Cedar

Welcome to Cedar Class - Year 1

Welcome back to school, I hope you and your families have enjoyed a restful summer and some sunshine! Mrs Holmes is the class teacher in Year 1 and Mrs Tricker our class teaching assistant. We are really lucky as Mrs Tricker is full time in Cedar Class.

We have an exciting term planned for Cedar Class, with lots of learning and fun activities to keep us all busy.

Your children will line up on the playground in the morning, opposite the Year 1 garden. Mrs Tricker and I will then take them into the classroom. At the end of the day if parents/carers could wait on the playground please, we will dismiss the children from the classroom garden gate. This is much easier and safer for the children. Please let us know if your child is due to be collected by somebody else as we will need to check this, before letting children go.

Attendance is so important for all children, and supports their development in so many different ways. Building relationships, confidence, independence and resilience are all key skills that will benefit your children alongside the academic skills they develop at school. As a class, we work towards an attendance reward that is given each week to the class with the highest attendance in school. Individually, pupils' attendance is recorded with prizes given throughout the year to those with good attendance. We recognise that there are times where children are unwell and need to be absent from school to recover. If you are having any difficulties with your child attending school, please do contact us and we will do all that we can to support you.

School day timings

Start of day: 08.45

Collect: 3.25

Now that your child is in Year 1, we will slowly start to introduce slightly more formal learning as a whole class. We are very much guided by the needs of the children and will have plenty of opportunities (as they did in Acorn Class) to learn through play, as well as more guided adult led activities. Within our classroom we will use ‘continuous provision’ to enable the children to work independently, exploring and investigating, enabling them to direct their own learning whilst developing their skills and understanding further. Mrs Tricker and I will be working closely with the children, particularly during the first half of the Michaelmas term, to ensure that all children are able to access the learning environment fully and ensuring high expectations of behaviour for learning.

In Cedar Class we will continue to have daily phonics lessons with a phonics screening check carried out in the summer term. Your child will bring home a book, closely matched to their reading/phonics ability as well as a book to share with you. Please could you make sure that these remain in your child’s book bag as they will be collected and changed each week. Children will put their book bags into a box as they come into the classroom, ready to read with an adult. Different groups change their books on different days, it won’t necessarily be a Friday. It is important that children read little and often at home, as well as in school. The children can collect certificates that are presented in assembly for 25, 50 and 100 reads.

We will continue to develop children’s writing skills, ensuring that they develop the correct letter formation. We will send home a sheet at the start of term to help with this.

In Maths we follow the White Rose maths scheme. We will be looking closely at place value. Please encourage your children to look for numbers in their environment and to practise counting and recognising numbers.

Checklist for Cedar Class

Everything needs to be named please - ideally labels as biro washes out!
Named water bottle
PE kit (named) with plimsolls and joggers for colder weather (black)
Book Bag
Coat, as we will be outside in all weathers

Mrs Tricker and I are so looking forward to getting to know your children and working with you. We will use Class Dojo so that you can see how many ‘dojo’ points your child is receiving for good effort, kindness and work. You can also contact me using Class Dojo. If you have any questions or concerns, please do get in touch.

Many thanks