Term 6, Week 7

We have had a very busy week.  We have enjoyed listening to a different Julia Donaldson book every day and each book has informed our writing for our summer safety leaflet.  On Monday we read the book ‘Zog and the flying doctors’ and first talked about sun safety and then wrote about how to keep safe in the sun on our summer safety leaflet.  On Tuesday we read the book ‘Super Worm’ and discussed and wrote about road safety on our leaflet.  On Wednesday we read ‘The smartest giant in town’ and wrote about water safety.  On Thursday we read ‘Monkey Puzzle’ and wrote about what to do if you get lost.  On Friday we read ‘The Highway Rat’ and wrote about stranger danger. The children will be bringing their summer safety leaflet home on Monday when they have finished colouring in their pictures to share with their family.

In Maths this week we have been revising 2D and 3D shapes by going on a shape hunt outside.  If the children found a 2D or 3D shape they got one point and if they could name it correctly they got two points.  They really enjoyed this activity.  The boys were really pleased to find a missing ball in the bushes (they knew it was a sphere so they got two points!)

We have also been weighing this week to find which piece of fruit was the heaviest or lightest.

We used our colour mixing skills to make the correct colour of paint needed for our salt dough animals.

We have had a multi-sports afternoon and practised our football, tennis, hockey and athletics skills.

On Friday the Year 1 crew entertained some senior citizens from the local community.  They sang three songs which you may have heard them singing at home: ‘Oh I do like to be beside the seaside’, ‘Bring me sunshine in your smile’ and Que sera sera by Doris Day.  They also recited the poem, ‘Pussy cat, pussy cat, where have you been?’  The children  then asked our guests questions about their life whilst enjoying a cream tea.  We have had so many people say how impressed they were with their behaviour, singing, confidence and oracy skills.  I am extremely proud of them all.  They have been a joy to teach all year because they are so receptive to learning and Friday afternoon proved this.  The children were so interested in the lives of our guests and asked many more questions than we had discussed in class.   I am really excited about moving our learning forward further in Year 2.

 

Our entry codes to the classroom for Monday and Tuesday next week will be: all and school.

The children will be bringing home a letter to ask if they could bring in a photo, a postcard or a memento of anywhere they have explored over the summer holidays for the first day of next term.

Thank you so much for all of our lovely cards and gifts.

Have a lovely summer break and I look forward to seeing you all on Tuesday 3rd September.

 

 

Term 6, Week 6

This week we have been reading the book ‘Zog’ by Julia Donaldson and looking at Zog’s character.  Zog always perseveres when he finds things a little tricky.  Zog is also very kind and helpful and always listens and respects others.   The children acted out parts of the story before writing their sentences.  They then shared their sentences with a partner so they could give each other kind feedback in a respectful way!

In Maths this week we have been learning about direction and position.  The children started the week using the language of forwards, backwards, right turn and left turn to direct their partner to move across the field.  We talked about using our thumbs and fore finger to make a L shape to check which was our left.

We then looked at using a quarter turn, a half turn, a three-quarter turn and a whole turn and used the language of clockwise and anti-clockwise.  We all found this a little tricky but we persevered like Zog!  We made our own treasure maps on a grid.  We drew six items that the pirate (our partner) had to  reach on the map using the directional and positional language we have learnt this week.  I was very impressed by the quality of the maps.

In Art this week we have been sketching and labelling Zog.   We have some amazing artists in Year 1.

Some children made Zog out of salt dough but some children chose to design and make a different creature.  They wrote a label to give details about their animal.

We have been learning to mix different shades of colour ready to paint our salt dough creatures on Monday.

On Thursday we spent half of the morning in our new Year 2 classroom.  We found out where everything was stored in the classroom and talked about our hopes and dreams for Year 2.  We decorated our star with all the things that we would like to do in Year 2.  We also talked about our learning theme for September, ‘Who is the greatest explorer?’  We played a game with the giant blow up globe outside to help us remember all the different continents and sang our favourite song all about the continents.

Next week our sight word codes for entry to the classroom will be: what, when, went, where and were.  Please help your child to read and spell these words.

Many thanks for all your support.  Have a great weekend.  Keep reading!

