Welcome to Year 1!

Welcome to Year 1 at St Vincent's Catholic Primary School!

Year 1 marks an exciting new chapter in your child’s learning journey! As children move up from the Early Years Foundation Stage (Reception) into Key Stage 1, they continue to build on the strong foundations already laid, while developing greater independence, confidence, and curiosity!

In Year 1, we recognise that children are still young learners, so the transition from play-based learning to more structured lessons is gradual. We ensure plenty of opportunities for hands-on, practical activities, outdoor learning, and creative exploration alongside more formal teaching.

The Year 1 Curriculum is made up of the following:

• English
• Maths
• Science
• History
• Geography
• Art
• Design and Technology
• Computing
• PE
• Music
• PSHE
• RE
  

Religious Education is at the core of our Curriculum at St Vincent's. 10% of our curriculum time is dedicated to Religious Education.

In the summer term, all Year 1 pupils take part in the Phonics Screening Check — a short, informal assessment that allows the children to showcase all of their amazing phonics learning that they have learnt over the past 2 years. We support every child throughout the year to help them feel confident and successful.

We look forward to teaching and supporting your child through their Year 1 Journey!

Many Thanks,

Miss Wright and the Year 1 Team

Reminders

Homework
Each week along with a Reading for Pleasure and Phonics book, your child will also receive a piece of phonics homework. This homework sheet will consist of all the digraphs or trigraphs the children have learnt that week, the new words and sentences that they have been taught containing those new sounds and new tricky words that they are expected to learn from memory. Alongside this, your
child will be assigned homework every Friday via Google Classroom. This will consist of a piece of Maths homework linking
to your child’s learning that they have been taught that week.

Uniform
Please ensure that all uniform is clearly labelled. This includes shoes, water bottles and lunch boxes.

PE
PE is on a Monday and Wednesday with Miss Wright. Can you please ensure that your child attends school in their PE kits on these days, Thank you.

Timings of the Day
Learning starts promptly at 8:35am and formal lessons begin at 8:45am. The school day ends at 15:00pm. It is important that child arrives to school on time to ensure no learning is missed

Year 1 Teaching Staff

Phonics

At St Vincent's Primary School, we follow the Government's accredited phonics scheme Little Wandle. Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised is a complete, systematic synthetic phonics programme (SSP) developed for schools by schools. We start teaching Little Wandle in EYFS, which ensures that children build upon their growing knowledge of the alphabet code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school. 

Reading Books
At St Vincent's Primary School, we follow the 'Little Wandle' Phonics scheme. The children will take part in small group Reading Practise sessions three times a week. The same book will be read in each of these 3 sessions, with a different objective for each read. The first session of the week will focus on developing decoding skills, exposing your child to the graphemes that they have already been taught. Each book will be 90% decodable so that the children will develop more independence in reading. The second Reading Practise session will focus on the skill of fluency, children will re-read text they are familiar with. The third Reading Practise session will look at comprehension skills, to see how well the children can answer questions about what has happened in the text and use pictures and words to find the answer to a question. These books will be sent home with your child every Thursday, alongside the Reading for Pleasure books every Friday. If your child is reading it with little help, please don’t worry that it’s too easy – your child needs to develop fluency and confidence in reading. It is important that these books are kept in your childs bag everyday along with their reading diaries so that they can participate in guided reading and 1:1 reading sessions. Reading diaries will be checked once a week when changing their books to ensure that children are reading three times a week at home.