Year 1 Weekly News: 3.11.23

Our first week back after half term has flown by. We have started lots of new learning topics this week including a very exciting topic of toys in our History lessons....

In Phonics this week, we recapped all of our sounds and even practised reading some tricky red words. We read a range of RWI books to improve our blending and fluency. 

In English, we spent a week focusing on the SPaG side of things as we await our new exciting book to arrive. We focused on learning some new English language words including "singular, nouns and plural". We learnt that plural means more than one of something. We also learnt that with plurals come some spelling rules. We learnt about adding s and es depending on the word ending. We played a range of games and activities throughout the week to consolidate these spelling rules. Well done, team!

In Maths, we continued focused our attention on subtraction. We used part wholes, number lines and concrete resources to help us build an understanding of less than and subtraction. We spent this week looking at part wholes in relation to fact families. We learnt about the corresponding number sentences that a part whole can create. We did this both practically and through a range of questions throughout the week. Well done!

In P.E, we started a new unit of work all around gymnastics. We got used to the mat and beam apparatus as well as talking about points of contact. We created mini routines and thought about the best way to hold a balance. We will build on this knowledge next week. 

We had a very packed music lesson this week. We began watching a philharmonic orchestra and learnt the different instrument sections. We know a conductor's role now, and also what a backing vocalist is. The programme presenter played a saxophone and was accompanied by: a keyboard player, a bass guitar player and a drummer playing a timpani drum. Following on from this, we listened to a spooky piece of music. Our task was to listen to any changes we could hear when instruments were added and removed. In music this is called layering. We created our own layering technique by counting 1,2,3 starting with one person, then the next person, and so on. We also did this in reverse. We could hear how the volume changed too. Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star was our final song to listen to. After dancing and singing along to the song, we decided this version was a lot louder than the one we learnt when we were younger! We loved the onscreen characters too!

In our wellbeing time, we thought about all the strategies we had learnt over the last half term. We then spent time thinking about how we feel when we feel safe. We drew pictures to illustrate this. 

On Thursday, PC Nick came into our class to explore the roles of the police. We learnt all about the important phone numbers and what we should do if we see something not right taking place. Thanks, PC Nick!

Throughout the week, we also had lots of provision time. During this time we enjoyed the garde, explored the provision areas in the classroom and enjoyed some role play games with our friends. It was great to see the construction and mud kitchen areas in full use once again. 

What a brilliant week!

Enjoy your Sunday,

Mr Dale