Mrs Poole

 

Term 6, Week 5

We have looked at alternative ways to spell the same sound this week and we have learnt some of the spelling rules, for example ‘ay’ is used at the end of the word more than ‘ai’.  The children had to choose which column on their whiteboard to put the dictated word in.  They then wrote dictated sentences using this knowledge remembering to use capital letters, full stops, exclamation marks, question marks, ‘ed’ and ‘est’ endings

On Friday the children wrote an assessment piece after watching a short ‘Spy Fox’ film clip to inspire their writing.  I was so pleased to see how many spelling rules they had remembered.   Great listening and concentration as always Year 1!

 

In Maths this week we have been revising the four operations: adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing.  We have also completed some reasoning and problem solving questions for each operation too.  For example, how many different ways can you share 20 sweets?

We have looked at changes during our PSHE lessons this week.  We talked about the life cycles of different animals and how the children have changed from when they were born to now.  There have been so many things that they have learnt to help them grow, for example, learning to crawl then walk, talk, read and write, run and skip, even ride a bike and some have learnt to swim.

We then talked about changes that may happen to us in the future and how we would feel.  The children chose an object from the bag and said what change that may represent.  Some children explained how they felt when they had a new brother or sister, some children could talk about moving schools and moving house.  We talked about our feelings of moving to Year 2.  We are all very excited to be moving to a new classroom.

Our sight word entry codes to the classroom for next week are: friend, have, would, should, could.  Please help your child to read and spell these words,

Thank you for continuing to read with your child at home.  I can see the difference it is making to their writing.

Have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Poole

Term 6, Week 4

In Maths this week we have been recapping fractions.  We have found a half and a quarter of a shape and a half and a quarter of  an amount    We used our knowledge of dividing by two and by four to support our learning.

In English this week we have been working really hard on our spelling and grammar.  The children have written dictated sentences and tried to remember all of our spelling rules this week.  I have been really impressed by their sight word spellings too.  They have remembered to add a question mark where needed and consistently used capital letters and full stops.

I have seen a lot of progress made in bowling and batting during our PE lessons for rounders this week.  The children are watching the ball and they are able to strike it really well.

In our RE lessons this week we have looked at the importance of communion for Christians.  The children acted out the Last Supper.  Jesus gave the first piece of bread to the one that was going to betray him – Judas.  We have also looked at the similarities and differences between the Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths.  The children found out that all three faiths have a special book, special meals and celebrations and places of worship where they meet as a big family.  We learnt that you must take off your shoes if you enter a mosque and that ladies and gentlemen sit separately.  The Jewish have Torah Scrolls and they are kept in a special ark  in a synagogue and are read using a yad (a silver pointer).  The children wrote what they knew about each faith on big sheets of paper using the picture clues to help them.

Next week our entry codes to the classroom will be: eleven, fourteen, fifteen, thirteen and twenty.

Have a lovely weekend – enjoy the sunshine.

Many thanks for all your support.

Mrs Poole

Term 6, Week 3

In Maths this week we have been recapping time and measuring in cm.  We have also had fun learning about capacity,  full, half full, a quarter full and empty.

The children were asked to find an animal around the classroom and record the time each animal had set their alarm clock for.   The times were set for o’clock and half past the hour.

The children were given different objects and shapes to measure accurately.  We talked about the importance of lining up the 0 cm mark with the start of the line they were about to measure.

We had great fun finding out which container had the most capacity to hold water.

 

In art this week we have completed colour and line drawings using paint.

At the beginning of the week the children wrote their story innovation of ‘The Queen’s Hat’.  They checked their work for full stops and capital letters, neat handwriting, correct sight word spellings, the use of ‘and’, ‘because’ and adjectives.

Towards the end of the week the children planned and then wrote their own ‘Magic Key’ stories.  It was lovely to see all the interesting places the magic key took them and how they helped the people they met.

Next week our sight word codes for entry into the classroom will be:

eight, two, four, one, twelve.

Have a lovely weekend and thank you for all your support with reading.

Mrs Poole

 

 

 

 

Term 6, Week 2

The phonics screening checks have gone extremely well this week.  I have been so proud of every child’s approach and results.  Thank you for all the reading and phonics support you have given at home, it has made such a difference.

