Year 1 newsletter!

This week has been very busy we have been amazing adjective finders, spectacular sunset painters and crazy coders.
In English this week, we have been continuing our focus on 'traditional tales'. On Monday morning we found something in our garden. It was three bowls of porridge, three chairs, three beds and some police tape...we suddenly realised that the three bears had been in our garden. Can you believe it? We story mapped the story of 'Goldilocks and the three bears' and all week we have been practicing telling the story out loud with actions. Can you use the story map to re-tell the story to your families? We have also been hot seating the three bears and using adjectives to make our story sound better. In each English lesson we start with a talk for writing game that focuses on grammar. Our favourite has to be the who am I game which is really helping us all with using adjectives!
In reading, you have all been learning your new sounds each day and reading through your story books. Mrs Van-Russelt and I are all amazed how much confidence you have when reading out loud.
In maths, we have been learning about how many tenths and ones are in our numbers to 20. We have used ten rods and one blocks to help us visualise the number and to see how it can be split up. We can now do this independently- which is amazing! We then went onto finding one more and one less of a number to 20. We had to use number lines to help us and we had to understand that if we are finding one less we jump backwards and if we are finding one more then we jump forwards. Finally we then went onto comparing objects and numbers to 20 using our crocodile symbols. I was so proud of how much you remembered of our learning last term to help you transfer these skills to comparing numbers to 20. You were all using the language of 'greater, fewer, more and less' to reason the comparison between your two numbers. You have definitely been math superstars this week!
In science this week we started our topic on humans and animals. We started our topic by looking and discussing the human body. The children all started the lesson by drawing around someone in their team and you labelled all of the body parts that you already knew. We then learnt all about the eyes, ears, mouth, nose, heart, lungs, brain and skeleton. Did you know that the heart is a muscle and we know it's working by finding our pulse? We found out that our pulse also gets faster when we do the daily mile in the afternoon as our heart is beating faster to help get more oxygen around our body. We then had a competition to see which team could match the body part to its function in the fastest time.
In RE we looked at our new question which is 'What does Jesus say about the kingdom of God'. We focused our lesson on the parable of the 'mustard seed'. We were so lucky because Emilie's grandma had kindly given us some seeds to plant so we started the lesson by planting these seeds. We spoke about what a plant needs to grow, where do we put plants and what do seeds grow into. We then put this into perspective of God's kingdom and how it kept on growing just like plants do. We then all started to design our own kingdoms and thought about what they would look like and how would people act.
In Geography and music this week with Mrs Swan you looked at hot and cold countries. You looked at where these places were on a map and if they were on the equator or in the northern or southern hemisphere of the world. You then decided what Betty bear would put in her suitcase if she was to go to any of the hot or cold countries. In music you listened to the rhythm and beat of African music and used the glockenspiels to carry this beat on.
In computing this week you completed your first coding session on code studio with Mrs Holland. You did amazing! You used the basic skills of 'drag and drop'. Some of you even got to have a turn of coding your own character and telling your character where to go to find the treasure chest.
In art this week, we learnt about where animals come from if they are not in a zoo. You found out many of the ecosystems in the world but we focused on the savannah. We learnt about all of the amazing animals that are found in the savannah and we understood that it can be either very dry or very wet. As someone rightly said it is very green because it has lots of rain and sunlight. We watched a video of the sun setting on the Savannah and we decided that we would create our study work front pages whilst creating the warm sunset using the watercolours of red, orange and yellow. We can't wait to add a silhouette outline of our favourite animal next week.
Finally, we ended our very busy week of learning with the special treat of the Y6 worship on the special message of peace. This message was shared beautifully with wonderful singing. Year one you made me so proud of how beautifully and peacefully you sat during this worship!
Maths homework for this week is set on 'school jam' and an email has been sent out explaining the homework. Well done to everyone who completed last weeks, I loved looking at all of your amazing number work you did at home.
Have a brilliant week superstars and rest up.
See you on Monday,
Miss Haynes