18.10.19

What a lovely end to the first half term we have had!

This week, the children have been telling us their monster stories. All of their stories followed the format of 'Grendel: A Cautionary Tale about Chocolate'. We used story scribing as a way of allowing all children to tell a story from beginning to end. Some children wrote the entire story themselves, some wrote part and an adult wrote the rest , and some filled in the missing words to their story once the teacher had written it.  This lasted a few days as they also performed their stories to the class.

In Maths this week, we consolidated our Place Value unit of work. We have reminded ourselves about representing numbers in different ways, counting forwards and backs, one more and one less, comparing and ordering numbers to 20. After half term we will move on to addition and subtraction.

This week, in Geography, we looked in more detail about where Chocolate comes from and where Cacao trees grow in the world. We learnt about hot and cold locations of the world in relation to the Equator, the North and South Poles. We coloured and labelled a map of the world to show our learning.

A big thank you for all your support so far with your children's learning. We are seeing lots of super home learning and loads of comments in reading records. Please do remember to log on to Bug Club and see what is available on there. The username is the first 4 letters of your child's first name, followed by the first 4 letters of their surname (John Smith would be johnsmit). The password is Caterpillars19 or Ladybirds19 depending on your child's class, and the school code is 99kq.

Have a lovely half term,
The Year 1 Team.

Weekly News 11.10.19

This week we have been very creative in Year 1.
On Monday, we made some clay monsters - our own characters for our monster story! We then wrote some adjectives to describe our monsters. We thought about the size, shape, amount of eyes, colours and texture.

Later in the week we used the structure of the Grendel story to plan our own monster story. We thought of 3 things our monster loved, a wish and a problem. Next week we will be doing Story Scribing to write our stories in more detail.

In maths this week, we have been learning to order numbers. Some children ordered numbers to 10, whilst others ordered numbers to 20. We used the language of 'most' and 'least'. The children really enjoyed playing this game online.

If you would like to find some fun learning games online for your child like the one above we can recommend the 'Topmarks' website and the 'ICT Games' website - both of which have some fun counting, comparing and ordering number games.

In Science this week, we completed an experiment called 'What can our hands do?'. We found out that our hands can tell amount, size, weight and temperature, but they cannot tell us the colour!

Weekly news 4.10.19

Another lovely, hard-working week in Year 1.

In Maths this week we have been comparing numbers to 20 using the language 'more than', 'less than' and 'equal' We began by practically building the numbers with Numicon and cubes before writing the numbers in our books. Later in the week, we introduced 'greater than' and 'fewer than'. Some children could tell us how much bigger one number was compared to other by working out the difference.

In English, we have been retelling the entire story of Grendel by using actions. We also made story maps / story boards and wrote words and sentences to go with the pictures.

The children are working very hard to segment the sound in words to help them spel and to use finger spaces correctly. 

Thank you for all your support with the children's home learning activities. The books will be coming home again today ready for a second piece to be completed before half term.

Have  a lovely weekend,

from the Year 1 team. 

Weekly News 27.9.19

We began the week by designing and describing a chocolate / sweety land. The children worked collaboratively, in their colour groups, to draw a land using colouring pens, pencils and oil pastels. Each child then wrote their own label using adjectives to describe different parts, for example; 'likable house', 'yummy flowers', 'spotty moon'.

Later in the week, the children found a letter from Grendel (the character of our story) In the story Grendel had 3 wishes and one of them was to turn everything he touched into chocolate. However, Grendel has realised his mistake now that his Mum is chocolate! In his letter he asked for the children's help. They wrote some amazing letters back to him with some super advice. We are eagerly awaiting his reply.

In Maths we have been learning about one more and one less than a given number. Some children were able to explain this with numbers up to 100! We also consolidated one-to-one counting of objects.

Our foundation subject challenge this week has been a Science challenge. We have learnt about the 5 senses and which part of the body they are associated with. In the investigation area the children found smelly pots, feely tubs, interesting pictures and headphones.

This week, we have also set up weekly challenges. Every week the children will now have 5 challenges to complete (including the one linked to a foundation subject).  If, by the end of the week, they have completed all 5 they will achieve 2 house points.