This week we have been reading the book, ‘The Queen’s hat’.  Our maths has been linked to this story.  The children were asked to measure a picture of Buckingham Palace using cms and recreate the drawing with correct measurements on a piece of A3 paper.   I was very impressed with their accurate drawings.

The children were also asked to estimate how many of the Queen’s soldiers were on the train.   They then had to estimate the quantity of different items in several boxes, record their estimate and then count the actual amount.  They used greater than, less than and equals symbols to compare the amounts.

Another maths activity linked to our book was to build a palace for the Queen from 3D shapes.  The children needed the help of a bit of blue tack to hold the spheres on top of the cuboids.  They then drew and labelled the 3D shapes they had used in their palace design.

 

In English we have been planning our own story innovation of ‘The Queen’s hat.’  The children thought of their own character and an item that would be blown off by the strong wind and where their item may go and finally land.   Next week the children will be using their plan to write their story for our class library.   We have so many budding authors in Year 1 this year.   I can’t wait to read their published stories.

Next week our sight word entry codes for the classroom will be: asked, looked, called, could and going.  We are looking at adding ‘ed’ endings as a lot of children are writing a ‘t’ rather than ed.  Please help your child to read and spell these sight words.  Many thanks.

We are going to be recapping all of the phonic sounds every day to keep them at the forefront of our minds.  The children will still be spotting digraphs, trigraphs and split digraphs when we read whole class stories under the visualiser.   We will also be concentrating more on comprehension questions as the children will have to tackle written comprehensions in Year 2.

I am so excited to be taking my lovely Year 1 class up to Year 2.  We had a celebration afternoon today with squash and biscuits because all of the children did their very best in the phonics screening check and are ‘always’ children.  Children that ‘always’ work so hard at everything to strive to do their very best.  I am immensely proud of them all as I am sure you are too.

Many thanks for all your support.

Mrs Poole.

Term 6  Week 1

Our theme for Term 6 is ‘What has the Queen seen?’  We are looking back over the Queen’s life to see how things have changed over the last 93 years.   We were interested to see the difference in telephones, toys, buses, planes and trains over the decades.  The children used their observational skills to sketch some of these items and placed them on a timeline from 1926 to the present day.

The children were challenged to make a moving vehicle independently.  They were successful and one vehicle even transported the colouring pens back to the pot.  We had races too to see which car was the fastest.

We have read the book ‘The Queen’s Knickers’.  In this book the Queen has special knickers for every occasion and some have special powers and can turn into handy equipment.  The children wrote about what their knickers looked like using some great adjectives and what they would turn into.  We had some very creative ideas: a lifeboat, a parachute, a whiteboard, an aeroplane, a cake, to name but a few!

The children also watched the video clip of James Bond visiting Buckingham Palace and escorting the Queen to the helicopter for her skydive into the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games.  They then had so many questions for the Queen about her palace and dogs mainly.  They wrote a letter to the Queen to ask her their questions. I hope she will reply.  We are planning to invite some retired ladies and gentlemen to a cream tea at the end of the term and the children thought the Queen may like to come too.

In maths we have been looking again at the value of coins and notes.  The children made a royal purse encrusted with coins and wrote the value next to each coin.  Please can you help your child to recognize coins and notes at home?  In Year 2 they will be expected to add coins to find a total. Many thanks.

In PE this term we are learning to play rounders, one of my favourite games.

We started by playing catch with a bean bag and as we became more successful at catching we took a step backwards so we were further apart.

We then moved onto throwing a tennis ball to our partner through a hoop to help us get the height right.

Next a tennis racket was used to hit the ball.  We then moved on to practising hitting the ball with a rounders bat.

We hope to have all the skills in place soon so we can play a game of rounders.

Next week is phonics screening check week.  Please keep reading with your child over the weekend.  I have sent a phonics paper home but if you want more you can access them using google – just type in ‘phonics screening check papers’.

We will be revising split digraphs next  week in phonics: a-e (cake), e-e (evening),  i-e (bike), o-e (home),  u-e (use).

Our sight words for entry into the classroom will be: come, some, people, little, called.  Please help your child to read and spell these sight words.

