Y1 weekly newsletter 18.6.21

It's been another busy week in Y1 with lots of learning taking place. You have been story writers, light house keepers and even sea side artists.

In English this week, we took our story of the light house keeper's lunch and changed it to make it our own. We decided we were going to create the light house keeper's breakfast. We created a shared plan and then you changed some parts in your plan so that you could use different names, animals, food and settings. This was quite a challenge because you were changing a good chunk of the story. As you started to write your story, it came alive with your detailed writing and description. I can't wait to finish these stories next week so that we can find out what happens next.

In maths this week, you have been busy learning all about halving. You started the week by completing a practical activity by halving different shapes. You learnt that when you split something into half, you are splitting it into two equal parts. We knew that they were two equal parts because when we folded the shape the sides wouldn't overlap each other. To build upon this learning, you learnt what a quantity was and how to half different quantities. You understood that we have to split the quantity into two equal groups and a 1/2 would just be the amount in one group. Next week, we will build upon this learning further and we will learn about quarters.

In phonics and reading, you have been super busy at trying to read with accuracy and with a faster reading speed. We are just completing our reading assessments this week and next and I am so proud of how well you are doing. It's lovely to see you read with such confidence Y1.

In our afternoon learning, we have had a huge focus on art so that we can get our art work on display. You learnt more about our artist David Hockney and the artwork that he created. We found out that David Hockney like to paint and draw portraits of other people. We understood that we can find out how someone is feeling on a painting by looking at their expression. We looked at several portraits and looked at the people's expression. You then went to your tables and drew a portrait of your partner with a particular expression on their face. These portraits were fantastic! On Wednesday, we found out that one of the skills he uses is wax resist. You all had a practice of completing this in your sketch books and you enjoyed seeing your art work come through as you water coloured over the wax. We built upon this skill by creating our own painting of the sea. When looking at photos of the sea, you realised that the sea looks blue and green. You used these colours in your painting and created a repeating pattern with these colours. You then used your fine motor skills, to cut carefully around different types of fish so that you can put these on your under the sea painting and build upon the texture of the artwork. We finished our artwork with taking a picture of ourselves and we will put this on our painting so it looks like we are diving into the sea. Your art work has progressed so much this year and I could clearly see that your brush control is getting so much better. Well done team!

In history this week, we built upon our learning of Grace Darling from last week by finding out why she is a significant person in history. We realised that Grace was very brave as she rescued people from a ship wreck. Her bravery and courage is still remembered now. We listened to a story about this night and then we re-enacted it in the garden. You then wrote the key events in your history books so that you can remember what happened.

In RE, we completed our RE assessment and wrote about what we could do if we had the help from the Holy Spirit. You came up with some fantastic ideas and I was really proud of them. You said ' I will help other children when they are sad' ' I will look after God's earth by picking up plants and watering his plants' ' I will look after animals when they are sick or lost'. What beautiful ideas Y1!

In computing this week, we explored our new app puppet pals. We learnt the skills of choosing a character and background, how to move the characters around and how to record our own voices on the app. You came up with some super short stories using the characters that you had. Now that we are familiar with the app, we will plan our own puppet story next week which we will perform the following week.

In music this week we listened to and appraised 'The Firebird' by Stravinsky. We learnt this piece of music was composed in 1910. For our next song, we had to listen really carefully to identify the instruments in the song. We found them all, but we did choose too many at the start! Then we went on to learn more about pulse and rhythm and even clapped our own rhythms! Billy Beat and Rita Rhythm were our musical characters. They showed us how the beat and the rhythm go together in music.

Well done on all your hard work this week Y1. I always say it but I'm so proud of you.

Have a lovely weekend,

Miss Haynes