Year 1 w/b 13th May 2024
Date: 17th May 2024 @ 4:24pm
The children have been working hard this week which has been so lovely to see. We hope you enjoy reading this week’s blog and looking at the pictures that capture some of the learning that has taken place.
In our English lessons this week we have been exploring postcards. Looking about the features of a postcard, why we receive them and when we usually send one. We have also been looking at alliteration. This has been great fun as we looked at noun phrases from the story ‘Black Rock’ and then added alliterative phrases such as ‘sparkly sea, slow sealion, rugged rock’. We even thought of good examples using our own names like ‘energetic Elizabeth, ‘adventurous Andy’. We have also looked at the rule for adding s or es to words to make plurals. We add 'es' if the word ends with ch, sh, s, x or z. So tree would be trees and church would be churches.
In maths we have been focusing on position and direction using key vocabulary such as above and below, left and right, forwards and backwards. We then looked at ordinal numbers before moving on to our next number-based unit. In this unit we will look at numbers from 1 to 100. Counting on or back wards from any given number.
In Phonics we have been focusing on diagraphs 'oo/u-e', ‘ou/ow’, ‘kn/ph’ and the trigraph ‘ire’. The children have also been having lots of alien word practice, looking for the special friends and sounding them out carefully as they can be tricky especially those containing split diagraphs.
This week we have also carried out our half termly reading assessments. Children will continue to select a new reading book from their current book band colour on Monday before we arrange the new books ready for Thursday’s book change. It has been fantastic to see the progress and confidence in reading across the year group including the speedy recall of phonics sounds.
In RE the children have been exploring how people of World Faiths welcome new babies into the world. We focused on the Islamic faith and how Muslims welcome a new child into the world. We worked in groups making posters discussing the three wonder questions of ‘I wonder what words you think should be the first that a baby hears?’, ‘I wonder what sweet tasting thing you would give to a baby?’ and lastly ‘I wonder why names are so important?’. We even looked at the meaning of our names which was interesting.
We then had a beautiful music lesson learning to sing in unison as well as doing actions to our song. The children thoroughly enjoyed it and there is some real musical talent in Year One which was so lovely to see.
In PSHE this week we have been looking at feelings and emotions. We made our very own feelings circle thinking carefully about how we can give positive feedback and how that makes someone feel. We talked about emotions and what can make us feel sad/happy/angry/excited etc.
In DT this week we began making our playground equipment models. For this unit we have been working with a partner, so the skill of cooperation was fundamentally important. We will have one final session to complete them and evaluate what we have made. We can’t wait to share the finished results with you.
This week we began our computing unit for the half term. We are building on our work on algorithms from the spring term to program BeeBot robots. We started by finding out about the basic skills of a BeeBot before becoming BeeBots and controllers ourselves! We then wrote down the algorithms needed to move a BeeBot around a mat. We have been using the following free website to support our understanding: beebot.terrapinlogo.com It does seem to work better on a computer rather than smartphone but is a good way to have a go at programming a virtual BeeBot.
We look froward to another busy week of learning next week to end the half term.
Wishing you a wonderful weekend,
Mrs Lindersen and Mrs Walker
