Y1 weekly news 14.1.21

What an amazing first week back we have had Y1. You have worked so hard and learnt so much.

In English this week we walked into our classroom on Monday to a crime scene. There were lots of clues such as paw prints, black fur, photos of a tiger who had been in our garden and a table with half eaten food on. This hook immersed us into our focused story of the tiger who had come for tea. Your first job was to write a report about what you had seen in the classroom and any clues you had found. We wrote these reports to the police so that they could try and catch the tiger. Throughout the week we had clues being left around school to show that the tiger was still around. Finally on Thursday you were told that the police had caught the tiger who was hiding out at the moss and took him back to Chester zoo. On Friday, Chester zoo wrote us a letter all about the tiger who had been in our classroom and showed us pictures and videos of the tiger . We hope to see the tiger when we go to Chester zoo! Throughout the week, you have learnt our story of the tiger who came to tea, learn our SPAG focus of using – ed at the end of verbs when you are writing in past tense and wrote a small paragraph to sum up the story. You have definitely worked your socks off! We will build upon this learning next week by innovating the story and created a shared class story.

In phonics, you have gone to your new groups and started to learn all of your new sounds. I am so impressed with how amazing you are doing at reading. Please make sure you are reading your book three times at home as this extra practice will really help!

In maths, this week we finished our shape topic with a game of who wants to be a millionaire and a shape quiz. You were then introduced to your new topic of numbers to 20. Firstly, we focused on ordering our numbers to 20 and writing them. You then were introduced to how many tens and ones were in certain numbers. We used lots of practical resources to show this and you managed to pick it up very fast. We then built upon this by understanding that if 17 has 1 ten and 7 ones then that must mean that 10 add 7 is 17. We used lots of STEM sentences to build our language around this.

In our afternoons you have been dancing queens, jungle artists and geographers.

Our main focus this week in our afternoon learning was geography. We finished our topic of our local area by comparing Wybunbury to London. You understood what a capital city was and what the word population meant. We found out that London has a much larger population than Wybunbury. There are also more places to visit in London. We then built upon this learning by focusing on the different types of transport in London and Wybunbury. We found out that London has boats so people can travel down the river Thames but Wybunbury doesn’t because the Brook is not wide or deep enough. We then stood outside of school and completed a traffic survey to find out what transport we see in Wybunbury. It seems lorries and vans are the most popular way to get around in Wybunbury!

In art, we finished our big art off and we are so proud of our work and how it makes us smile by having it on our display board. We then turned our focus onto the artist of Henri Rousseau. We created a small fact file on what we had learnt about him and the skills that he uses in his paintings. We found out that he was a realistic painter because when you look at his paintings it makes you feel like you’ve stepped into the jungle. We found out that he uses bold colours with sharp outlines and he painted by using his imagination because he never visited a jungle before. We are so excited to create some paintings in the style of Henri Rousseau.

In computing this week, we focused on our first E safety session which was about how to balance your use of technology. We understood that it isn’t healthy to be on an iPad for too long and if our parents tell us to come off it we should listen to them. We realised that it is very important to ask an adult before going on an iPad or an app as we need to be safe online and ask for permission. We then though about what else we liked to do instead of using technology so that we could create our balance in our lives. You all drew pictures of what else you liked to do and you had some great ideas of crafting, colouring, playing football and going to the park.

In RE this week we started our new topic of God’s kingdom and we looked at our first question of ‘What did Jesus say about the kingdom of God?’ You learnt the story of the mustard seed and how something small can grow into something big. We linked this to our courageous advocacy of the woodland trust and how we are doing something small by raising awareness of the danger of deforestation which could lead to something big where we stop cutting large amounts of trees down. You then thought about your own kingdom and how you would like it to be. You wrote beautiful sentences about what your kingdom would be like. I would definitely like to live in these places!

For our music lesson this week, we listed lots of animals on the whiteboard, and had to choose an animal and clap the syllables of that animal to create a rhythm. To help us with this, we clapped the syllables of the christian names of all of us! We did my turn, your turn with Miss Holland. Then once we felt confident, we worked in pairs to practice. We chose a wide range of animals! We are really getting in to this topic now!

In your sportscape session you did a fantastic session of dodgeball which you all really enjoyed!

For our wellbeing session you chose to go on the adventure playground. We used our gross motor skills to hand from ropes, pull ourselves up ladders and we balanced ourselves along the wooden beams. It was lovely to watch you play so nicely with your friends and help them out when they needed it.

We have had a fantastic first week back with lots of great learning opportunities. You have worked so hard and I am always so proud of the superstars that you are.

Your homework has been emailed out on Friday and it is a focus on your numbers to 20 With a school jam activity of a number hunt.

Have an amazing weekend Y1!

See you on Monday,

Miss Haynes