Welcome back Y1!

Welcome back Y1 after our half term break. It has been lovely to hear about all of the Halloween adventures you got up to with your families. We have definitely had a busy week back and it has been lovely to delve straight into our learning again.

A mysterious basket was left in our classroom on Monday. When we opened up the basket we found a purple present inside. We used our imaginations to try and guess what was inside the present. We decided to write some sentences in our English book using the sentence opener 'I think it is a'. We worked really hard on trying to describe our object inside the present using adjectives. We opened up our present to see that it had the naughty bus inside! I then told you that our story that we were going to focus on was the naughty bus as we were going to learn about adventure stories. We used talk for writing to learn our story and we used actions so that we could remember it easier. In our short burst writes we have had a focus on nouns and adjectives. You learned that nouns are an object, place or person and adjectives are words that describe the noun. You even wrote your own A-Z noun list.

In maths, we have been working super hard on addition. You have been solving missing number sentences using number lines, tens frames and part-part whole models. Addition is something that you have all found difficult but this week I saw this little light bulb shine brightly as we started to understand it. By the end of the week, I was seeing you all have a go at adding numbers independently using the skills that I had taught you. We are now ready to move onto our next topic of subtraction.

In our afternoon we have been so busy and we have had so many fantastic learning experiences that have enhanced our learning of our transport topic.

Mrs Pointon and I had organised a little special surprise for you on Wednesday and to see your faces light up with so much excitement was amazing. You were told on Wednesday morning that we were going to get a special visit from PC Nick to help us with our learning of transport. We had so many questions that we wanted to ask PC Nick about the transport in the police force that we had to write our questions down in our English books. We were then on pins all day waiting for PC Nick to arrive. When PC Nick came he helped our PSHE learning by teaching us about the importance of the police force in the community and how they help to keep us safe. You then very confidently asked one question to PC Nick and listened to his response. You then burst with excitement when PC Nick told you that you could see the police van that he had brought to school. You all listened to the sirens, looked at the different parts of the police van and then even had a turn of going in the back. All of these photos have been individually shared with your families on seesaw.

In Science, we carried on learning about the season of Autumn. We shared any autumnal walks we had been on over the holidays and what we saw around us. We then focused on how Autumn can change the ways animal and plants act. We found out that some birds migrate, some animals grow thicker fur, wasps die and deciduous trees have leaves that change colour.

In RE, we finished our topic off by thinking about what we had learned about God from the creation story. You wrote about four important things that you had learned and then drew a wonderful picture by each one.

In Geography, we focused on transport that we may see in London and we then wanted to compare this to the transport we see in Wybunbury. To do this we had to complete a traffic survey outside of school. We stood outside for 20 minutes to see what traffic we have in Wybunbury. You were fantastic at spotting the transport around us as we saw cars, lorries, bikes, aeroplanes and even helicopters.

We carried out some more work on algorithms this week in computing and what fun we had pretending we were in a maze game. The children had to use positional language to guide the game player around the maze so that they could get to the London landmarks. However, to make our game more difficult the children had to try and dodge the river Thames so that they wouldn't fall into it. You did so well and I was so proud of how many of you knew your left and right now.

This week we started our history topic by looking at old and new transport. First you learned the meaning of the words 'old' and 'new'. We spoke about how old things can be from the past and new things can be from the present. We found out that old bikes were called hobby horses and penny farthings. You then independently sorted out pictures of old and new transport into two groups. We looked at how transport has changed so much over time and how this is mostly due to new inventions and technological advancements.
We also started our DT topic this week and found out the exciting news that we were going to create our own naughty bus. Before we do this, we understood that we need to look at the features of certain types of transport to think about how they are built differently for their purposes. We understood that land transport has wheels but water transport doesn't. I just know you are going to be super inventors already!

Instead of mindfulness Monday this week we had mindfulness Friday to finish our busy week off. We focused on feelings this week and how we can understand our own feelings. We listened to the wonderful book 'colour monster' by Anna Llenass to understand that certain colours can sometimes represent our feelings. We focused on the feelings of happiness, sadness, anger and being scared. You spoke about the certain times you might have these feelings and then drew pictures to represent each feeling. It was very lovely to hear all of you speak so openly about your feelings which is something we should never shy away from.

What a busy week we have had Y1. I just can't believe all of the learning experiences that we have managed to fit into one week. You must be so tired! However, this has definitely been one of my favourite weeks as a teacher. We haven't stopped laughing and smiling all week.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend, rest up and I will see you on Monday,
Miss Haynes