Year 1 w/b 14th November 2022
Date: 18th Nov 2022 @ 4:27pm
Despite a very wet week and lack of playtime this week we have been especially proud of the way in which Year One have embraced their learning and have embodied the values we cherish so much at Brereton- respect, responsibility, and compassion. Our week began with a worship reflecting the importance of kindness and how we can reach out to spread this kindness to others. Our odd socks on Monday reminded us we are unique, and our differences are to be celebrated – No Outsiders at Brereton!
Our English unit focusing on character descriptions and poetry has now been completed. We adopted the style and tone of Alex T. Smith and layered our descriptions as he did in Claude in the City. Focusing first on Beegu we used adjectives to describe her looks and personality for our shared write eg
This is Beegu.
Beegu is a small alien.
Beegu is a small, yellow alien.
Beegu is a small, yellow alien who is lost and is far away from home.
Adopting this approach, we planned and wrote our own descriptions for the friend for Beegu we modelled in clay during our forest school session this week.
We are up to the part in the Beegu story where Beegu still has not found any friends. Working in groups, we explored phrases and vocabulary to describe her feelings and pieced these together to create poetry to perform eg
Lost
Ignored in a world of strangers
Hoping to finally go home
Lonely
Heart broken
In Phonics we have enjoyed focusing on ou (shout it out) and oy (toy for a boy). We have added the suffixes (ed and ing) to our spellings where appropriate.
This week in our Power Maths lessons we have consolidated our work on subtraction and introduced word problems where the children need to read the number sentences carefully and recognise the mathematical vocabulary e.g., altogether, in total, the difference between. The children have worked hard learning the difference between adding and taking away numbers and recognising which way to move along the number line. Using a range of concrete resources such as multilink, counters, number lines and the part whole model has helped embed learning.
On Tuesday, we continued the My Happy Mind unit ‘Celebrate.’ In lesson two, we recapped the 5-character strengths; love and kindness, bravery, and honesty, exploring and learning, teamwork and friendship and love of life and our world. We discussed all the fabulous strengths we had used and seen this week and learned how these are like superheroes. The children then drew their own superhero character strength in their My Happy Mind journal. We sang the ‘We are Wonderful and Special’ song and invented our own actions to go with it.
In RE we focused on the reason Mary Jones wanted a Bible so much and we were delighted by the independence all children showed in writing their responses reflecting Mary’s love for God and his son Jesus.
Our first lesson in Design technology caused great excitement – learning how to join two pieces of fabric together on our test pieces we tried stapling, gluing and safety pinning along the edges of the fabric before deciding which methods we would choose for our hand mitts or comforters for Beegu. Next, we drew our designs for our friend for Beegu, labelling our chosen joining method. Next week we shall cut out our patterns and pin these to our chosen fabric.
Wow, what a fantastic Forest school session we had this week! The weather was again VERY wet but that didn’t stop the children getting creative. We used air drying clay to design and create our own friends for Beegu. The children came up with some very elaborate designs and their final models are amazing. They thought carefully about how to create a 3D model, using joining techniques to join the clay. They then added different features using a range of natural materials.
We have continued our Geography sessions thinking about our environment, particularly looking for things which are manmade or natural. We extended our learning further this week by using these features to give directions between them. We worked in partners to carefully give clear instructions using the words ‘forwards, backwards, left and right’ to direct each other around our environment. We then used our directions to follow a map of our environment and drew the route we had taken on to the map. The children demonstrated some excellent listening and map reading skills and all successfully navigated their way back to the classroom.
We are delighted with the classes’ enthusiasm for ‘Busy, Busy Bethlehem’ and the singing is bringing daily smiles and much joy as adults walk past our classroom door. You should have all received costumes letters last Monday. If you have any queries about costumes, please be in touch. The stage went up in the hall this evening and we hope to schedule some hall time next week so the children can get used to being on a stage and can learn where they are sitting and standing. Hopefully dance rehearsals will also begin from Thursday too.
Next Tuesday we have the excitement of our whole school trip to Chester Zoo. A separate email will be sent to you all confirming key details such as ensuring children have a warm waterproof coat, school uniform is to be worn, a rucksack for packed lunches and water bottles and to be in school close to 8.35am so we can leave promptly at 9am. Year One will be given hi- vis jackets in school and will walk in pairs, in groups of 4-6 throughout the day . The class will always stay together. Shared experiences like these always create such lovely memories and we hope to share many of the photos with you on our return.
Thank you for your continued support and we shall look forward to seeing many of you at our Christmas fair next Friday. The Year One classroom will be hosting ‘Elfridges’ Christmas present wrapping.
