What an excellent week we have had in year 1! The children are settling back into school routines well and producing some fantastic work.

Maths

This week’s maths focus has been on time. Time can be a really tricky concept but we have been blown away with how well the children have grasped the concept. We started our week by making our own clocks with our learning partners. This was so we understood how a clock works and what the numbers mean. Children in year 1 focus on reading and making o’clock and half past times.

We have used lots of stem sentences to support our learning, we repeat them using My Turn Your Turn to help us remember. These sentences included:

The minute hand is the longer hand

The hour hand is the shorter hand

Minute hand on the top, we say o’clock

Minute hand on the 6, we say half past.

We had to be really careful to look at the hands’ positions before deciding what the time was. We also had to remember when making a half past time, the hour hand didn’t sit exactly on the number.

RWI

Our afternoon speed sounds sessions are well under way now and children have been engaging well. Some groups have also changed levels in RWI (their book colour may have changed). Attached below are the red words for the different colour books for RWI and your child will come home with a copy also. Please encourage your child to practise reading and writing the red words they will need for their RWI level.

As part of RWI and handwriting sessions, children have been focussing on letter formation. It is important for children to form their letters correctly starting and finishing in the correct place. Once they do this, they will be ready to learn cursive writing, a skill needed in year 2.

We are practising reading a variety of words in our RWI sessions including set 1 and 2 sound words, multi syllabic words and suffix words. Children practise looking for special friends, fred talking then saying the word.

 

Topic

For the next 4 weeks our topic focus will be Art and will centre on the Indian artist F N Souza. The children were given clues which they had to use to work out what we were learning. Like super detectives, they quickly worked out the man was an artist, who was from India and was born in 1924. We learnt all about the country he was born, including the animals that live there, famous landmarks, the different types of foods, clothing and money.

Then we learnt about the group F N Souza established with a few fellow artists called the Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group who fought to move art styles on in India and break away from their norm. We explored how art had changed in India through the influence of the group, for example some artists, including Souza, incorporating an abstract style into their work. We then created our own abstract self-portraits using similar art techniques.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, we visited an art gallery in our very own classrooms. Using some art vocabulary we have been using this week, we critiqued some Indian artists’ work, remembering to remain respectful and kind. We also discussed how much we would pay for each piece of art.

Love to learn

Love to learn is back!

This week our focus will be on maths and English. As mentioned before, attached are the RWI book colour red words, please could you practise your child’s level with them (reading and writing). Your child will also come home with a copy of their colour, so you know which ones to practise.

Please practise handwriting with your child ensuring they are forming letters correctly. Attached is a sheet which groups letters together showing similar formations eg curly caterpillar family.

Your maths task this week will link to next week’s learning of shape. We will be learning about 2D and 3D shapes and would like your child to find as many of these shapes in their home environment (or when out and about) as possible. This can be recorded in photos, or your child could draw a picture and label the shapes they saw.

Important messages

• Love to learn books need to be returned to school on a Tuesday to allow enough quarantine time. We share home learning on a Friday afternoon with the class and if it comes into school later than Tuesday, we will be unable to share it.
• Monday 3^rd May is a bank holiday and school will be shut.
• Number Day is on Friday 7^th May – please dress up in a number theme
• Please could we ask for any old material you have but do not need. If you have any old offcuts or rags of material we could have, we would be very grateful.
• Please encourage your child to read as much as possible at home.  
• Parent teacher consultations will be held in week 4 this term, please make sure you have booked a time slot with your child’s teacher/s.
• PE is on a Tuesday please ensure your child comes in to school wearing their PE kit.

 

From the year 1 teachers

 

Mrs Walker, Mrs Barlow and Mrs Marazzi