Year 1 w/b 10th October
Date: 14th Oct 2022 @ 3:56pm
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 igh (fly high) and ow (blow the snow). We added the suffix er/est to many of our words to compare their meaning.
We have been assessing the children’s reading progress this week and are pleased by the increase in 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 Collective worship this week we have focused on the life of St Francis and his journey in life and how it led him to caring for all God’s creation, especially the animals. Back in the classroom we wrote a class prayer focused on all God’s creatures and how we need to love and care for them. The Ethos Council also gave us a ‘Good Deeds’ box for our reflection area. When someone show us a good deed, we jot it down and post it in the box. It is wonderful to see the box filling with Year 1’s good deeds.
In RE this week, we completed our final assessment task on creation thinking about what we have learnt about God and creation over the last 6 weeks. It was lovely to observe children focusing not merely on what was created but how it should be protected and cared for.
Our much anticipated ‘My Happy Mind’ lesson focused on learning what happens when Team H-A-P is happy and sad. Team H-A-P works best when we are happy but sometimes the hippocampus and Pre- frontal cortex goes to sleep when
we are sad, stressed or worried. We found ways to wake them up again by doing some happy breathing and joining in with the ‘Happy Healthy Brain Song’
Our PE lesson was our penultimate one on dance. It was great to observe how the children’s confidence has grown as they practise moving their bodies in time with the music and apply this newfound confidence to the freestyle in a class circle at the end.
In forest school, Mr Simmons encouraged the children to make collages from the leaves dropped by deciduous trees. He was amazed by the children’s recall of leaf names.
This week in Science we thought about how a deciduous tree changes through the year, looking specifically at an apple tree. We watched a video to show how the tree changed in each season and then had a go at making our own illustrations to show the changes.
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.
During our History lessons we have begun to discuss how toys have changed over time. We have looked at different toys and thought about similarities and differences.
Mrs Lindersen has now started her maternity leave and we wish her every happiness as she prepares for her new baby. We shall miss her so much and the children’s pictures and messages to her reflect this affection beautifully. We look forward to Mrs Lindersen returning with her baby for a little visit after half term.
Thank you to all those parents who signed up for a consultation this week and we shall speak to the rest of our parents next Tuesday afternoon.
It’s been another busy but most enjoyable week and we hope you can all enjoy the good weather forecast for the weekend.
The Year One Team
