Year 1 w/b 20th June
Date: 24th Jun 2022 @ 4:17pm
Another busy week with both Sports week and assessment week coinciding and a wonderful week of sun. As a fantastic start to our sports week, we took part in a circus skills session. In the session we learnt how to spin plates, use flower sticks to perform tricks and work on other circus skills using the incredible resources. We had plenty of time to try out some of the other skills including juggling, mini bike riding, diablo, unicycling whilst also dressing up as clowns! The pictures below capture some of the energy and skill from our morning. On Wednesday, Multiflex were encouraging children to try something new so they were introduced to Danish longball which was a mix between cricket, rounders and baseball. This was great fun and all the children loved being involved.
In forest school this week, the children moved between three stations as part of sports week. The first task was for children to work as a team to get to the other side using tyres and planks, but they had to be careful not to fall into the lava or they would have to start from the beginning again. The second station involved children being in 3’s to have a successful game of cricket. The last and final station was dancing to music outside in the sunshine. It was fabulous to see all the children participating in all the activities and supporting one another.
In English, we have planned and written our innovated responses to Tom from the Night Pirates. We have learned how to structure a letter and about the features of a letter. It has been great to observe how confident the children have become spelling multi syllabic words using their knowledge of phonics, punctuating sentences correctly and checking their writing by reading it back to themselves and a partner. Next week we plan to write letters to Miss Roxborough introducing ourselves and telling her the sort of things we are looking forward to in Year two. Phonics teaching has been targeted at the silent letters kn (knock, knock, who’s there), wh (whisk, whisk) and ck (tick tock clock)
Our maths this week has all be assessment tasks which has included an arithmetic and reasoning paper. Again, it was satisfying to see the children using and applying the techniques taught during the course of the year to calculate answers. The children were permitted a number line and hundred squares to aid calculating and to support mental strategies. In Maths Mastery we have completed our unit on adding and subtracting multiples of 2 to a series of odd and even numbers.
In geography this week, we found out where the UK was using google maps and discovered that the UK is an island. We discussed which countries are in the United Kingdom and which continent it is in. We looked at the British seas that surround the UK and used the compass and ‘Never Eat Salty Worms’ to help us label the seas around the United Kingdom.
In RE, we completed the story of Joseph from Genesis and the children were amazed by the twist and turns in Joseph’s life in Egypt and his eventual reconciliation and forgiveness of his brothers. We considered where God was in each stage of Joseph’s life, how he helped Joseph interpret the cup bearers, bakers and Pharoah’s dreams and blessed Joseph with great success in Egypt. Yesterday we also enjoyed a lovely service at Church learning about the sisters Mary and Martha and their visit by Jesus. Mary stopped and listened to Jesus, whilst Martha pushed on with cleaning, cooking and tidying jobs. As Sandi explained there is a time to stop and listen and a time for keeping busy and we should aim to do both in our own lives.
In Science this week we have continued to build on our identification and observation skills from last week, to talk in detail and describe the features of plants and trees that we found outside. First, we took our feature checklists from last week back outside to find examples of the following: leaf, flower, petal, fruit, berry, root, seed, trunk, branch, stem, bark and bud. We pulled up a plant from the ground to see what the roots look like.
We went back to the classroom to label our own flowers and observe the changes that we have noticed in our sunflowers that we planted last week. We were very excited that some have already started to grow.
My Happy Mind this week build on all of our learning so far. We looked at how team H-A-P respond to how we are feeling. Like all teams, they work best when they are all working together. When we are happy and regulated team H-A-P work in harmony with each other. The opposite of this happens when we are sad, stressed or unhappy. Our amygdala can take over our whole brain sending our prefrontal cortex and hippocampus to sleep. If this happens the amygdala doesn’t pass any information to the prefrontal cortex and this will cause you to react with a flight, flight or freeze response. The good news is we can wake the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex by doing something called happy breathing. This week we learnt one technique for happy breathing. Talking about and trying this out at home would be helpful.
In other news, Miss Roxborough will be in school next week working both in Year One and Two. She will be at parent consultations on Tuesday so that will be a lovely opportunity for us to introduce her to you. As well as welcoming new teachers, we are also saying goodbye to Miss Ridge who completes her teaching placement with us next Wednesday. We are sure you will want to join us in wishing her every success and happiness in her future in teaching and we are thankful for her consistency, warmth and dedication to Year One over the past 10 weeks.
We hope you all enjoy a lovely weekend and we shall look forward to seeing you all next week and most specifically at parents’ consultations on Tuesday.
Mrs Pulle and Mrs Lindersen
