The Rissington School Hurricane Class
Here are some photos from the Autumn Term:
Hurricane Class
Useful information:
Reception forest is on Thursday
Year 1 Outdoor Learning is on Friday
PE is each Friday.
Reception books are changed on Friday.
Year 1 books are changed on Monday.
topic web autumn year 1 2024.pdf
General Information (Reception & Year 1)
Welcome to the Autumn Term. We are thrilled to have everyone back in school and are excited about the learning we will do during the 2024/2025 school year. We hope you all had a fantastic summer break and that you are now ready for a very busy Autumn term.
Outdoor Learning:
Hurricane class - Reception and Year 1 - will take part in outdoor learning every Friday. Lessons will link to our science, Geography and PE curriculum. Children must come into school wearing PE kit and trainers. Children will need waterproofs which will be worn over their PE kit if required and wellies. These can be left in school and will be sent home at the end of every term. Please can these be in school for our first session on Friday 13th of September.
CLASSROOM ORGANISATION: Bags, lunch boxes and pencil cases. Cloakrooms and classroom space is very limited, especially as coats get bigger in the Autumn and Winter months. It is important that we minimise the amount of equipment brought in from home. Please ensure that you use the school book bags and any lunch boxes brought into school are of a reasonable size. All personal property must be clearly named. We do provide individual frequent use stationary and ideally pencil cases should be kept for use at home.
Show and tell: There will be opportunities for show and tell throughout the term, if children have any special achievements or artefacts that link to our topic they are welcome to share them with the class at an agreed time/
Further detailed information regarding all trips, events and visits will be sent separately. Make sure you continue to check your email, text or the school website for more important school dates for your diary.
Additional Information
The children will be expected to maintain good hygiene and to hand sanitise throughout the day, should your child be sensitive to the school soap and hand sanitiser you may want to provide their own. This must be for your child’s use only and should be clearly named.
Children are always able to access and drink water throughout the day, as such children should bring a named, and refillable water bottle each day. Water bottles must be taken home and cleaned thoroughly each evening.
If your child has an inhaler, please could you make sure that it is clearly named and in date. Their inhaler should be in school to be accessed at all times. If your child requires any other medication please could you make us AND the office staff aware.
Class DB primary pages are also kept up to date. Children have their own logins for this page and the easiest way to access our page is by clicking on the link at the bottom of the school website home page. https://rissington.greenhousecms.co.uk/
Formal parent evenings will be held in October to discuss settling in and your child’s progress to date. However, if you would like to discuss any aspect of your child’s education or have any concerns at any time throughout the term, please do not hesitate to make an appointment with your class teacher.
The Curriculum - Reception
This term our topic will be focused on ‘Stories from the Past’. The children will be enjoying lots of activities surrounding the story of the ‘The 3 Little Pigs’ and many more.
Communication, Language and Literacy
This term we will be working on speaking and listening skills, both independently and as part of a group, talking about home life and family, as well as other significant events. Your children will have a daily phonics session and will begin daily writing activities focusing on fine and gross motor control. They will start to use some of the sounds they have learnt to write and read simple words.
We will be sequencing stories and describing the characters that appear in them. The children will also have opportunities to act out familiar stories and make up their own.
Later on in the term, we will be writing to Father Christmas and exploring Christmas recipes linking to different countries from around the world.
Maths
In Maths we will be covering topics such as counting, recognition of numbers, 1 more, 1 less, addition, subtraction, number patterns, ordinal numbers, length, height, prepositions and will be exploring 2D shapes.
Expressive Arts and Design
The children will be engaging in a range of art and craft activities. The children will complete an ongoing project creating their very own Three Little Pigs picture, including creating a colourful background, the three houses and the characters. In music, we will be exploring sounds made by different instruments as well as making our own. We will be learning a range of different traditional songs linked to the harvest festival and Christmas songs. The children will be making crafts for Diwali, Bonfire Night, Remembrance Day and Christmas.
Understanding the World
The children will be learning about the similarities and differences between themselves and others and among families, communities and traditions. These will be linked to the five senses so the children can discover how they may see things differently to others. We will also be celebrating Diwali and will be making Diva lamps out of clay. We will be creating Rangoli patterns and having a Diwali party, tasting traditional Diwali celebration food. We will also be exploring the traditions surrounding Bonfire Night and Christmas. We will also be having forest learning sessions every Thursday. A separate letter will be going home with everything you need.
Personal Social and Emotional Development
This term we will be developing the children’s social skills, confidence, independence and self-esteem. We will be establishing classroom rules, routines and codes of behaviour. We will be exploring how to be healthy and what contributes to a healthy lifestyle. Friends and kindness will be looked at in the second term, the children will learn how to be kind to themselves as well as others.
Physical Development
We will be taking part in regular PE lessons, children will need to come to school dressed in their PE kit every Friday. Up until October half term we will aim to be outside as much as the weather allows so please dress appropriately. This term the children will be participating in outdoor games and gymnastic sessions, learning balancing and building on co-ordination.
