Year 1 w/b 5th January
Date: 6th Jan 2022 @ 4:11pm
Welcome back to a new term in Year One, we hope you have all enjoyed a fun filled break. We have certainly enjoyed welcoming the children back to school and have been very impressed with the way they have settled into a new term. Our week began with an exciting and intriguing discovery: a package containing an old cheese box had been dropped off at school for the attention of Year One. We were instantly fascinated to find out who this cheese box belonged to and what was inside. As we opened it, we were shocked to discover many tiny objects belonging to someone very small. We found binoculars, a magnifying glass, a book, cheese crumbs, a miniature book, a well-used pencil, and a tiny letter addressed to Mr Potts on Offley Street. Where was Offley Street? Who did these things belong to? Thankfully our key text for this half term answered many of our questions. We will be looking at the story of Hermelin (the detective mouse) by Mini Grey. The book revealed that Hermelin is in fact the name of the cheese and also the name of a reading, writing, detective mouse! We can’t wait to find out more about Hermelin and the residents of Offley Street over the next few weeks.
Our first collective worship session for the year continued the story of events that happened after the birth of Jesus. Not much is known about the visitors from the East who came after Jesus was born. Tradition says that there were ‘three wise men’ but actually we only know that there were three gifts – gold, frankincense and myrrh. Some say they were Jews left in Babylon after the exile. Some say they came from three different lands to represent the entire world. Wherever they came from, and whoever they were, we do know that they followed a star to the city of Bethlehem which God had promised would be the birthplace of ‘a new ruler, who will be the shepherd of my people’. The Bible uses the words child and house, not infant and animal shelter, so we can assume that their journey was long and that some time had passed since Jesus had been born. As soon as they saw Jesus, they kneeled and worshipped him. We made connections with the story and how Christians believe God put a star in the sky to help guide the Magi to find Jesus. We thought about areas of our lives where we might need help or guidance and wrote our thoughts on stars to sick in a class night sky scene display before joining in with a prayer.
This week in Computing we have been learning about algorithms and what they are. We found out that these are instructions that computers need to do something. We were able to write our own instructions for creating a creature, we rolled a dice and the number that it landed on gave us the part of the creature that we needed to draw. For example, if our dice landed on 1, we had to draw a head. We wrote step by step instructions for someone else to follow. We looked at input, like keyboards and mice and output devices, like printers and screens for computers. We also created our own virtual assistants just like Alexa or Siri. We gave our assistants some instructions to follow for example, if we clapped our hands (input), the assistant will jump (output).
In Maths we have been learning about the following 3D shapes: cube, cuboid, sphere, pyramid, and cone. We’ve also been linking them to things that we can see around us e.g. a box or a football. We know that 3D shapes are not flat shapes (2D) and that they are fat and solid shapes.
As you will have seen in our school newsletter from last half term, our school has started following the No Outsiders curriculum and we will be completing a series of lessons across the year to support our learning. Each lesson is centred around a key text and for Year One this half term this was: Elmer. We read the story of Elmer and looked at the ways he was different and how he desperately wanted to make himself look like the rest of the elephants. We looked at pictures of children from around the world and observed how we all might look different in many ways including wearing different clothes and the colour of our skin and that it is okay to be different, that we should like who we are and that we do not need to change. We are all different and all welcome.
This half term we are lucky enough to continue working with MultiFlex for our PE sessions. We have moved from gymnastics to look at invasion games. We hope you will enjoy the speedy action shots in the photos below.
In HeartSmart we started our next topic ‘Too Much Selfie isn’t Healthy’ and have been thinking about whether it is better to give or to get from others. The ‘giving’ we are thinking of can take many forms; it could be a gift, help, attention, time, etc. Being HeartSmart means knowing that just as we are important, other people are important too. As we become aware of the people around us and consider their needs as well as our own, our hearts and theirs are strengthened. We came up with ways that we could show our love for others and looked out for some opportunities to show love to our classmates.
We are looking forward to another busy and fun filled term,
The Year One Team
