Welcome back to the final term of year 1. We have had an amazing week of learning and it is great to be back.

Maths

We have practised different strategies to help us solve maths mentally this week. We started the week by practising our doubles. We did this through a rotation of activities and used the stem sentence double____ is ____ to help us remember the doubles we found.

 

We then used our doubles to help us to solve near doubles calculations. We learnt that when a number is one more or one less than the number we are adding to, we can use our near doubles.

For example to find the answer to 5 + 6, we can find double 5 add 1.

After this, we added multiples of ten together. We identified that multiples of ten do not have any ones, so we could focus on the tens digit. We found patterns in calculations for example we recognised that we could use 1+1 = 2 to solve 10 + 20 = 30.

RWI/ English

Team turquoise were learning about the story, ‘The Secret Sky Garden.’ The story is about a lonely girl Funni, who loves to be at an old airport carpark. But the carpark is grey and dull and something was missing. The character began to create a garden in the carpark, and after a few months she had created a beautiful garden. But something was still missing. A boy named Zoo saw the carpark from an aeroplane and he wanted to visit the garden. When Zoo visited, they realised they both had a lot in common. This story is about a beautiful friendship blossoming between the two characters. We looked at an image from the book The Secret Sky Garden. After a discussion about the image, we made some predictions about the story based on what we could see. Then we read the story to see if any of our predictions were correct. 

Once we had read the book, we asked questions about it to help with our understanding. Then we learnt that verbs are ‘doing’ words. We read each page of the book carefully and identified the verbs acting them out as we read them. We also wrote verbs down and the class had to guess what verb it was. We acted out the story to help us to sequence the events in the story and our friends helped us to see if we got the correct order. Finally, we learnt about capital letters. We learnt that we use them at the beginning of our sentences and for proper nouns. We completed an activity similar to RWI tick or fix, where we had to identify capital letters and if they had been used correctly.

 

 

Team Cyan have been exploring a book of poems. The book is sectioned into poems about the different seasons. We started the week listening to a poem called Out and About without seeing the book or the pictures from it. We had to imagine what the poem was about and created a snapshot using what we saw in our mind’s eye. We learnt about nouns (people, places or things) and listened for nouns in some poems. We then had a copy of a poem from the book and we had to write all of the nouns around the poem. We identified nouns such as sand, beach, sea and ice cream! Using pictures, we wrote down words and phrases which reminded us of each season, and then used these to write our own poems. This is our class poem that we wrote together!

Sun is shining,

Hot, hot, hot

Waves are splashing,

Splosh, splosh, splosh,

Ice lollies are melting,

Sticky, sticky, sticky,

Sunglasses are on,

Bright, bright, bright.

 

 

 

PSHE

We have started to discuss our transition into year 2 this week. We are reading a book called, ‘My Teacher is a Monster.’ This week, we discussed the transition, and discussed how we feel about the change. The story is about a little boy who thinks his teacher is a monster, she roars and stomps around at school. Until one day he sees his teacher at the park! During their visit, they begin to understand one another a little more and their relationship develops. We discussed how our opinions about people can change over time, and that getting to know someone better can help us see them differently. We discussed what we could do to get to know our new teachers a little better.

 

RE

This week we have been learning about how Muslims celebrate. We started by learning about the Islamic New Year, the prophet Muhammed and his importance among Muslims. We also learnt about Mawlid al-Nabi which is the day Muhammed was born and died. We discussed how different Muslims remember this day, some celebrate the birth whilst some spend time quietly reflecting, thinking of what a blessing Muhammed was. We thought about what we are thankful for and why. Finally, we learnt about the celebration of Eid al-Fitr which is celebrated at the end of Ramadan (a time of fasting). During the festival, Muslims thank God for the strength and self-control he gave them whilst fasting. Eid al-Fitr is a time to be happy, wear their best clothes and share homemade treats and gifts with one another. We thought of a time we have dressed smartly for a celebration and drew pictures of ourselves.

 

Love to learn

Our love to learn focus this week is on RE. Following on from how Muslims celebrate, we would like you to find out about another Muslim celebration and record your findings in your love to learn book. Don’t forget to keep up you home reading too.

Important messages

• Next Thursday we will be exploring our senses. As part of this lesson, we will be doing some taste testing involving a variety of flavoured crisps and some fruit pastilles. Please let your class teacher know if your child needs an alternative.
• As the hot weather continues, please ensure your child comes to school with a water bottle, hat and sun cream for them to reapply at lunchtime if you wish.

 

From the year 1 teachers

 

Mrs Walker, Mrs Barlow and Mrs Cheshire