Homework
Once your children are settled they will begin to bring home books to help practise their phonics skills. Books will be changed every Friday. The books will have red and greens words on page one, these need to be practiced daily. Green words can be sounded out using phonic knowledge, red words are tricky words so these need to be read through recall. It is very important your children practice these words in a variety of ways; reading them, hearing them and identifying them and writing them. To begin with, every child will bring home picture books, these are an important part of your child’s reading development and should be looked at daily. Every book had a different story to tell and you should encourage your children to make up these stories using new vocabulary and questioning techniques. Alongside this, each week your child will go to the school library and choose a sharing book to bring home, these can be read to your children and enjoyed throughout the week.
Your children will soon start to learn a phonics sound each day. A letter will be sent home with a timetable of these sounds and a parent information evening will be held to explain our scheme. It is important you practice these at home. This work at home is designed to be fun and will help to consolidate their learning they do at school.
The Curriculum - Year 1
Our main focus this term will be stories from the past, looking closely at The Great Fire of London where we will be travelling back in time to discover what happened and why it is an important event in British history.
In English we will explore the traditional tale of “The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse” investigating and comparing the two contrasting localities. We will then learn about our own capital city and comparing this with our home environment. The story will not only inspire our writing, but we will also use this narrative to draw, paint and make models of the mice and their different homes. The children will learn about the importance of the diary entries written by Samuel Pepys; this literature provides descriptive information about events in history, and how people lived in the mid-17th century in England. In addition, we will be studying how the fire brigade has changed and developed over time and asking questions such as “Could a fire like the great fire of London happen today?” and “how can we protect ourselves and our own homes from a fire?”
Later in the term we begin an investigation into what happened during the great fire of London, using the story “Vlad and the Great Fire of London”. As geographers, the children will develop the contextual knowledge of London as a significant place. They will also be looking at where in the world they live, naming continents, countries of the UK and the surrounding seas. In history, children will ask their own questions about life in the 17th Century and what it would have been like to live in London at that time and who Samuel Pepys was.
Through a range of creative and practical activities linked to the fire of London we will design, make and evaluate a range of craft activities. In D.T We will be exploring how we can use mechanisms to make a moving pictures for the town mouse and country mouse. In Art we will be drawing and painting using the Great Fire of London as our inspiration. We will also look at the work of Sir Christopher Wren and be creative with lots of Christmas crafts.
Maths: In Y1 children will be consolidating their knowledge of number from Reception. In the unit of work for place value the children will be counting, grouping, sorting, writing numbers in words, comparing objects and numbers and using the number line for numbers within 10. They will then move on to Addition and subtraction, this will involve understanding parts and wholes of amounts, fact families, number bonds to and within 10 and finally addition and subtraction problems. We will finish the term with naming and sorting 2D and 3D shapes.
At the start of the term the children will be issued with their login details for Mathletics. This is a fantastic maths resource which we will use in school and is available for you to use at home. Maths homework will be set on Mathletics on a Friday to be completed over the weekend . If you do not have access to technology at home please do let us know and we can always send paper copies home.
Science: Everyday materials is our focus of learning this term. Children will learn how to distinguish an object from the material it is made. They will identify and name a variety of everyday materials and be able to describe simple physical properties, as well as group and compare a variety of materials based on their properties. Considering our focus on London, the city and the countryside, we will discuss what houses are made from and how this has changed over time, as well as explaining why some materials are better for building than others.
As a continuum throughout the year, we will learn about seasonal changes across the four seasons, describing the weather associated with the seasons and how day length varies from autumn, to winter and spring into summer.
RE and PSHCE will involve a range of activities that continue with wellbeing with Mrs Barnes. We will also be thinking about “What makes me special and how have I changed?” In Religious Education, we continue to follow the Gloucestershire Curriculum for RE and begin with considering Who is a Muslim and how do they live? As usual at this time of year, we will also think about our own new beginnings and participate in Harvest celebrations. As we near the end of the autumn term we will of course be participating in our Christmas celebrations and Nativity.
PE: Hurricane class will have PE on a Friday. Children should arrive in their PE kit and remain in it all day. PE kit must comprise: blue t-shirt, black shorts/skort (or as the weather becomes cooler – plain leggings), a warm jumper/school sweatshirt, long dark coloured socks. It is essential that your child wears good fitting, outdoor training shoes as we will be outside as much as possible.
Home Learning and Homework: It is our aim to support the children in becoming self-motivated and organised with their home learning and as such we will be teach the children how to access DB Primary in the classroom during the autumn term.
READ EVERYDAY: Please spend time reading and listening to your child read for at least half an hour each day and make a record of any reading in their reading journal. The reading journal will be monitored by an adult (teacher, reading volunteer, teaching assistant) during guided and individual reading sessions each week. Books will be changed every Monday.
In Year 1 the children will have their FFT phonics reading book for a week once they have completed it in school the previous week. They will also have a shared reading book from the library
Spelling lists will be sent home each week. Children should learn their spellings at home using the “Look, Cover, Write and Check method” as well as oral recall. This will give them a chance to practise their handwriting too. The children should be ready for a spelling test on a Monday, there will also be an expectation that the learnt spellings will be used in their written work too. In addition, a copy of the common exception words has been sent home already – further copies can be found on the class DB Primary page should you need them.
Maths: Please practise key number facts with your child at home as often as you can. Especially counting in 1s and 10s as well as number bond to 10/20 days of the week and months of the year. A copy of the Key Instant Recall Facts expected of children can be found on the class DB Primary page for reference or just ask your class teacher for another copy.