Year 1 w/b 9th October 2023

Date: 13th Oct 2023 @ 3:37pm

Our work in English has now moved onto instruction writing. We had to come up with a cunning way to stop the toy soldiers from playing all night and keeping us wake. Luckily, we found some old floorboards, a brown sheet and tasty, sweet. The soldiers were so tempted by the tasty sweet they walked onto the brown paper covering the gap in the floorboards and fell between them (still chatting). At last, we had some peace and quiet! We learnt the actions for some instructions like first, next, after that and in the end and rehearsed saying the instructions together. We looked at the different parts of the instructions – the title, what we need and what we do and have planned and written our own innovations.

Phonics this week has been either oo (poo at the zoo) and oo (look at a book) or a-e (make a cake) and e-e (go Pete and Steve). Next week we shall be assessing the children’s reading progress by looking at the number of sounds the children can recall on sight and read in words. When a word is phonetically plausible, we encourage the children to identify the special friends (2/ 3 letters that make one sound), Fred the word, reading all the sounds in it e.g., b-l-ow and then read the word (blending the sounds). The red tricky words are looked at regularly so the children can read these on sight speedily. In this way the fluency and pace of reading is increased.

This week in maths the children have been introduced to the part-whole model, focusing on different ways of partitioning numbers to 10. Children use the part-whole model to help them write and compare number bonds. Children who have

mastered this unit will be able to confidently partition numbers within ten using a part-whole model. They can write the associated number sentences and be flexible with where they write the = symbol; for example, they know that 3 + 2 = 5 and 5 = 3 + 2 represent the same fact. As children gain confidence, they can compare number sentences using the <, > and = symbols, and use a systematic approach to solve problems.

In RE our focus has been on the Jewish festival of Sukkot celebrated each year when all the harvest is gathered in. As well as celebrating the good gifts of the harvest and God’s yearly provision, the festival of Sukkot is a time to remember the Exodus where Moses led the Hebrew people out of Egypt to freedom. They then lived in makeshift shelters in the wilderness for 40 years. During that time God provided for them. Remembering this event in their history is very important to the Jewish people. Throughout the week of Sukkot Jewish families gather to chat and eat meals in the Sukkah. We enjoyed creating three different Sukkah shelters in forest school and we worked in small teams and in the rain to create special places of shelter and refuge just like the Hebrews did when they arrived in the Promised Land many years ago. We enjoyed learning about this Jewish tradition still celebrated today in many Jewish communities.

In this week’s worship we considered how God made the world to provide us with everything we need. Then God said,

“Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” Genesis 1:26. We thought about how people do not always care for our planet, and we discussed the impact of this. For our reflection task, we contemplated what actions we can take to protect our world which included recycling, turning lights off, re-using plastic, and using canvas bags for shopping.

In PSHE we thought about what a good friend looks like, and we talked about the qualities we love in good friends. Sometimes however, even our friends can be unkind or tease. Next, we thought about examples that were teasing like,' I'm hiding your toothbrush, can you find it?' After this we collected examples of unkind things friends can sometime say such as ' Your hair looks a mess' or ' those shoes look babyish'. Finally, we explored bullying. We wanted to all understand that bullying is usually quite rare and means someone repeatedly saying or doing something hurtful or mean. An example might be ' she pinches me in the line for dinner every day'. To check we understood the difference between teasing, being unkind and bullying we held up which word best suited different statements we read out.

We also focused on World Mental Health Day on Tuesday and the theme was '‘Mental health is a universal human right' to improve knowledge, raise awareness and drive

actions that promote and protect everyone’s mental health as a universal human right. In class we talked about ways we can look after our mental health using the Five Ways to Wellbeing and the class came up with lots of ways to promote great mental health, such as playing outside, playing with friends, doing exercise, and eating a balanced and varied diet which included fruit and vegetables.

In gymnastics we focused on balancing on different parts of the body and holding the balance for 3 seconds. We endeavoured to point our toes as we made shapes in a sequence and completed this sequence with a balance. We made side star balances, stork balances and even Arabesque balances. We worked in partners and threes on mats to smoothly perform our sequences and some of us even included forward rolls in our sequences.

In art and design, we have continued our work based on William Morris’ work. We created observational drawing of leaves that we have found in our surroundings and then drew one of our leaves on to a printing block, adding as much detail as possible so we are ready to add these to our backgrounds.

We have continued our learning about transport from the past in History, this week focussing on the invention of aeroplanes. We started our lesson creating our own paper aeroplanes and had a little competition to see whose design was the most effective. We then found out about how aeroplanes were first invented and how designs have

changed over time. We finished our lesson thinking about how the Wright brothers would have felt when they first watched their aeroplane fly.

In Science this week we used the knowledge and skills we have acquired over the last few weeks to create our own leaf identification books. We first practiced identifying trees using the leaves we have collected in previous weeks and then we made observational drawings of the leaves and added labels.

Next Friday marks the end of our first half term together but sadly it also marks Mrs Knott’s last day with us in Year 1 as Mrs Lindersen returns from her maternity leave next week. Mrs Knott has been a fantastic job share partner and teacher and I know the class have thoroughly enjoyed learning from her calm, gentle and nurturing teaching. Mrs Knott starts her new job after half term, and I am sure you will want to join me in wishing her continued success and happiness in her new teaching job.

Mrs Lindersen will be in school from Wednesday next week to work alongside Mrs Knott so she can get to know the class and meet some of you so you will be able to say hello.

Thank you to everyone who has signed up for a telephone parent consultation next week and I shall very much look forward to speaking to you then.

Enjoy your weekend.

Mrs Pulle