Thank you for using the word bags that we put out in the morning, and we are seeing lots of super comments in reading records. We have now set-up Bug Club which is a great online resource that your children can log onto at home (tablets and computers). The information about how to access this can be found in the previous blog post.

Have a lovely weekend!

Education City and Bug Club

All the children now have usernames and passwords for Education City and Bug Club. 
These are excellent resources that the school subscribes to, which you can use with your child at home. 

Education City     www.educationcity.com
Bug Club             www.activelearnprimary.co.uk

Education City passwords will be sent home in the children's book bags tonight.  Bug Club user details are as follows:

Username - 1st four characters of the child's first and surnames, e.g. Robert Smith would be robesmit
Password - Caterpillars19 or Ladybirds19 (depending on which class they are in)
School code - 99kq

If you have any problems accessing these, please speak to your child's class teacher or the school office.

Thank you.

Weekly News 20.9.19

What a busy and fun week we have had!

We have been reading more of our Power of Reading book - 'Grendel - A cautionary tale of chocolate'. We found out the Grendel loves his Mum, his dog, but most of all chocolate! The children wrote about the things that they love and drew pictures to illustrate. Later in the week Grendel was granted 3 wishes. We wrote a wish, discussed our reasons for choosing it and some children even discussed what the consequences of their wish could be.

In Maths, we have consolidated our understanding of representing numbers in different ways. The children wrote the numeral, drew a representation, counted out objects, showed it using Numicon, made it with play dough, etc. We have also been practising counting forwards and backwards from any number. Please continue to practise counting with your children at home.

This week, we have introduced our weekly challenges. Every week we will have at least one challenge linked to the foundation subjects (science, art, geography, etc.). The children complete these independently at some point during the week. This week the challenge was to label the parts of the human body. A

ll the children have a peg on the wall with their name on where their work gets put once completed.

We went on a phonics hunt to consolidate some of our sounds (or, ow, oi, igh and oa). The children enjoyed applying their segmenting and blending skills to read the words.

Notices:
- Remember home learning will be coming home today. You will see a note on the home learning about spellings. We will not be starting these until after half term. However, just to let you know in advance, we will be putting the four spellings for the week on our blog (every Friday) so please do remember to look.
- Knowledge organiser. You will see a knowledge organiser attached to the home learning. This includes some keys facts about our topic that we would like the children to learn. Please discuss these with your children.

Weekly News w/c 09.09.19

We survived our first full week in Year 1 and have done some brilliant learning.

Our Chocolate Wow Day to launch our new topic was a big success.  We began the day by watching a video about where chocolate comes from and how it is made.  Throughout the day, the children accessed various activities including making their own chocolate lolly, estimating how many M&Ms were in a jar and designing our own chocolate bars. We ended the day by sampling some different types of chocolate.  Caterpillars liked the caramel one best, however Ladybirds preferred the white chocolate!

In Maths, we have been practising sorting and counting objects and writing labels to show how many there are.  We also looked at how to represent number using Numicon and made number lines to 10,  We also learnt how to make teen numbers, remembering that the 1 always goes first and that the 1 is worth ten!

In English, we have introduced our Power of Reading book, Grendel, a Cautionary Tale of Chocolate.  We thought about some initial questions such as, "who is he?"  "what does he like doing" and some children also used adjectives to describe him.

In Continuous Provision, the children have enjoyed using the chocolate Play-Doh in our new chocolate factory role play area and also the mud kitchen has been open for the first time.

Notices

We have started to send home Reading Rhino and Maths Monkey.  These will come home every Friday with one child in each class.  When it is your child's turn, please do a maths activity (counting, shape hunting etc) or read a book.  You could record this with a photo, a bit of writing or a drawing in the book provided.  These need to be returned to school on the following Monday.

Next Friday, Home Learning books will be sent home.  There will be a Home Learning sheet with a number of activities and instructions on how to complete.  These are intended to be fun activities for you to do with your children.

Have a lovely weekend,
From the Year 1 Team