Y1 weekly news- 19.11.21

What a fantastic week in Y1 from celebrating anti-bullying week to starting our Christmas crafts and celebrations.

In English this week we started to box up our information text and look at the structure of our information text all about the woodlands. Once we understood the structure, we started our shared write 'All about fields'. You have worked so hard on your writing this week. You have been using 'and' in your sentences, adding -ing onto the end of your verbs and working hard to spell phonetically. You have come up with some fantastic ideas for your shared write and I can't wait to finish it next week.

In phonics you have been working super hard learning your new sounds and being able to read different words that have these sounds in. Each phonics session you complete 20 minutes of reading and it is amazing to see how fluent you are becoming with your reading. I am truly amazed!

In maths this week, you were introduced to subtraction. You understood that when you subtract you jump backwards on a number line. You realised that you start with the whole (greatest number) and you take away a part to then find the other part. It's been difficult to work in reverse as we focused so hard on addition the last couple of weeks but I am so proud of how resilient you have been. Next week, we will build upon your skills so you can practice subtraction and start to answer more challenging questions.

Beep beep bus coming through!! In D&T this week, you all finished creating your naughty buses and you took them out for a test drive. Some of us then realised we hadn't made our wheels strong enough so you went back to the classroom to fix them. Once we finished our test driving you then evaluated your buses. You thought very carefully about your design and if you had followed it, if you had worked safely and if your bus worked. These are the best buses I have seen and I know how proud you are of your work.

This week you were introduced to geography and what geography was. You understood that it is the study of the earth. You found out that in geography you will look at different maps, places and features of these places. You were introduced to physical and human features in our first lesson. You found out that physical features are things that have always been on earth and are not made by humans e.g. rivers, soil, weather, seasons and oceans. You then found out that human features are things that haven't always been here and are made by humans e.g. houses, shops, pubs, schools and roads. We then went on a hunt around school to find different human and physical features in our immediate environment. You took pictures of these features on an iPad and created a pic collage using your computing skills. I was amazed by how well you picked this up and were able to confidently tell me different human and physical features in school.

In RE, you were introduced to our new incarnation topic of the 'Christmas story'. You had to job of reordering the Christmas story so that I could see how much you have remembered from reception. You then spoke about what you knew and you linked lots of your ideas to your nativity last year. It was lovely to hear you happily recall all of the different parts you were. We then focused on our first part of the Christmas story which was when the angel came down to Mary and told her that she was going to have a special baby who would be the son of God. We thought about what we had learnt about Jesus from this part of the story and you all came up with some fantastic ideas!

In art, you recapped what canal boats were used for in the past and why people painted their canal boats using canal art. You then had the important job of drawing your own roses in your sketch book. We focused on how we can add pressure on our pencil to create darker and lighter lines. We decided to add more pressure so that we could have dark lines to see the detail of your rose. Once you had followed the step to step guide to draw your rose, you carefully water coloured your rose using side to side brush strokes. I was very proud of your drawing skills!

In music this week, we listened to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. This version had different background music than the version we are used to hearing. Some of us liked this song, whereas some of us decided we didn't like the background as it was too loud. We enjoyed watching the sloth on the video though! We then learnt how to sign the lyrics to 'Rhythm In The Way We Walk.' Miss Holland was so proud at how well we did this. We thoroughly enjoyed the song and stayed really focused. Our Naughty Bus Song was our last task. We brought it alive by adding actions to accompany the lyrics. Well done year 1!

In forest school, Mr Hadfield linked our science topic of season changes into your learning for this session. You were told about the different changes we would see outside during autumn. You found out that the leaves on a deciduous trees change colour. We thought about the different colours we could see on the trees on our field. You then went on a hunt to find different leaves and you then created the most beautiful leaf art under our oak tree. In forest school, you also built upon your fire skills and this week you dipped a cotton wool ball in petroleum jelly and you then used your dragon sneezes to create a small fire. It's amazing to see you all develop your risk taking skills and seeing you get braver and braver each session. Mr Hadfield spoke about the importance of only making fires in forest school and told us about how dangerous fires can be.

You had your extra sportscape session this week where you were focusing on your catching and throwing skills.

This week we celebrated anti-bullying week and we went on a lovely journey to understand the importance of being kind. We started our journey with reading the book 'Mine's bigger than yours' which helped the children to understand that bullying is when something is happening repeatedly. The children then learnt our STOP acronym in our anti bullying policy. The children then had an activity where they all had a perfect heart that they had cut out we understood that this heart was full of love and kindness. The children then had to take their partners heart and say mean things to it over and over again like bullying. As the children said mean words, they crumpled their partners heart up. At the end, we spoke about how our heart had creases and lines in from every mean word that was said to it. The children then decided to say kind words and to try and smooth the heart out. As Cesca rightly said ' Our creases aren't going away even when we say kind words'. The children then stopped and realised that a heart never forgets the unkind words that are said and those creases last a lifetime. The children then wanted to say kind words to their friend and it was so lovely to listen to the compliments you were giving out. Towards the end of the week you also looked at pantosauraus and we realised the importance of keeping our privates private. You were very grown up and sensible with our learning this week and you made me one very proud teacher.

This week we started our Christmas crafts for the Christmas fair on Thursday which is on between 4-6pm. We hope to see you all there. The children were very excited painting our crafts whilst listening to Christmas music. We can't wait for this Christmas spirit to continue next week when we meet Father Christmas and visit the Christmas fair.

I hope you all have a fantastic weekend. You homework had been emailed out.

See you on Monday,

Miss Haynes