Many thanks for all your support. Have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Poole

 

Term 5 – Week 5

In maths this week we have been revising our knowledge of division.  The children remembered the methods from previous learning.  They found it useful to draw circles to share out the amount equally.

 

We have been finding out more about the plague this week and have written about what happened if you got the plague.  A couple of fascinating facts – if you caught the plague, you and your family were locked in your house for 40 days and a red cross was painted on your door.  We also learnt that the nursery rhyme ‘Ring a ring o’ roses’ is a song about the plague.  We listened to a few extracts from Samuel Pepys’ diary and realized that it is important to write a diary so people in the future will know what it was really like to live through a period of history.

We have been looking at relationships in PSHE this week.  We have looked at: families, how to be a good friend, different greetings, people who help us and how each one of us is incredible.

We talked about what a good friend should be like and then sorted statements into true or false. We realized to have good friends you have to be a good friend yourself.

The children voted on the top three qualities that you need to be a good friend:

1^st           Be kind

2^nd          Say sorry

3^rd          Care about other people

We played ‘pass the squeeze’.  The children sat in a circle and held the hand of the person sitting either side of them. They closed their eyes and waited for the greeting to reach them.

We greeted each other in different ways: hugs, fist pumps, high fives, bows, shaking hands.

Thank you for supporting our sports day.  The family atmosphere was lovely, as was the weather and the wonderful children.  I think we may have some future Olympic champions at St. Anne’s.

Our sight word entry codes to the classroom for term 6 week 1 will be: there, were, where, their, what.  Please help your child to read and spell these words.

We will also be revising all sounds during the first week back for our phonics screening test (week commencing 10^th June.)  Please keep reading with your child over half-term.  If you want to look for past papers online just type  ‘phonics screening check’ into Google and you will be able to access the papers for the last seven years.

Have a lovely half-term break.

Thank you for all your support.

Mrs Poole

 

Term 5 – Week 4

We have been revising multiplication this week.  We worked practically to start with using hoops containing tomatoes.  We then drew the ‘groups of’ (hoops) as circles and the amount (tomatoes) as dots within each circle to support our workings out when multiplying (see picture below for 5 x 3).  We counted all the dots to find the total.

We used different vocabulary to help our mathematical understanding,  for example, ‘5 groups of 3’, ‘5 lots of 3’, ‘5 times 3’.  We also drew arrays to help us find the answer.  All the children enjoyed multiplication and asked if they could carry on rather than rotating to their next activity.   The super challenge involved using their knowledge of the 2, 5 and 10 times table to find the answer rather than drawing circles and dots.  For example, 8 x 10 would have taken a long time to draw as circles and dots so the children put up 8 fingers and counted each finger as a 10, they soon got to 80.  They also used this method to count in twos and fives.   Thank you for using TT Rockstars at home to practise the 2, 5 and 10 times table.  Their knowledge of their times tables has definitely improved.

In English this week we have been learning about the Great Plague of 1665.  The children pretended they were a plague doctor and wrote about the causes and the symptoms of the Great Plague.   I reassured the children that fleas do not carry the disease today and they will not catch the plague.  We compared the differences in the doctors and the conditions between 1665 and today and we all agreed that we would rather be alive now rather than in 1665.

In the afternoons this week we have been looking at different faiths and asking the question ‘Where do I belong?’  We started by talking about all the different organisations and clubs that we belong to, for example, Beavers, Rainbows, sway dance, swimming, gymnastics, football.   We then agreed that we all belong to our own families as well as to the St. Anne’s family and it made us feel good.  We understand that not every family will look the same.

We talked about some of the things that are the same for different religions.  We learnt that Christians get baptised to show that they belong to God’s family.  We had an infant baptism (see below) where the ‘vicar’ christened the baby, “Isabel Board.”  The parents and godparents promised to bring the baby up to be part of God’s family.

We watched a video of ‘Jesus” baptism in the River Jordan (played by actors of course).  Without a baptismal pool big enough for an adult’s full immersion baptism we were forced to use the baby again and a bowl of water to show a full immersion baptism.  It was just as awesome as you can see from the children’s faces below.

