Grade 1

Reading 

This fortnight, students have continued to strengthen their phonics, reading and spelling skills, focusing on spelling rules, decoding and recognising tricky words. 

Students were introduced to the FLoSS and ‘ck’ spelling rules, learning to listen carefully for short vowel sounds and recognise when to double a final consonant or use ‘ck’ at the end of a word. They explored these concepts through explicit teaching, word-building, reading, and spelling activities.

Our learning has also focused on words with the suffix ‘ed’, helping students understand how this suffix shows that an action has already happened. Students revised and consolidated the tricky words should, would and could, developing greater accuracy and automaticity when reading and spelling.

Students also explored ‘y’ at the end of words, as in puppy, and ‘ey’ at the end of words, as in key. They practised recognising, reading and spelling words containing these graphemes through word sorts, paragraph reading and targeted phonics activities.

The tricky words kind, find and thought were also introduced and practised, with students developing their ability to recognise, read and spell these words accurately.

Throughout the fortnight, students applied their learning through shared reading, spelling, word sorts and sentence writing, supporting greater confidence and independence in reading and writing.

Writing

This fortnight in Writing, students explored The Day the Crayons Quit, using words, pictures, nouns and adjectives to describe the text and its characters. They practised making clear requests and strengthening their sentences by adding descriptive words. Students also developed their persuasive writing skills by stating what they wanted and using because to provide reasons and so to explain positive results.

Maths

Students have been learning about sharing and grouping collections equally. In the first week, they explored how to identify how many groups are needed to share a collection equally and used sharing strategies to solve problems. They practised identifying the number of groups in a collection, skip counting to find the total, and making groups of a given number while recording the number of groups.

In the second week, students continued developing their understanding of equal sharing. They practised sharing collections into a given number of groups, including sharing into two groups to find half. Students described the groups they created and explored representing equal groups as arrays. Through hands-on activities and problem-solving, students developed their understanding of how collections can be shared equally and represented in different ways.

Home Learning

Reading: 

• Read together and look for words that follow the FLoSS and ‘ck’ spelling rules.
• Listen for short vowel sounds and discuss when a final consonant is doubled, such as in fluff, bell and mess.
• Find and practise words ending in ‘ck’, such as back, neck and duck.
• Explore words ending in ‘y’ and ‘ey’, such as puppy, happy, key and monkey, and practise reading and spelling them.
• Revisit the tricky words should, would, could, kind, find and thought, and practise using them in simple sentences.
• Look for words with the suffix ‘ed’ and discuss how it can show that an action has already happened.
• Play a word hunt by looking for this fortnight’s focus spelling patterns and tricky words in books, signs, labels or other print around the home.

Writing: 

• Encourage students to use correct letter formation and spacing between words.
• Practise writing sentences using nouns and adjectives to describe characters or objects.
• Practise making clear requests and giving a reason using because.
• Write a persuasive sentence using because and so.
• Complete the weekly homework sheet.