Year 1 w/b 24th May
Date: 28th May 2021 @ 4:03pm
A great final week to this half term, especially with our Seaside day on Tuesday. We hope you have enjoyed reading all about it from our Tuesday blog and seeing the fun involved in active and engaged learning through the photos.
In English, we have written postcards from Erin’s viewpoint and then applied this learning to our history day at the seaside. We wrote postcards as if we were one of the children in the Victorian postcards- exploring what we saw in the paintings and black and white photos. Donkey rides, Punch and Judy, promenade walks, bathing machines and piers were a focus for the things we saw and heard. Mrs Winward, our new Patron of Reading, visited our class on Wednesday afternoon to chat about her role, why she loves, reading, promote some books and the library, read a poem and launch the half term reading competition. More details of this great competition will follow in the school newsletter. We are all very excited and are already thinking of our favourite books to review.
In Maths, our class has been introduced to the concept of equal groups, represented in various concrete, pictorial, and abstract ways, including the number line. We have looked at division in the context of sharing equally. We shared a given number of objects equally across a given number of groups to find out how many are in each group. Children were encouraged to make links between the two types of division in order to strengthen their conceptual understanding. Finally, children used their understanding of division to solve simple word problems. A secure understanding of equal groups and sharing, and the ability to apply it in more abstract contexts, will prepare children for more formal work on division later, and develop their multiplicative reasoning.
This week we completed the final science lesson of our ‘animals including humans’ unit of work. We looked back at the knowledge harvest we completed at the start of the unit and added in the new things we have learnt. It is clear to see that we have learnt lots about ways to group and describe animals. The second half of our science lesson involved some very cute visitors. To summarise our unit of work, we needed to describe an animal using our learning from this half term and what better way to do this than to look at real animals! We were visited by three very small and fluffy chicks who were not more than 10 days old. We each got the opportunity to hold them and look closely at them before discussing what we know about animals. We agreed that they are vertebrates and could just about feel their backbones when we held them. We already knew they were birds but identified the features that tell us they are birds: feathers, a beak, two legs, hatch from an egg and wings. We also found out that they are omnivores because they eat both plants and meat. What a great way to finish our science topic!
Yesterday marked the end of our DT topic. We have now created our final playground designs. After two weeks of making, we realised that our plans to build many pieces of playground equipment was a little ambitious so, with a partner we focussed on creating a swing using our design brief. This week we have evaluated our swings against our initial design criteria. You can see photos of our finished swing designs below.
In music we have been listening to our final jazz song of the half term. This week it was by Sugar Chile Robinson – an incredibly talented child performing the ‘Numbers Boogie’. Check out the video at home for yourselves to be wowed by his piano skills! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhFlE4mFqA4
Today we had our final cricket coaching session from Harry and it has been lovely to observe the improvement in the children’s catching, batting and fielding skills. Today we played whack the ball and cricket rounders.
In Collective worship we celebrated Pentecost, the birthday of the Church and recalled that first Pentecost over 2000 years ago when the disciples were filled with a new-found confidence being filled with the gift of the Holy Spirit. This Holy Spirit appeared as wind and flames and enabled the Disciples to speak about Jesus’ resurrection and life to non-believers. 3,000 were baptised on that first Pentecost and many more, hearing the Good News of Jesus, made changes in their lives. They shared money, food and fellowship with others and talked about Jesus and his teachings. The Church was born! Finally, we enjoyed making windmills to remind us about that first Pentecost and the wind as a gift from God making the Disciples move and speak out about Jesus. We thought about our gifts and how we use them everyday.
For RE this week we were fortunate enough to have a talk on Islam from one of our student teachers in Year 2, Miss Raja. Miss Raja made a power point explaining her faith to us. She explained how Islam was a faith of peace and duty and how she endeavoured to follow the teachings of Allah in following the 5 Pillars of Islam. Miss Raja showed us the Qur’an, the holy book for Muslims and read one part of it to us in Arabic and in Punjabi. She explained how Muslim’s prayed, where they prayed and how they knew they were facing Saudi Arabia. Miss Raja explained why some Muslim men and woman wear head coverings. We heard about Ramadan and why it is followed by Muslims and Miss Raja shared how she celebrated the end of Ramadan with Eid, celebrating with her family. Finally, we recognised how many similarities there are between Christianity and Islam. Both faiths believe in one God, the power of prayer, charity and that Jesus was a very special person.
It has been a great 6 week half term and we hope you can all now enjoy a break from the school routine for a week, whatever you may be doing. We look forward to seeing everyone again on Monday 7th June and hearing all about their half term adventures.
Mrs Pulle and Mrs Lindersen
