations, shape, space and measure including time, and additionally for Year 2, basic fractions. In Year 2, children are introduced to the multiplication tables and will become  fluent in the 2, 5 and 10 multiplication tables.  Please see the homework section below for ways you can help at home with your child’s Maths learning.

Understanding the World and Topics

In Robins class we delve into Science, History and Geography topics. Please see the Curriculum Map above for this term.

P.E. & Forest School

PE will be held on Thursday with Mrs Bamber and our other session will be held on a Monday.  Children need to wear navy shorts and a pale blue polo shirt or tracksuit bottoms and tops in colder weather.  They also need to wear trainers. PE kits should be worn to school on the days that PE is timetabled. All kit should be clearly named please.

 Homework

 Read, read, read and read some more!

Without a doubt, learning to read is the most important step in a child’s academic journey and, along with their emotional well-being, it has top priority in Robins Class.

Reception children will bring home a wordless book for the first few weeks of the Autumn Term. Please have a look at this with your child and help them to work out the story from the pictures. Ask them lots of questions about what is happening and guide them in knowing the conventions of turning the pages the right way from front to back. They will also bring home a story book for you to read to them. The love of stories is so important in learning to read so this is an opportunity to just enjoy the books together. We will start daily Phonics sessions in Week 3 of the Autumn Term. Once we start these your child will bring home a book with decodable words in that they should be able to sound out independently. The more letters and sounds they learn in Phonics the more complex the reading will become.

Pupils will have their books changed to take home on a Friday and will keep them for a whole week. Reading and re-reading the same book for a week is an excellent way to embed their phonics learning and develop fluency.

Year 1 children will bring home books from Phase 5 Phonics, linking to the letters and sounds they have been learning that week. They should be able to read these independently. Pupils will have their books changed to take home on a Friday and will keep them for a whole week. Reading and re-reading the same book for a week is an excellent way to embed their phonics learning and develop fluency. Children will have a yellow Home-School Diary in which to record the reading they do at home.

Year 2 children bring home books that are within their Accelerated Reader book level (this is recorded on the inside cover of their yellow Home School diaries). These should be read at home and at school (more than once is advised if they are short books) and then they take a comprehension quiz to test their understanding of what they have read. Accelerated Reader will tell us the results of the Quiz. At the beginning and end of each term we do a Star Reading Test which gives us the Book Level the child should be reading at.  Please encourage your child to read at home every day and record what they read in their Home-School diary.

Online Homework:

Please see the links to websites to support learning at home. The children should know their login however please pop in of you need any support. 

English Homework in addition to reading: 

Phonics Bug: (YEAR 1) - Good for practicing phonics for reading and spelling. It has a variety of books that the children can read online or can have read aloud by the computer as well as games

Spelling Frame (YEAR 2) - A spelling resource which focuses on learning spelling rules and patterns. It allows children to look at example words for a spelling rule and play games to learn the rules. Please note: We no longer do weekly spelling tests as research shows that learning spelling rules is a much better use of all our time than learning words in isolation that are swiftly forgotten when the writing books appear!

Maths Homework

Numbots (YEAR 1) – Great for practicing counting and addition and subtraction

 Times Tables Rock Stars (YEAR 2) - great for times tables practice and particularly good for rapid recall.

As parents ourselves, we are well aware how hard it can be to fit homework into busy lives amongst other the needs of siblings, mealtimes, bedtimes, out of school activities, and just having time to relax with your children after a busy day at work and school! If it is becoming a battle or if fitting it in seems impossible talk to Miss Reid at the next parents’ evening, or before. We can come up with a plan together!