Year 1 Summer Term 2 Newsletter 2026

Welcome back to our final term! This year has gone so quickly, but the children have made some wonderful progress and this term we will be getting them ready for their transition to Year 2. It is a fun term with many exciting things to look forward to, including our Year 1 trip, Sports Day and Sparks Species Day.  

Our topic this term is ‘Under the Sea’ and we will be using some beautiful books based on this theme, including the delightful story of ‘Billy’s Bucket’ by Kes Gray and Garry Parsons. This is a fun story, where we can learn how to make our writing much more interesting by adding adjectives and verbs to give more detail.

As well as this lovely story, we will also be reading ‘Someone Swallowed Stanley’ by Sarah Roberts and ‘The Journey Home’ by Frann Preston-Gannon, using them to look at the problems of plastic and rubbish filling our oceans. We will then be linking this very important subject in geography, where we will be taking a closer look at the different oceans, the wonderful wildlife that live there and how we can help to look after these.

In Maths, we will be continuing to practise all of the skills we have be learning throughout the year. We will begin the term by counting in multiples of 2s,10s and 5s and we will use this knowledge to make arrays. We will also be covering time (o’clock and half past) and we will be continuing to focus on place value, addition and subtraction and incorporating these sums into word problems.

We are also REALLY looking forward to our school trip to Hastings, where we will visit the Shipwreck Museum, the Lifeboat Station and also the Sea life Centre.This will be a wonderful experience for the children, eating lunch on the beach (weather permitting) and bringing to life all the learning surrounding our topic.

Thank you so much for all your support with helping your children practise their reading and learn their spellings at home. This support really has made a difference to their progress and confidence.

Finally, can we also ask that now the summer has finally arrived (as soon as someone tells the sun!), your child comes to school with a sun hat and has sun cream on as we will be spending lots more time learning outside.

Thank you again for your continued support.

Year 1 Team

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