Well done for reaching the end of week 1! We can’t believe it is term 5 already, this year is flying by. We have had an excellent week in year 1, the children are well rested and eager to learn.

Maths

Team Cyan and Team Turquoise swapped their maths this week to complete the learning they missed in the last week of term.

Team Cyan have explored mass this week, using scales to discuss the mass of different objects in their classroom. We discussed how scales work including how to make them balance and what this means. We used non- standard units of measure (cubes) to weigh objects and used skills of estimating, comparing and ordering. We then linked our adding knowledge to our mass learning and added weights of ingredients together for making cakes. Then we applied our subtraction learning to solve take away problems.  

Team Turquoise learnt about money this week. We recapped the value of coins and notes, then used this to add up the value of coins in a purse. We used jottings of our tens and ones place value knowledge to help us with our counting. We then counted amounts and found the coin we could exchange for, this meant that we had found an amount that was equal to what we had in our purse. We then found coins which would make a given total, remembering the coins we have. Finally, we found the difference between amounts by giving change, to find the difference, we counted on.

When learning about money, it is great to have real life experiences of handling and using money to help children understand the concept in context. Any opportunities where you could include your child in using money, for example when paying in the shops, would be hugely beneficial.

RWI

This week children have started to have an extra RWI session in the afternoons. We are focussing on set 3 sounds which will be new to some children. We are seeing great progress in children’s reading and want to give them every opportunity to succeed. By exposing them to all the sounds, we are giving children the tools they need to decode unknown words. For children who have learnt set 3 sounds, this is a chance to recap and embed their learning. During our speed sound sessions in both the mornings and the afternoons, our recap words include multi syllabic words. Children are practising using their sounds to chunk words into syllables. Some words can seem quite daunting, but it is amazing what the children can achieve.

 

PSHE

This week our PSHE learning has been based on a book. Term 5’s focus is ‘It’s Good To Be Me,’ where we will be exploring what makes us different and what makes us special. The book we focussed on this week is called ‘Peanut Goes For The Gold.’ A story about a guinea pig with a difference. Peanut always does things differently and one day decided they wanted to be a rhythmic dancer. We explored the book through a tell me grid where we discussed our predictions of what we thought might happen, questions it made us think of, inferences we could make about characters and their actions, connections we made to our own experiences or other books and what we liked and disliked about the book. We also had a circle time when we discussed how we would describe ourselves. Some children expressed gender as a part of their identity, in the book Peanut is referred to as they and them, not he or she. We discussed what this meant for Peanut, that sometimes they felt like a girl, and sometimes they felt like a boy. Finally, we thought about our own dreams, some as wild as being a rhythmic dancer. We thought about who might help us achieve our dreams.

Important messages

• PE is on a Tuesday please ensure your child comes in to school wearing their PE kit.
• Please encourage your child to read as much as possible at home.  
• Home learning will restart from next week.
• Parent teacher consultations will be held in week 4 this term, more information will be sent out soon.
• Lots of children have lovely new uniforms, please make sure they are labelled. We have sharpies if you need us to write it in.

 

From the year 1 teachers

 

Mrs Walker, Mrs Barlow and Mrs Marazzi