Year 1s weekly newsletter

Our weeks are flying by in year one and we are learning so much! We have been story writers, puppet makers and rainforest artists.

In English this week, you have built upon your learning by becoming story writers as we took our story of the 'tiger who came for tea' and changed it to the giraffe who came for tea. You worked hard on changing three parts of the story: the characters, the food the animal was eating and the place where they went to have some food at the end. You worked incredibly hard on your stories. It was lovely to see how many adjectives, verbs and punctuation that were used in your stories. You left me feeling incredibly proud when I read your stories.

In phonics, you have continued to work hard in your lessons and applying the learning of your sounds in your reading. You are focusing on using 'Fred in your head' to build up fluency in reading so that you can become a quicker reader. You are then applying your phonics learning to your spelling of words by segmenting each sound to write it. You are also looking closely at the special friends in a word to try and see which one you should use. I can see a clear progression of all of these skills since September and it is simply amazing!

In maths, we have done non-stop counting! You have learnt how to count in 2s, 5s and 10s. You found this very tricky at first however after continuous repetition you have been able to understand the pattern to help you remember how to skip count. Whilst building on these skills through our power maths books we have also done lots of practical work and games around this. You solved word problems, used counting stones, completed missing number tracks and even played our top favourite game which is 'fizz pop bang'. You had homework set this week on these skills so you can keep practicing this further and show all of your families how you can skip count. At the end of the week you completed two maths quizzes to show everything you have learned this term. I am still so shocked to see how much learning you have retained even with a lockdown. We definitely have your families to thank for as they sat down with you each day trying to help you with your maths work. So, thank you!

In our afternoons we started the week by learning more about the artist 'Henri Rousseau' by looking at his famous painting of 'Tiger in a tropical storm'. We started by learning about this painting and how Henri had never visited a jungle but used his imagination and experiences of botanical gardens to recreate the jungle in his paintings. We then set of to recreate this painting in our sketch books. You started by drawing your tiger and we decided to do this with pen because Henri had clear outlines in his paintings. We then focused on using water colours to paint the sky and we realised that the sky was dark so we had to use our skills of mixing colours to create a darker sky by adding blue and black together. I was so impressed with your mixing skills. You then used orange and black to paint your tiger. This week we are going to add our leaves on using oil pastels. Then we will use all of this learning to recreate our own surprise painting with our favourite jungle animal.

The eye goes in and the tail comes out is what we kept on repeating for our DT lesson as you sewed your animal puppets. These puppets are fantastic Y1 and you have worked super hard on your sewing skills. To think most of you had never sewed before and you have now sewed a puppet is fantastic. You confidently sewed a running stitch to bring the two pieces of felt together and we left the bottom open so that you can use it as a hand puppet. To show progression as you progress your sewing skills in your learning journey through school, we started off by sewing through holes that had already been made on the felt. Some of you went on further by learning how to undo a stitch. We are going to showcase your puppets in your study work books so that you can take them home at the end of the Y1. Next week, you are going to focus on decorating your puppets using your original designs.

In your wellbeing learning this week, we focused on being kind. It has been hard for many of you to come back to school and remember how to play together with children when we have been locked up in our houses for so long. We spent this week thinking about nice games that we can play outside and how we can be nice to others. You read the book 'Not now Bernard' and then spoke about the meaning of compliments. You learnt about what a compliment is, how it can make someone else feel and how it can also make you feel. You then practiced saying some compliments to your friends. We then created our own compliment jar that we are going to keep in our class so that at any time when you are feeling sad you can take a compliment to cheer yourselves up. I have already looked at some of these compliments and they have melted my heart. Some of your compliments said 'You are beautiful' and ' You are a good friends never forget that'. You really are the kindest bunch of children that I have ever met.

We finished our week by practicing our Easter service and we are so excited to share this with you next week.

Have a lovely weekend Y1 and well done for working so hard.

See you on Monday,

Miss Haynes