Year 1 w/b 4th June 2024
Date: 7th Jun 2024 @ 8:08am
A warm welcome back to school after the half term and from the children’s excitement and news it sounds like you have had a great week either at the seaside, enjoys days out with family and friends, or spending time in the garden.
We have been busy reading our new book “The Night Pirates” by Peter Harris & Deborah Allwright. The children found an interesting ‘hook’ in the classroom on Tuesday morning which spurred lots of imaginative ideas of what our new topic could be all about. It was a gold treasure chest with lots of interesting artefacts and objects linked to our story. The children had some amazing predictions of what our story could be about, who the characters could be and where the setting is. The children made their own pirate list poems using the objects found. We then completed a book review of the story of what we liked and disliked after we read the story together as a class. We shared lots of lovely discussions about whether we would recommend it to a friend and how many stars we would rate it. We then answered fastest finger (retrieval) and have a thing (inference) questions from the text before learning the actions to help us learn and become familiar with our model text.
In maths the children have been busy thinking about one more and one less this week and what number comes before and after. The children used a 100 square to help them if they found it a little tricky. We then looked at numbers greater/less than. This has concluded our unit on numbers to 100. We are now moving on to a unit focusing on money. Handling coins and calculating with money in real-life situations at home can really help children see how important it is in daily life… and talking about money is the first step to great skills!
In phonics this week we have been focusing on revising all our phonic sounds and preparing for the phonic screening check so lots of practice with green words/alien words from our previously taught sounds.
In science this week we have been exploring plants and labelling a tree. Thinking carefully about where the roots are, the branches, the crown. We also talked about the functions each of these have and how we look after them to keep them alive. The children also looked at the seasonal changes over a period of time and what happens to trees in autumn compared to in the summer and how the appearance alters and changes. We even went outside in our school garden to observe our class apple tree and we were amazed to find tiny apples growing under the lovely green leaves!
In worship this week reverend Sandy spoke to us about how God knows us all. We are all so special. She then followed this up in our church service by talking about things that make us feel good and things that might not make us feel good. We could all identify examples from both of these categories. This led on to the thought that we also have the power to make people feel good or bad through our actions and therefore we all decided that we would like to try to be influencers of good for our friends. This can start with a simple smile. When we returned to school, we listened to the following poem which linked perfectly to this thought…
Smiling Is Infectious
by Jez Alborough/Spike Milligan
Smiling is infectious,
you catch it like the flu,
When someone smiled at me today,
I started smiling too.
I passed around the corner
and someone saw my grin.
When he smiled I realized
I'd passed it on to him.
I thought about that smile,
then I realized its worth.
A single smile, just like mine
could travel round the earth.
So, if you feel a smile begin,
don't leave it undetected.
Let's start an epidemic quick,
and get the world infected!
In computing this week, we have been introduced to the term ‘data’ through an animal themed activity that involves identifying the number of animals at a zoo and developing visual ways to represent the numbers. We then used online software to visually represent data about zoo animals, creating a pictogram or chart.
This half term we will be focussing on geography. We will be learning about oceans and continents around the world, the seas around Great Britain, the human and physical features of British beaches and the use of a compass. It was really interesting to see where the children thought we lived using a map of the UK. This week we have been finding out more about the 5 oceans and 7 continents around the world. Perhaps you could share any experiences of visiting different places around with your children to help them understand similarities and differences of places around the world.
Wishing you a wonderful weekend with the promise of sunshine!
Mrs Lindersen and Mrs Walker