The children shared a special family memory with their talk partner and then drew and wrote about it.  Family holidays, celebrating birthdays at Frankie and Benny’s and Christmas featured a lot.  Then they wrote words on post-it notes to describe what the word family means to them: ‘having fun’,  ‘playing games’, ‘eating together’, ‘love’, ‘it feels like home’, ‘holidays’, ‘helping my mum and dad’, ‘sharing my iPad with my brother’,  ‘camping together’, ‘watching TV together’,  ‘kindness’, ‘surprises for them’, ‘thankful’, ‘celebrations’, ‘having a picnic’,  ‘hugs’, ‘a lovely day at the beach’, ‘over-excited’, ‘happy’, ‘going out together’, ‘kisses’, ‘give them love’, ‘cuddles’, ‘watch movies’, ‘going to Nannies’,  ‘belonging’,  ‘play with me’, ‘Mummy, Poppy, Nannie, Granddad, Grandma, Pappy’, ‘they help me when I fall over’.  What words of wisdom from 6 year olds!

We heard about the ‘Holy Family’ and how worried Mary, the mother of Jesus was when she realised she had lost him when he was only 12 years old.  We wrote speech bubbles to show what Mary and Jesus might be saying to one another.  Jesus said, ‘I was in my Father’s house., ‘I was doing my dad’s work’, ‘I was in my Father’s house doing his work; I was talking to the teachers.’

We also looked at how other faiths share special family times and why they are important to them.  We learnt about how Jewish people celebrate Shabbat (their Sabbath Day, day of rest) and made special plaited bread called Challah.

We also made some simple Kippahs, a head covering normally for men to remind them that God is above them.  They are a sign of humility, our value for this term.

Today we found out about the importance of prayer for Muslims.  Prayer is so important to them that they pray five times a day.  We used our clocks to  show the times for prayer and drew a picture of what we would be doing at that time.  We also designed our own prayer mat after looking at some of the Muslim artifacts in school.

We talked about some of the things that are the same for Jews, Christians and Muslims: special family meals, a special book and a building to meet in for worship.

Next week we will be recapping split digraphs again: a-e (made), e-e (evening), i-e (like), o-e (stone), u-e (use).  Please help your child to spot these special friends in words.  Your child will be taking the national phonics screening test week commencing 10th June.  Please keep reading at home over the next couple of weeks.

Our sight word codes for entry to the classroom will be: of, off, one, two, does.

Many thanks for your support.  Please come and talk to me if you have any concerns.

Mrs Poole

 

Term 5 – Week 3

This week in Maths we have been revising subtraction using concrete, pictorial and abstract methods.  We started by using counters to support our taking away, then we drew circles and crossed through the number we were taking away to see how many were left.  We even used jumps on a number line to help us find our answers when solving missing number problems.

In Art we used charcoal to draw Tudor houses and give the effect that they were on fire.

 

To inspire our writing this week we set fire to our Tudor houses and St. Paul’s Cathedral.  The children recorded what they could see, hear, smell and how they felt whilst they watched their houses burn.  They then used these notes to write a poem about the Great Fire of London.  I was very impressed by the adjectives and adverbs they used to describe the fire and their emotions.   They gave their poems a flame effect by colouring to the end of each sentence in either orange, red or yellow.

We have also been practising  races for our forthcoming Sports Day on Thursday 23rd May (weather permitting).  There are still a couple of children who do not have a full PE kit.  Can you please ensure your child has a PE kit in school every day?  Thank you.

We will be recapping the following trigraphs (three letters, one sound) next week: ear (hear), ire (fire), ure (pure), are (share) and air (hair).  Please help your child to spot these special friends in words when reading at home.

Our sight word codes for entry to the classroom will be: school, should, would, there and they.  Please help your child to read and spell these words at home.

Many thanks for all your support.

 

Term 5 – Week 2

This week we have been learning more about the Great Fire of London in 1666. The children have written a recount of our class text, “Toby and the Great Fire of London”, using their story maps to help them.  The results have been amazing.  Some children have written three whole pages and wanted to work through their lunch hour to finish their recount.

In Maths we have been revising methods for addition.  We have challenged ourselves by adding a single digit number to a two-digit number and even added two-digit numbers to two-digit numbers.  We have represented the tens with sticks and the ones with dots to help us add.  Today we had a go at solving simple missing number problems  using different strategies, for example, 6 +  ___ = 11.  We drew 11 dots and then  we drew a lasso around 6.  We then counted the dots that were left to see what the other part was that made the whole (the total).  We also jumped from 6 to 11 on a number line and counted the jumps to find the missing number.

