Y1 weekly news 3.2.23

This week has been full of celebrations as we have celebrated interfaith week and NSPCC number day. You have loved coming together as a school community to celebrate these two things.

In English this week, you completed your hot writes on your lost and found stories. You all focused on using adjectives, full stops and using and within your writing. These are three things that you have definitely mastered. You have edited these stories using your posh green pen too. At the end of the week, we focused on using our courageous advocacy to inspire us on our next letter writing topic. You listened beautifully to Wangari's tree of peace story which is about a lady in Africa who was also a courageous advocate in 'saving the trees'. We are excited to learn more about Wangari's journey and we are all feeling very inspired by her messages.

In phonics, you have continued to learn your set 3 sounds and additional sounds. You are becoming amazing at retaining these sounds and reading them in words. Well done my phonics superstars!

In maths, we have finished our topic of subtraction within 20. You focused on related facts, comparing number sums and word problems. We have also had a huge focus on fluency by using our daily 10 challenge to answer questions on our whiteboard. You then finished the week by celebrating NSPCC number day on Friday. You played who wants to be a maths millionaire and then we completed some practical work in the garden making tens and ones with natural resources. You loved doing this and experimenting with bigger numbers. The biggest number we made was 209. Can you believe it?! A huge thank you to efforts that were put into your number costumes. Mrs VR, Meg and I definitely enjoyed dressing up as well too. Thank you Mrs Burns for working so hard on organising a fantastic day for us all.

In our afternoon learning we have explored different faiths, different colours in art and the history of Chester zoo. Wow, aren't we busy bees.

To celebrate interfaith week, we explored the religions of Christianity, Buddhism and Sikhism. You listened carefully to 'Jesus the sermon on the mount' 'The Golden Swan' and 'Duni Chand and the needle'. We focused on who the teacher and the learner was in each story. You then realised that although all of these stories are from different faiths they all spread the message of greed and how we should be thankful for the things we do have. You then enjoyed the story of the golden swan so much, you wanted to create your very own stories about greed by changing the character of the swan to a different animal. This helped us to relate this learning to our animal topic. We then got to share our work in a celebration assembly on Friday. Thank you so much Mrs Ward for organising such a fun filled week. We are excited for our interfaith disco next week.

In science this week, we started our focus on animals. You learnt the meaning of vertebrates and non-vertebrates. You then built upon this learning by learning the 5 names of the species in the vertebrate family. Did you know that we are a mammal. You then took 5 common animals and named them and then decided if they were mammal, reptile, amphibian, bird or fish. What an exciting lesson extending your vocabulary even further!

In history, you focused on the question 'How has Chester zoo changed from when it first opened?' You started the lesson on recapping who George Mottershead was and why he was a significant person. You then understood that Chester zoo started at Oakfield house and it got bigger and bigger. You learnt that enclosures used to be built by George himself with the help of his chimpanzee Mary. However, we know that enclosures now are built by builders and architects. Did you know that Chester zoo only had 115 members when it first opened? It now has over 119,000 members. Wow! Even some of you in our class are a part of this number. Our excitement is growing and growing for our trip.

In art this week, you explored warm and cool colours and how this can change the mood of a painting. You thought about what you think of when you hear the word cool and warm, this then helped us to identify warm and cool colours. We looked at Henri Rousseau's art work and realised that some of his backgrounds are warm which tell us the sun was setting but some are cool which tells us it was night time.

In heartsmart this week, we listened beautifully to the story of Boris to remind us who Boris was. You then started your topic of 'Letting love in'. You understood that although you should love other people it is important to love yourselves too. We thought about 'What the best thing is about you?' and you actually found this rather difficult and couldn't pick out your best characteristics. So, we started by me telling you what you are good at and what you are talented in. This then helped you to think about what the best thing was about yourselves. We definitely spread that inner love around the classroom. We linked this to biblical quote of 'Love thy neighbour, as thyself' Matthew 22:39.

Homework has been emailed out for this week! Thank you for always going to the efforts of completing and engaging with this. It really is helping the children's learning.

Have a wonderful weekend my little superstars!

See you on Monday,

Miss Haynes