Year 1 w/b 16th November
Date: 20th Nov 2020 @ 5:40pm
This week we have been delighted to welcome Miss Witham to our Year 1 team. Miss Witham is a third year teaching student from MMU and will be working alongside us until mid February. Over the forthcoming weeks we shall endeavour to introduce her to you either at the beginning or close of the day. She is very excited to be in Year 1 and the children have already welcomed her with warmth and enthusiasm.
Poetry has been our focus in English this week. Our week started with hot seating of Beegu where the children became Beegu and were asked about their feelings, thoughts and actions at different points in the story. We modelled how to write questions before we wrote our own questions to Beegu. This was an introduction to work on adjectives and nouns and our group poems which we performed to each other. Finally, we explored step poems using our knowledge of adjectives and nouns to create individual poems before we published these for a classroom display using beautiful handwriting presentation.
Our phonic focus has been the split diagraph a-e ( make a cake) and ai ( snail in the rain) so spelling homework will reflect this on Monday. Please look on Showbie for the spelling sheet on which your child can practise our taught sounds.
Our work in Power Maths has focused on number bonds within 10 and number bonds to 10. It is important that over time children become fluent in these facts because they are the foundation for future number facts. Within this unit, children were introduced to formal addition for the first time through the idea of ‘count all’ and ‘count on’ strategies. A ‘count all’ strategy is when all parts are added together to make a whole. A ‘count on’ strategy asks children to start with a number and count on. As well as introducing children to some of the key language associated with addition, children will also begin to develop an understanding of the commutativity of addition – the idea that addition calculations can be performed in any order
Topic activities have included Science learning where we have measured our heights, compared heights and used the data we recorded to make a half sized model of someone in the class. It was interesting to see who in the class was taller or shorter than ourselves and even who was the exact same height. Within geography we recapped our understanding of human and physical features in our school grounds before we drew maps of these grounds in small groups. In forest school we enjoyed making clay faces of Beegu and her friend on the bark of trees. Please see the photos below.
In gymnastics we continued to impress our teachers from Multiflex with our fantastic gymnastic ability. We used different apparatus to travel along, balance on and perform holds on. This included a very tricky caterpillar walk. Try having a go at it at home, don’t forget to keep your legs straight though!
In RE we explored the types of story in the Bible and enjoyed acting , drawing and using puppets to retell stories from the old and new Testament. We explored in particular Jonah and the Whale, David and Goliath and the Lost Son and Good Samaritan .
In Collective worship we explored Isaiah’s prophecy 800 years before Jesus was born and why he was referred to as the prince of peace, everlasting father and wise counsellor. On Tuesday Revd Sandi taught us about God’s promises and encouraged us to make our own promises based on our school values of service, compassion, belief , aspiration , friendship, courage and respect.
Have a lovely weekend and see you on Monday.
With many thanks
The Year One team