We have been using different coins to purchase items from our bakery.  One child was the shopkeeper and wrote out the price of the cakes and bread for sale and their partner counted out the correct money using 1 p, 2 p, 5 p and 10 p coins.  It was good to see children counting in twos and fives rather than using 1 p coins for larger amounts.  This really was times table knowledge for a practical purpose.  Please keep practising the two, five and ten times table with your children at home and support them to know the value of numbers to 100, for example, “how many tens and ones are there in 74?”

 

The children made a Tudor city of London ready for burning next Friday.  They placed their houses very close together and even made St. Paul’s cathedral.

Next week our sight word codes for entry to the classroom will be: all, said, once and could.  Please help your child to read and spell these words.

We will be revising the following sounds: oa (boat), ar (card), ur (nurse), ai (snail). Please ask your child to spot these special friends when reading at home.

Many thanks for your support and have a lovely bank holiday weekend.  Keep reading!

Mrs Poole

 

 

Term 5 Week 1

Welcome back!  I hope you all enjoyed a wonderful Easter break and the lovely sunshine.

This term we are learning about the Great Fire of London.  To launch our theme the Year 1 class became a bakery on Monday because the Great Fire of London was started by a spark from a baker’s oven.  The children enjoyed making bread and watching it rise before cooking it in our oven.  We talked about how ovens are much safer today than they were in 1666.

The bread rolls smelt delicious.  We decorated brown paper bags with our own bakery’s logo.  We put the bread rolls in the bags to take home to enjoy with butter and jam.  We also made some cake creations for the bakery from play dough.

We have enjoyed reading a story about the Great Fire of London through the eyes of a young boy called Toby.

We made up actions and a story map to help us remember the story as a class and then the children drew their own story map to help support their writing of the recount of the story next week.

We have been learning about Tudor houses and why they burned so easily in the Great Fire of London.  They were mostly made of wood and were built very close together.  Land was very expensive so the bottom floor of the house was smaller than the floors above which overhung and nearly touched the houses across the street.

The children studied pictures of Tudor houses and used their sketching techniques to sketch a replica using sketching pencils.  I was very impressed by the quality of their finished pieces.

This week in Maths we have been revising place value.  We have been counting forwards and backwards within 100.  We have also been looking at how many tens and how many ones there are in numbers and working out what one less and one more would be and what ten less and ten more would be.  The children chose a number between 1 and 100 and represented their chosen number using lines for sticks of ten and dots for ones.  Their partner had to guess what the number was and record it correctly in the tens and ones columns.

Next week we will be revising the following phonics sounds: ew (few),  aw (yawn), au (Autumn), ou (shout but can also be soup), are (care). Please help your child spot these special friends in words whilst reading with them at home.

Our entry codes on the door will be: Saturday, people, school, called and some.  Please help your child to read and spell these words correctly.  Many thanks for all your support.

Have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Poole

Term 4 Week 6

This week has been ‘Easter Week’ at school.  We have studied the Easter story from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday and now have a really good understanding of the meaning of Easter for Christians.  The children have identified why the cross is significant for Christians and why we have Easter eggs.  They understand that an egg produces a new life and enjoyed handling the new born chicks from Busy Bees that were just a couple of days old.

To finish our learning theme about different types of animals we were lucky enough to have a couple of animal experts visit the Year 1 crew.  On Tuesday, Zachary’s mum came in to talk to us about mini-beasts and animal classes.  First, we had to sort all the different specimens and pictures by the number of legs they have.

Then the children were given the opportunity to hold or touch a hissing cockroach.  We learned that their poo is just like fine soil and it is really good for plants and trees so cockroaches play a really important role in our world.

 

We then had to put the different stuffed animals, animal skins  and shells into the following classes: mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians.  The children used their knowledge gained this term and were very successful at classifying.

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On Wednesday Mason’s mum and dad brought in five of their four week old puppies.  The children loved cuddling them.  The look on their faces said it all.  The children asked some very interesting questions in their quest to find out more about the puppies.

