Year 1 Newsletter

It was wonderful to welcome the children back after the mid term break. They came back refreshed, excited and proud to be members of the wider Kennedy Community.

We have been very busy already and what fun the Year 1s have had dressing up for Diwali and for our Fun-O-Ween day last week. Their costumes were fabulous and some very creative.

Thank you so much for all the parent volunteers who joined us for our Hong Kong Forest Adventure trips! The children had an amazing time exploring, being adventurous and trying new activities. What a joy to be able to venture outside of school once more! We are all looking forward to 1C enjoying the same experience on Tuesday 15th November.

Thank you,

The Year 1 Team

The Year 1s have started our second Unit of Inquiry 'How We Express Ourselves'. Within this unit the children explore their own imaginations and learn how their own ideas can inspire others. We have been asking the children, "What is your idea?" and we can see and hear them already being very imaginative. As this unit progresses we will be encouraging the children to explore expressing themselves in different ways.

Our Central Idea is:

Imagination inspires people to create and share ideas.

Our lines of inquiry are:

• Different forms of expression
• How people and experiences inspire us to create
• How expression is a creative process

We are continuing to generate our own ideas for writing by exploring being authors and what we can bring to our books to make them interesting and unique. We are learning about speech bubbles with a particular focus on Mo Willems' 'Elephant And Piggie' books.

In Phonics, we have reassessed the children and reshuffled the groups accordingly. Please talk to your child about what they have learnt when they bring their phonics work home.

Here are the Read Write Inc. handwriting sheets should you wish to use them at home. Each letter has a rhyme to help form it.

Please practise reading the high frequency words at the back of your child's yellow reading log. We will give them new words once they are ready.

If you haven't already tried Reading Eggs, please take a look. It is packed with fun games and activities to help learning sounds and high frequency words. Your child's log in details are in the front of the yellow reading log. Have fun!

Please click the link to find out about 'Enrichment' and 'Mixed level' Chinese groups this week.

In Maths, we have been learning about 2D and 3D shapes and the differences between them. We have started to explore the mathematical terms 'vertices', 'faces' and 'edges'. Encourage your child to name shapes they can identify at home and in the wider world around them. Ask them to explain the difference between 2D and 3D shapes.

We will be moving on to find out about patterns using shapes and then number patterns for e.g. counting in 10s to 100. Please find a link to a useful interactive 100 square here, you can use this to look at and discuss number patterns when practising counting in 2s, 5s and 10s.

Please help your child to prepare their Box of Me ahead of their presentation. Class teachers will send you the class schedule.

Things that we will be looking for:

• An achievement

• A special photo

• A family photo

• A memory from a holiday

• A memory from home

• Favourite book

• A favourite toy

• A talent/hobby

A reminder to parents that every child should be wearing the correct Kennedy School uniform. We have noticed a mix of uniform and PE kit. Please only send children to school in PE kit on PE and Games days. As the weather cools down there are many jumpers being brought into school that are not labelled. Please ensure that your child's layers of clothing are clearly named.

School uniform can be ordered online via schooluniform.hk

Please encourage your child to bring in a healthy snack to school. It is important to help develop healthy eating habits for our young people early on.

When considering snacks, please be reminded that we are a NUT FREE school.