Year 1 w/b 28th February
Date: 4th Mar 2022 @ 4:55pm
It has been wonderful to welcome back Year 1 to the second half of the spring term and we trust you have all enjoyed a lovely half term.
Our week started with a puzzle- footprints leading to forest school! Why were the footprints there? Who had left them and what did they mean? After further investigation the children decided the footprints may have been those of a panther, lion or tiger – the large cat family. Reading more about large cats and looking at their footprints on the internet confirmed our suspicions that we had a tiger in our school grounds. This discovery encouraged us to read more about tigers and think about books we knew with tigers in them including the ‘Tiger that came to tea’ and ‘There’s a tiger in our garden’. Next, we focused on the characters in the book, Nora and the tiger. We collated adjectives to describe their appearance and generated synonyms for some of these. We used these adjectives to write character descriptions extending our sentences with and, because, with and even so. We then wrote a conversation imagining what the tiger and Nora may say to each other, before looking at our text map and using the power of 3 adjectives to describe Nora’s and the tiger’s feelings.
World book day was wonderful fun. The children looked amazing in all their costumes and enjoyed the opportunity to draw and write about why they had chosen to dress up in their chosen book, film or theatre character. Thank you for your book donations which helped boost our basket of great reads for pleasure and additionally thank you to those parents who kindly volunteered to be our mystery readers. In addition, we welcomed Jude from Holmes Chapel library into school today to let us know just how easy it is to join a library and tell us they have over 7000 books for children to loan!
In phonics we have focused on ire (fire! fire!) and air (it’s not fair) so spelling homework next week with reflect this focus.
In Maths this week, we have moved on to interpreting, ordering and comparing numbers to 50. A strong understanding of numbers to 50, including their place value and relative sizes, will enable children to extend their calculation skills and number knowledge to larger numbers and to an increasing range of situations. The children will be using several methods to help them make tens and one’s numbers eg bead strings, tens frames, part whole models . It is important that they realise how any number between 0-50 can be represented with different apparatus.
What a delight it has been to be back in the hall worshipping together as a school after almost 2 years of bubble worship. With Lent starting this week we of course took the opportunity to cook crepes and think about Jesus as the ‘Way Maker’. Jesus showed compassion when he stopped to share bread and fish with five thousand people listening to him talk and this helped us focused on ways we too show compassion to others. We focused on forgiveness and sharing what we have with others. Revd Sandi showed us another way Jesus showed his compassion when he washed his disciples’ feet at the last supper.
Our new focus in RE is salvation and we started our topic by looking at a variety of crosses, a sign of salvation. These included a palm cross, crucifix (with Jesus on the cross), plain wooden empty cross and San Salvadorian brightly coloured cross. We explored their similarities and differences and how and why they were similar or different by playing an odd one out game. Some children liked the empty cross because it showed Jesus alive again whilst others loved the palm cross because they can remember Jesus coming into Jerusalem on a donkey and being celebrated as a King. Finally, we played pass the parcel, no chocolate in each layer however, just six pictures that revealed the order of events in Holy Week from Palm Sunday to the resurrection a week later. You may enjoy as a family listening to this piece of music called ‘Oh Praise the name of the Lord our God’ which helps us reflect Lent and Easter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65vhPIUT-KE
Our focus in science is materials. We shared what we thought we already know about materials, their names, origins, properties before we identified what materials were used to make everyday objects in the home and classroom. We were surprised to find that several objects were made of 2 different materials such as a butter knife with a plastic handle and metal blade.
In forest school we were amazed by the trees blown over in the storms we had over half term and shocked to see the scratches on one of the trunks which looked like they had been made by a wild animal- yet more evidence of tigers perhaps.
Have a lovely weekend everyone and we look forward to seeing everyone on Monday.
The Year One team
Mrs Pulle, Mrs Lindersen, Mrs Millington, Mrs Oldham and Mrs Taylor
