Happy Easter Y1!

Happy Easter Y1! I hope you have had a lovely Easter weekend celebrating with your families and eating lots of treats off the Easter bunny. It's crazy to think another term has just flown by like that. Our spring term didn't plan out how we had imagined however you have made the most out of home learning and being back at school. We have already covered so much of our animal topic and I am very proud of how engaged and enthusiastic you are about the learning within this topic.

In English this week, we spent most of our time completing reading assessments. These are your first ever reading assessments and I am so proud of how well you all did. You definitely showed off your comprehension and understanding skills! At the end of the week, you focused on the spelling of different misconception (red) words and you chose a select few to use in different sentences. You also focused on using exclamation marks in your writing. You understood that when a sentence has an exclamation you have to change your voice when reading it. You practiced reading sentences with an emphasis on your voice. To build on this knowledge, you independently wrote your own sentences with exclamation marks. I loved reading through all of your powerful sentences.

Fred talk, Fred in your head and Fred fingers are something that we are always talking about in Y1. However, our little Fred does help you in your phonics journey and this week just showed that when I got to listen to you all read individually in our phonics assessments. I am still beaming with pride at how well you are all working. In your phonics sessions, you are concentrating on securing all of the sounds whilst working on building fluency so that you can all become faster readers. You have also loved taking your challenge books home each week and you are very close to your first award which is amazing!

In maths this week we started the week by completing maths quizzes to see how much knowledge you have secured since September. You are all brain boxes and have absorbed so much of the learning this year. You are becoming maths geniuses even with the topics that you have found hard like subtraction and counting in 2s, 5s and 10s. Once we had finished our maths quizzes this week, you practiced your learning of counting in 2s, 5s and 10s and ordering numbers with some practical activities so that you could consolidate your learning. Well done for always working so hard, you make me a very proud teacher.

In Science, we built upon our learning from lockdown on plants by planting our own flowers in the Y1 garden. We spoke about what a plant needs in order to grow. You had so much fun planting the seeds and we are hoping they will grow over Easter half term.

In RE, you focused on the Easter story and all of the significant parts. We discussed the key events and why they are important. We spoke about why Jesus died on the cross and why he resurrected. You even started to understand why we celebrate Jesus' death each year on Good Friday. You then went on to retell the Easter story in your books. I was so proud of how much you remembered and the detail you went into. We then built upon this learning by practicing and filming our Easter service all week. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed performing and singing in the service.

In DT this week you have been busy finishing your animal hand puppets by following your own designs. You should all be extremely proud of yourselves, they are amazing. You are very creative! After Easter, we will be evaluating our hand puppets.

Our crafty week carried on into our final art lesson on Henri Rousseau this week. To build on our learning from last week you created your own piece of art in the style of Henri Rousseau. You started by drawing your favourite animal with a thick outline. You then water-coloured your animal and the background by mixing different colours together. Finally, you created the jungle leaves and trees by using oil pastels and paper layering to hide your animal. I was honestly so proud of how well your paintings turned out that we had to put them into your study work books.

It's been a very hectic term so your only homework for the next two weeks is to relax, have fun and spend some time in the outdoors. I will be looking forward to seeing you all in two weeks and to hear all about your Easter antics. Thank you for making me so proud of you this term.

Have a lovely Easter,

Miss Haynes