Happy half term Y1! 15.10.21 and 22.10.21

Year 1, I am not quite sure how we are already at half term already! This term you have settled into year 1 life perfectly and it has been a delight to get to know each and everyone of you. You have made me proud every single day and you have progressed so much in your learning already. Our newsletter describes what we have been learning about the past two weeks...

In English last week, you were super busy completing your shared writes on a persuasive advert about a tractor. It was amazing to see you use all of the skills I have taught you in your writing. We focused on using question marks, capital letters, full stops and even adjectives! I have loved reading these back. This week we found out that the garage was so impressed with our tractor adverts as they all sold out straight away. We were then asked to complete a persuasive advert on a train and this was going to become your independent hot write. Well well well Y1...it has been amazing to see your confidence grow with your writing and how you carefully used your plans to support your writing. We then finished our week by reading our adverts to the class. It was lovely to see how proud you all were!

In phonics, you have been continuing to go to your phonics groups and learn your new sounds. You are each completing 20 minutes of reading each day and it's lovely to hear you read with such fluency and confidence. This week I have assessed all of your reading and you have blown my socks off with the progress you have made. I am super happy! We also celebrated 9 children who managed to achieve their bronze challenge award for reading 10 challenge books. Well done team! I wonder who will be next?

In maths last week, you kept your focus of part part whole model and answered lots of questions in your power maths book. You then moved onto learning about fact families and did you know that you could have 4 different sums from one part part whole model? Well Y1 know and they're very good at finding them. This week in maths, we built upon our part part whole model by learning about our number bonds to 10 and learning how to add numbers on a number line. On Friday, you put all of your early addition learning into practice by playing a board game and a human number line game on the play ground. We had lots of fun!

Our afternoons have been super busy delving deeper into our transport topic.

In computing, you have built upon your learning by learning how to save your work on pic collage. You created some lovely pic collages on old and new transport and labelled whether the transport was old or new. You are getting very confident now at using pic collage and some of you have even learnt how to change the colour of your text and put a different background.

In history, we brought our learning for this term to a close by looking at our local transport history. You started off by learning about George Stephenson and the rocket. You then found out that George Stephenson helped to build the grand junction railway and because this went through Crewe it meant that 'Crewe works' was built so that we could make more trains. You were so engrossed in this learning and couldn't believe the working conditions inside some of the factories. We finished our lesson by watching a video of people making a train in Crewe works. There was lots of 'wows' and 'ooos' as you watched with such interest.

In science we finished our material learning off by looking at different properties. You all chose an object out of the basket and you had to explain what the object was, the material is was made from and the properties to describe what the material looks/ feels like. You used some great describing words like 'bumpy, rough, smooth, stretchy, dull, opaque, transparent or even waterproof'. You have definitely learnt lots in our material topic and in our next lesson we will complete our hot task before moving onto our seasons topic.

In RE, you focused on your assessment piece. You brought all of your 'good news' learning together by thinking about how you could be a wise builder. You carefully water-coloured your rocks and wrote words to describe yourself. You wrote words like 'kind, thoughtful, caring and loving'. You then built your rocks on top of each other and then drew yourself right at the top to show that these were your strong and wise foundations.

Well, this week we did so well playing our percussion instruments! Working in partners we had the choice of: changing the sound of our instrument from loud to quiet; playing our instrument slowly to hear the sound; playing our instrument like a plodding elephant and playing our instrument quickly to hear the sound. We practised these options and took turns to have a go. Some of us used our previous knowledge of high and low sounds when discussing how to play our instruments. Next, we learnt the Naughty Bus song! We were so excited! While we listened carefully and followed the lyrics on the screen, we began finding the beat of the song. Some of us swayed to do this, others clapped or clicked. We can't wait to learn the lyrics!

Our main focus of our afternoon learning the past two weeks has been DT. We started our DT learning off by being introduced to the word vehicles and we looked at the different features a vehicle has. You then built upon this learning in lesson 2 by discovering wheels and axles. You then created your own wheels and axles from different materials. You tested how strong they were and if the wheels moved by rolling them down a ramp. I loved how you would jump with joy when your wheels worked. Once we knew the best material, you then designed your bus thinking carefully about the different features your bus is going to have. This then took us to our favourite part the making stage!! You all brought your cereal boxes in and this week we focused on painting our buses red to match the naughty bus and you have even drawn your passengers for your bus. After half term, we will stick our passengers on and then our wheels and axles ready to race our buses against each other.

Last week we completed our drugs and alcohol unit. You looked at what things in our life are healthy or not. You then learnt about different medicines and where you take those medicines e.g. tablets go inside your mouth, nasal sprays are for our noses and injections normally go in our arm or leg. You learnt about how only doctors/nurses should give you injections and there are only certain people who should give you medicines. I was very surprised to hear that a lot of you would pick up a needle/medicine off the floor and put it in the bin because you think you are doing the right thing. This led into a huge discussion about how dangerous this was as we don't know what is inside the medicine or who has had the needle. You found out that the only thing you should do is tell an adult straight away and to never ever pick these things up off the floor. I was so impressed with your ideas during our alcohol and drugs work and how grown up you were.

This week we have celebrated black history month by learning about Rosa Parks. We created a bus in the classroom and you were told that the children with hats on could only go at the back and they couldn't talk to anybody without a hat on. We then allowed one of the children with hats on to go on the seats at the front of the bus but as another non hat passenger came on the bus they had to give their seat up for them and stand up. You talked about how this was unfair and what the hat child should do. A lot of you said that they should say 'no' and you then learnt that this is exactly what Rosa Parks said. You listened beautifully about the story of Rosa Parks and how she stood up for herself and all of the black people in America who were being treated very badly at the time. You were all very shocked to learn how black people were not treated equally and a lot of you thought this story was not a real- life story. One quote stuck out the most in the lesson which was 'You must never be fearful about what you are doing when it is right'. This lesson left us feeling very empowered to include everyone and to never let anyone feel separated.

This half term has been super busy and you have experienced one of the trickiest transitions you will have as going from reception to year 1 is a huge step. However, you would never think how huge this transition is with how well you have settled in and how well you have managed all the learning. I am always left feeling really proud of you! Thank you for an amazing term but now it is time to relax and recharge our batteries before our final half term before Christmas. There is no homework being set except for you to enjoy your half term break!

See you all in a week superstars,

Miss Haynes