Beech Grove Primary School
AS1
Autumn Term 2023
Head Teacher Message
Welcome back to our new Autumn term. On behalf of the staff we would like to welcome you to a new school year and hope that 2023/2024 is just as awesome as last year. It was brilliant to see our whole school community trying their very best for our children to try and reach their maximum potential. I am positive this year will be exactly the same.
Once again, I cannot thank you enough for the tremendous efforts you went to during this period. We should, as a school community be really proud of the way we (as we always do) stuck together and supported one another.
I hope that you have all had the chance to relax and recharge your batteries during the summer holidays. It is so important that our children attend regularly in order to continue to make the brilliant progress that they made last academic year. I’m positive with your continued support, our excellent teaching and well-planned curriculum and interventions, our children will continue to achieve well and try their very best in all lessons.
I continue to be amazed and am so proud of them all and the way they have started back this Autumn term. The children’s continued resilience and adaptability is absolutely outstanding.
As always, our teachers have lots of interesting activities planned for this term and hope that you will enjoy hearing what children have been working on at consultation meetings, and will support them with their homework and reading outside of school. Reading is the key to EVERYTHING and unlocking the children’s true potential! Please, please, please x10000000 encourage them as much as you can with their reading at home. It is greatly appreciated.
John Dixon
Our work for this term
English
In AS1, we follow the Read Write Inc Phonics scheme to give your child the best possible start to their Literacy development. Children reading RWI books have daily Read Write Inc sessions pitched at their individual reading level. All children learn how to ‘read’ the sounds in words and how those sounds can be written down. The children are taught these sounds in 3 sets. As children build up their knowledge of sounds, they are able to apply their decoding skills to read real and nonsense words. Within all RWI sessions/books, children are exposed to red (tricky) and green (decodable) words to learn to help them to become speedy readers. Children are then taught to apply this knowledge to hold a sentence and write their own sentences using capital letters, finger spaces and full stops.
Those children who have completed the RWI scheme have daily reading comprehension and Writing lessons linked to the topic. This term, we will be learning how to use adjectives to make our writing more interesting and how to punctuate sentences using capital letters, full stops, commas question marks and exclamation marks. We will be retelling stories and writing alternative versions of stories with accurate punctuation and grammar. We will be looking at the features of fiction and non-fiction texts.
Every afternoon, we will be using ‘Talk Through Stories’ during storytime to deepen children’s comprehension and vocabulary.
Maths
Children working at Reception level will be taught following the NCETM Mastering number programme, teaching the children to subitise (say ‘how many?’ without counting) to 5, compare numbers, count and begin to understand the composition of numbers to 5. Please encourage your child to practise their number formation and to recognise counting and making numbers within 10.
Children working at Year 1 and Year 2 level will be taught following the White Rose Maths Scheme. This term we will be revisiting and consolidating place value and number. We will be solving addition and subtraction calculations, using known number bonds; and will be learning about 2D and 3D shapes. Throughout the term we will be counting on and back in 1s, 2s, 5s, 10s and 3s. Please encourage your child to practise their times tables and complete their maths homework sent home each term.
Topic and Science
Our topic for Autumn 1 is ‘Autumn & Harvest?’ – This half term, we will explore the seasonal changes that happen in the natural world during Autumn. This will include an Autumn walk in the Secret Garden, where we will collect autumn treasures and crunch through piles of autumn leaves. We will also learn about woodland animals, discussing hibernation and how animals prepare for Winter.
Our topic for Autumn 2 is ‘Day time & Night Time’– In this topic we will learn about how good bedtime routines can have a positive impact on our health. We will discuss things that happen at night whilst we are sleeping such as people who go to work during the night and the nocturnal animals that are busy while we sleep. We will be learning about the Sun & Moon and Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on the moon.
As part of our RE lessons we will learn about different celebrations including; Diwali, festival of Sukkot and the Christmas story.
Keeping Safe and Healthy (This section will tell you what we are teaching children about lifestyle choices)
During this term we will be talking to the children about keeping safe as the evenings get darker and keeping safe around fireworks.
Jigsaw- We will be introducing Jigsaw Jenie and teaching the children some calming techniques. Our topics will be Being Me in my World, where we talk about settling in to our new class and Celebrating Differences where we talk about being unique and special.
In AS1, we want to help prepare children for adulthood and do this by working towards PFA pathways in their Education Health Care Plans. Planning is centred around the individual child. We try to include the child’s aspirations and abilities to support them to achieve their full potential. Ultimately, we want your child to live a happy and successful life and we want their time in school to be a positive experience.
Preparing for Adulthood Pathways include:
- Good health
- Friendships, Relationships & Community
- Independent Living
- Employment
Dates for your Diary
Autumn Term: Monday 4th September 2023 – Friday 22nd December 2023
Half Term: Monday 30th October 2023 – Friday 3rd November 2023
