Year 1 weekly news 10.9.21

Wow Y1, we have completed a whole week already. This week we got ourselves into our Y1 structured routine and you have worked so hard completing all of your different lessons. You have been material hunters, naughty bus story tellers and you have even gone back in time to look at how transport looked 100 years ago.

In English this week, we came into our classroom and found a present that had been left for us. We thought about who the present was from, why it was left for us and what the present was. We all took turns to feel the present, shake it and look for any other clues. As a class we came up with lots of brilliant ideas of what the present could be. This then took us onto our next task where you wrote sentences using the sentence starter 'I think it is a...'. The following lesson we unwrapped our present and found out that it was a London double decker bus this hooked us into our talk for writing story 'The naughty bus'. Each day we have built upon our learning by re-telling a paragraph of our story whilst using makaton signs and actions to scaffold our understanding to help us remember the story. You have also completed different activities each day that have helped to immerse you into the story. You have hot seated the naughty bus and asked different questions to find out more information about who the naughty bus is, you've wrote a list of words to describe the naughty bus' appearance and you have even used the words 'First, next and after that' to describe the naughty bus' actions. We will not forget that every time we have come in to school this week, we have been greeted by the naughty bus and his bad actions. So far, he has put all of the other types of transport in prison, spilt oil all over the tables and even made a mess on the tables with flour. Oh dear Y1, we really do need to teach him how to be a good bus.

In maths this week, you have been recapping your place value knowledge from reception. You have used ten frames to scaffold your place value learning. You have now been introduced on how to fill a tens frame in properly so that you don't get confused on where to put your counters. On Friday, we started our Y1 power maths learning which introduces you to place value to 10. For the first lesson we focused on groups and being able to split objects into different groups depending on their differences. We started off very practically by splitting our fruit into different groups or blocks depending on their colour. Next week we will build on this learning by starting to count the amount of objects in each group.

In phonics, I have completed all of your assessments this week and I am so proud of the confidence and resilience you showed. All of the children have now been given a phonics book that matches their ability shown through the assessment. Please, can the children read their books three times? Children will have an extra 20 minutes of reading a day in school but this will not be recorded in their reading record.

In our afternoon learning you have been super busy being introduced to new subjects.

On Monday, you were introduced to science and what science is. You understood that science is learning about the world and universe around us. It's about understanding how the universe works through experiments and observations. You were very excited to learn about your topic of everyday materials. You completed an assessment sheet so that you could show me what you already knew about materials and we will then complete another one at the end of the topic to see how much you have learnt! We started our learning off by identifying and naming different materials using a feely bag. You then had lots of different materials at your table and you had to match the materials with their correct name. We will build upon this learning by going on a material hunt around school.

On Tuesday, you were introduced to your Y1 music sessions with Mrs Holland. You looked at how sounds are made, when objects like string – vibrate. We learnt that every time an object vibrates, it sends invisible sound waves to our ears, which changes those waves into small messages that our brain understands as sound. We know if we strum a thin string, it will vibrate faster, making the sound higher. If the sound is loud, or quite low, people who cannot hear sounds can sometimes feel the vibrations. We then began our new music unit 'How Can We Make Friends When We Sing Together?' First we found the beat by clapping along to the backing track as well as copying our onscreen penguins! We had to follow the giraffes' face and make our faces smaller, then bigger! This was so much fun. We did have some funny faces! After listening to the song lyrics, we discussed whether or not we liked this song and how it made us feel inside. We also discovered the tempo of this song is in-between. Finally, we acted out the actions of the lyrics as well as having a go at singing the lyrics.

On Wednesday, you were introduced to your RE topic of good news. We had a great chat about how we feel when we hear good news. This is the theme of our new topic – What good news stories did Jesus tell? We thought about what good news is, the good news stories that we have heard before, and at our tables we sorted news stories and drew pictures from the bible. What a busy lesson!

On Thursday, you were introduced to history. We spoke about what we think history is, what we might look at in history and what you would like to learn about in the history of transport. Many of you were super excited to hear that we were going to look at who invented different types of transport and what they first looked like. In this lesson, you were introduced to the new language of: past, present, old and now. You were able to clearly explain what these words meant and this then helped us to order old and now transport. We understood that transport like the penny farthing and the first air craft was very dangerous! You realised that the materials of what the types of transport were made out of has changed quite a lot. I was so impressed by how easily you could categorise the transport into 'old' and 'now'.

On Friday, you were introduced to Y1 computing. We started by looking what an algorithm is and you found out that it is a set of clear instructions that you give to a computer, ipad, robot or even a phone. I gave you an unclear instruction of what to draw on your whiteboard and then when you looked at your partner's whiteboard you realised that these instructions were not clear because the output of everyone's drawings were very different. When I gave you some more instructions, you realised that all of your drawings were the same. This then helped us to understand how important it is that algorithms are very clear and detailed. We then learnt the code for 'forwards' which is an arrow pointing up. You took part in a practical activity where you had to get your type of transport home and you had to challenge yourself by writing the algorithm code for it. I was so impressed to hear children giving clear instructions like 'move forwards once'.

Y1, I am amazed at how hard you are working and settling back into the school routines. Your brains have been super busy this week so I think it is time to turn them off and have a nice rest over the weekend ready for Monday.

Have a lovely weekend,

Miss Haynes