Year 1 w/b 7th June
Date: 10th Jun 2022 @ 5:44pm
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, time in the garden or of course celebrating the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee in red, white and blue.
Our first news of the week must focus on the Phonics screening assessments we have carried out this week. It was wonderful to observe the children’s sheer confidence and delight as they read the 40 words in the assessment, calmly identifying special friends and reading the words whether real or nonsense using accurate phonics. Very well-done Year One!
In English, we enjoyed our hook lesson where Miss Ridge helped us discover the secrets inside a treasure box- exotic fruits, sparkling gems, ancient pirate maps and jewelled rings. We wrote poems using exciting adjectives that described the treasure. Next, we read our focus text, ‘The Night Pirates’ and discussed our likes, dislikes, puzzles and patterns in the book. Finally, we have enjoyed answering questions about the book in a comprehension activity.
Division and sharing objects equally have been our focus in maths. Children have had the opportunity to share a given number of objects equally across a given number of groups to find out how many are in each group. They have been encouraged to make links between the two types of division in order to strengthen their conceptual understanding. Next week, this learning will be applied to solving word and number problems.
This week was our final week completing our playground models in Design Technology. We continued working with our partner to make at least two items of playground equipment and decorated our park areas to match our design and meet our design briefs. On completion we photographed our designs and evaluated our models. We had to consider the points we were most proud of, areas for development, challenges we faced and if our completed models succeeded in meeting our individual design briefs. As you can see from the photos, we are all very proud of our completed models which will stay on display in the classroom.
In Forest School this week we worked with Miss Ridge and Mr Simmons to link our learning to our Science work. We went on a minibeast hunt and used pooters to collect minibeasts. Once collected we transferred them to magnifying containers to look at their features before classifying them into either vertebrates or invertebrates. We soon concluded that minibeasts are invertebrates.
In PE this half term we are working on athletic activities. This week we were introduced to long lump, javelin and a range of running based activities. This preparation will lead nicely into sports day at the end of term. On Friday, we were lucky enough to have a second PE session where we learned the basic skills in cricket, catching a ball with cupped hands and how to hold a bat correctly.
As you will have seen on the letter that was sent to parents and carers this week, we have started a new program of learning called My Happy Mind. This week we started our fist module called Meet Your Brain. This unit is all about how your brain works and how you can help it to be at its very best. It was most interesting to learn that the brain weighs approximately the same weight as three tins of baked beans! We were introduced to Team H-A-P who make up three key parts of your brain: the hippocampus, amygdala and prefrontal cortex. We will be finding out more about the role of these three areas over the coming weeks.
In music this week we came up with our own lyrics to a well-known children’s song: The Wheels on the Bus. Our theme in music is under the sea so we created our own lyrics around this theme e.g., the dolphin in the sea goes jump, jump, jump or the crabs in the sea go pinch, pinch, pinch. We then added actions and performed our new and improved versions of this song.
So, a lovely first few days back in school and we hope you can all enjoy a lovely weekend before we return on Monday. As always, if you have any further questions, please just ask, message or email.
Many thanks
Mrs Pulle and Mrs Lindersen
