Y1's weekly news 9.7.21

What a celebratory week we've had in Y1 as we celebrated the score of England in the semi-finals and celebrated all of our birthdays that we had since March 2020.

In English this week, you have been busy rhyming different words. On Monday, you recapped your understanding of rhyming words. You understood that to make the word rhyme it's got to have the same sound at the end. You then had a go of rhyming different words linked to our theme of the seaside. You were then introduced to the poem 'freaky week' by Pie Corbett. We all thought this poem was very funny! You recognised all of the rhyming words in the poem and then had a go at rhyming different words with the colours that are in the poem. On Friday, you finished the week by creating your own freaky week poem and performing it to the class. Your confidence to perform in front of your peers is amazing!

In phonics and reading, you have been busy reading a range of books. Your passion and love of reading has grown so much this year. You always want to have some quiet reading time during the day which is fantastic. I am also amazed at how many of you have achieved different certificates for your reading challenge. Our reading challenge will stop on Monday but you will be able to continue it on with Mr Dale in Y2.

In maths, we finished our topic on time and you have worked so hard on reading clocks and changing clocks to the correct time. Mrs VR and I have been amazed at the fact that everyone in our class knows how to tell the time when it is o'clock and half past. What an amazing achievement! You have also been testing my knowledge of time by changing the time on our big clock and then asking me to guess it. Which I have loved! We then challenged ourselves further by looking at seconds, minutes and hours. You understood that seconds were the fastest measurement of time and hours are the longest. By Friday, we were even comparing different times! What superstar mathematicians I have in my class.

In our afternoon learning, we have been really focused on creating and designing our final few study work pages. We can't wait to take these home and share our journey of Y1 with our families.

In Science, we focused our learning on the final season of summer. We spoke about the changes that happen to animals and plants in summer. We have also been observing some of these changes in our garden.

In geography, we were introduced to the geographical language of cliff, river, sea, ocean, mountain and beach. We learnt what all of these words mean and we then spoke about which of these physical features we may find at the seaside. So, that we could retain our learning we played a game of corners. In each corner there was a picture of one of these physical features and the children had to recognise each one. We then labelled them in our geography book so that we could remember them.

In RE, the children learnt more about 'The story of Zaccheaus'. The children created a tree by writing on leaves and showing how Zaccheaus had changed in the story. We found out that he felt accepted and forgiven by Jesus. We then realised that any wrong choices we make can be forgiven and we can turn it around by making the right choice. You came up with some beautiful ideas!

In computing, we finished our puppet pals project by recording the fairy tale story that we had planned. You definitely used your imaginations in these stories. I was so proud of how confident you were at speaking into a microphone and how you used different voices for your characters. Well done Y1!

This week in our music lesson, we listened to and appraised a piece of music called Bolèro, composed by Maurice Ravel. We spoke about what we could hear as well as how the song made us feel. It made a few of us think of other things in our lives. We discovered how closing our eyes can really make us focus on the music and help us to use our imaginations. Next, we recapped what pitch means in music by matching the music to the correct musical picture. This was tricky to do. We stuck with it and completed the challenge on the third attempt. When we sang the Banana Rap song, we discovered how our voices needed to change to fit in with the different characters and their pitch's. Then we challenged ourselves to sing the 'Your Imagination' song to the backing track only. We did so well! To end our lesson, Miss Holland played us a piece of music by our composer of the month – John Williams. We recognised this straight away as being a soundtrack to  a Star Wars film. The second piece of music sounded familiar to us and we eventually got it as the soundtrack to Jurassic Park. When we watched a mini clip, we were amazed at how many instruments are played by the orchestra. 

This week has been SRE week and it's taken us on a beautiful journey of acceptance to diversity and being different. In our first lesson, we looked at a story about Jai and Bo. We realised that Bo was a new child and he looked different, dressed different and spoke a different language to Jai. We found out in our story that Jai and Bo became the best of friends even though they were different. This led us onto looking at how everyone in Y1 is different to each other. You designed an imaginary friend who was different to you. You wrote some sentences about why he/ she was different. You then discussed how you would make them feel welcome to the class. In our 2nd lesson, we looked at the lifecycle of a human and the changes we go through when we go from a baby to a toddler etc. You all realised that you were children and you even went on to discuss what your siblings were. In our 3rd lesson, we looked at how families are all different to each other. We used 'The family book' by Todd Parr to engage us further into this learning. We have enjoyed all of our circle time this week and I was so proud of how mature your answers were!

We then finished our week with the most important day....party day! We had so much fun celebrating all of our birthdays. As we entered the classroom on Friday morning you were greeted with lots of balloons and music. You all had a morning dance whilst showing off your wonderful party clothes. At lunch time, we had a picnic on the field with the whole school. It was lovely to see all of the classes in their bubbles as we don't see much of each other in school. We sang happy birthday all together and celebrated by blowing lots of bubbles! We then finished our afternoon with lots of party games outside in the sun.

I can't believe we only have a week and two days left Y1. Let's make it the best with a busy week of film night and sports day!

Enjoy your weekend superstars and let's all keep our fingers crossed for a win on Sunday! Remember on Monday you can come dressed in your red and white clothes to celebrate England making history.

See you on Monday,

Miss Haynes