Welcome to Year One!

A warm welcome to the Year One class page where you will find information about the term ahead, including a sample of our timetable, an overview of what will be taught each term and your weekly homework. For more information about what is taught in Year One, you might also want to have a look at the curriculum pages of the website. 

Thank you to those parents who attended our Year One Information meeting. Please find below the information slides.

Year One Parent Welcome Meeting- September 2025

The Year One Team

Miss Kennedy is the main class teacher for Year One this year and Mrs Tucker will also be teaching in class on a Tuesday morning, along with the support of Mr Coleclough, our PE and Forest School specialist teacher. Mrs Lee is our Teaching Assistant who will be supporting Year One throughout the week.

We have a strong and enthusiastic team working together in Year One.  We are all passionate about the development of young children academically, socially and emotionally and we are all excited to

Grow and Achieve together with our children in Year One this year.

If you have a child in Year One, please do keep up-to-date with what we have been learning about by logging into Seesaw.Your child will have their personal Seesaw QR code in the front of their homeworkbooks. 

Our Curriculum

Year One Curriculum

Phonics

At Sandiway Primary School, we follow the Essential Letters and Sounds Phonics programme. Here are some useful documents that we use in Year One to support children's Phonics and writing.

In June, all Year One children will sit a national Phonics Screening Check to ensure they are in line with age expectations. Children will be tested on real and pseudo words that include Phase 3 and Phase 5 sounds. We practise this throughout the year in our daily Phonics lessons and Guided Reading Carousel sessions.

Phase 3 Phonics Mat

Phase 5 Phonics Mat

Harder to Read and Spell Words

Reading in Year One

Reading will continue to be a school priority. All children are encouraged to read across the curriculum and at every opportunity. Please read with your child 3-5 times a week for 10 to 15 minutes. Little and often is always recommended to support your child's progress in Reading. Year One children are grouped for reading and will have a set reading day each week when they will read with Miss Kennedy and receive two new reading books.  Please ensure you date and write a brief comment in your child's reading diary each time you read at home.

Our Super Six:

Every day, we enjoy listening to a selection of books that become increasingly familiar to us.  Over this half term we will be enjoying:

English

During this half term, we will be reading the story 'Meesha Makes Friends' by Tom Percival about a little girl who struggles to make friends. The children will be planning and writing their own diary entry in the first person. Our focus is to use capital letters to start a sentence as well as using full stops to demarcate the end of the sentence and we will also be using 'and' to join two ideas together in a sentence.

Maths

We follow the White Rose scheme of learning in Maths. This half term,Year One will be learning Place Value within 10, before moving onto Addition and Subraction within 10. In class, we use a range of manipulatives such as numicon, tens frames and counters and dienes to support learning. We also teach a daily Mastering number lesson which embeds and supports children's numeracy skills.

Timetable

We are very busy in Year One.  We do lots of short focussed learning, small group work and independent learning through Busy Learning Challenges.  Here is a sample timetable to give you an idea of what we get up to on a daily basis:

A few reminders:

PE: Children have PE on Tuesday this half term which is taught by Mr Coleclough, our PE specialist and Mrs Tucker. Children should come dressed in their PE kit on these days.

On a Thursday, we have a Forest School session with Mr Coleclough as our first lesson of the day. Your child can come into school wearing their Forest school clothing and may keep waterproofs and wellies at school if you wish.

Water: Children are encouraged to bring in a bottle of water each day which they can access at any time. Please ensure your child’s name is on their bottle.

Snack: KS1 children are offered a piece of fruit during the afternoon. If you would like to send an alternative snack for your child, please make sure it is healthy. No chocolate, crisps or sweets please (we are a nut-free school).

Please ensure your child's school uniform is labelled, especially jumpers and cardigans.

Please send in a spare pair of clothing for the winter months. We also strongly recommend sending in a pair of wellies so that your child can enjoy outdoor learning without their feet getting wet or cold.

Homework

Homework is sent out each week on a Thursday via Seesaw and is due in the following Tuesday. Children will been given personalised harder to read words as part of their homework to practise each week.

Useful websites:

Login (oxfordowl.co.uk)

White Rose Minute Maths App (this is free to download)

Phonics Play