Amethyst, Diamond & Emerald Class Blog - 6th November 2020

Happy Friday everybody! It has been lovely to welcome all the children back to their new classes and we have been extremely impressed with how well everyone has settled in this week! Please remember that if you need to get in contact with any of us about anything please use our Key Stage 1 email address:

ks1@downhallprimary.com

As we have been so impressed with how hard the children have worked during their first week, there is no specific homework task this week, however we wanted to give you an update on some of the things that will be occurring during our first half term.

Baby Photos

As part of our science work this half term, we are learning about life cycles and living things. We will be looking at growth and how we have changed since birth. If you are able to email a photograph of your child as a baby for use in these lessons, it would be greatly appreciated and makes the learning much more personal to them not having to use a generic Google image! Please be assured that only KS1 teachers receive these emails and we will delete these particular emails once we have printed the photos off for the children to use.

It would also help the children if you have a chat about the photo with them. Explain what they could do and couldn't do when they were very young. Explain any key milestones in their development - when they started to walk, talk, their first words etc.

Reading

Since returning to school in September, we have been trying to find a way to support the children with their reading that works both in school and at home. We appreciate that, with our younger children, MyOn is more difficult as the texts do not match our colour bands and do not always support the children with their phonics. 

As a result of this and having listened to concerns some of you have raised, we have this week been able to purchase the Collins Big Cat ebook Library for use in school and at home.

This ebook library contains the same books as the children have been reading prior to lockdown and is arranged in the colour bands. We feel in Key Stage 1 that these ebooks will work better for your children's needs because:

• Your children will only see books that are matched to their reading level or colour reading band that they are familiar with.
• These books reinforce the work that the children do in Phonics lessons as all the words will be fully decodable.

We are awaiting our school login information and will share this with you as soon as it is available. Further information regarding how the ebook library works will be explained in the blog once it is fully set up.

Autumn Term Project - "999! What's Your Emergency?"

Here is a curriculum overview sheet of the work that we will be undertaking between now and Christmas. Some aspects might be given a light touch due to the fact that this term has been condensed into 7 weeks but as all learning objectives are reinforced over the 2 years that the children are in Key Stage 1, the curriculum is always fully covered.

Thank you all so much for your support in all aspects of your children's learning and development - it means so much and makes a huge difference to progress!

Have a great weekend:)

KS1 Team