The children cut out the characters from the Easter story and stuck them on lolly sticks to act out the Easter story in small groups before writing the story in their learning journals.

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On Thursday the children went outside to make their own Easter garden in a hoop.  Fynley made three massive crosses by using planks of wood that he found and made the tomb in his hoop.  He remembered that there was a criminal on a cross either side of Jesus, “one said he was sorry but one didn’t.”

 

On Friday we made Easter nests by melting chocolate and covering rice krispies.  The children were interested to see the reversible change in the chocolate when it was hot and when it cooled again.

The Year 1 crew also made crosses from natural twigs and different coloured wool to remember the Easter story.

In Maths this week we have been learning about the value of coins.  We played shops.  One child wrote out a price for the 3D shapes in their shop and their partner paid the price with their coins.  We also had fun rubbing the coins with wax crayons and labelling them.

At the end of the week the children were able to use different coins to make a total up to 20p.  Some children even managed to find different coins to total one pound.

We finished the week with an Easter egg hunt outside.

Happy Easter to you all.

Our spellings for Term 5 Week 1 will be: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  The days of the week will also be our codes to enter the classroom.

We will be recapping our split digraphs again during the first week back: u-e (cube), a-e (cake), o-e (home), e-e (evening), i-e (bike). Please help your child to spot these special friends when reading at home.  Please keep reading over the holidays.  We only have 6 school weeks until the national phonics screening test.

Many thanks.

Mrs Poole

 

 

Term 4 – Week 5

In Maths this week we have been looking at the value of numbers by representing two-digit numbers with sticks of ten and dots for ones.   The children were then asked to choose up to 6 two-digit numbers from a random list and order them from the smallest to the biggest. They explained that they needed to look at the number of tens first and then the ones to check which number was smaller or bigger.  I also set them a challenge to write numbers to 100 .

The children have been working really hard at their pre-cursive handwriting and have written sentences that include the sound of the day using their every time we write skills.  They remembered to start their sentences with a capital letter and end it with a full stop and used  fingers spaces that were just the right size.   They got into the habit of reading their sentence back to ensure it made sense .

Thank you for the boxes.  The children have really enjoyed making a habitat for their clay animals.  We spent a lovely afternoon in the sunshine on Thursday collecting natural resources to make homes for our animals.  I was impressed by the children’s knowledge of what their animal would need to survive.  Bethany explained that her giraffe would need tall trees so she pushed twigs into her box and stuck leaves to the tops of the twigs with cellotape.

Next week we will be recapping the following sounds: ire (fire), ure (pure), are (share), au (Autumn), aw (dawn).  Please help your child to spot these special friends when reading with them at home.

The sight word codes to enter the classroom will be: who, where, were, there and their.  Please help your child to read and spell these sight words.

Next week Zachary’s mum will be coming in on Tuesday to talk about her role at Bristol Zoo  and will be bringing some cockroaches in for us to study.  Mason’s mum will be coming in on Wednesday with 5 puppies to show the children and answer questions about them.   If your child is sensitive to either of these animals please let me know.

Many thanks for your continued support.

Mrs Poole.

Term 4 – Week 4

This week the children have undertaken some maths assessments to highlight any gaps in their knowledge.  This will help me to plan the teaching to fill these gaps next week.  It looks like we will need to do a little more work on doubling and halving, recognising the value of coins and number bonds (pairs) to make 10 and 20.   The children also need a little more time practising measuring in cm with a ruler from 0 cm.  If you have a ruler at home perhaps they could record some measurements of household items and bring the measurements into class to show.  Knowing number bonds to 10 and to 20 fluently will really help your child with their maths as they move up through the school – perhaps you could practise these pairs of numbers on your drive to and from school?

Please let your child pay with real money in a shop wherever possible or play shops with them at home.  My mum played shops with me for hours when I was 6; I loved it!  We will be using real money more in class after the Easter break.

We have been looking at non-fiction books (information books) to look up facts about animals before attempting to write our own fact files about our favourite animal.   We have enjoyed learning facts about a variety of animals, wild and domestic –  Puppies are deaf and blind when they are born.  Meerkats stand in a line when a snake approaches so they look too big for the snake to eat.

We have had a block of art afternoons this week as you will probably have guessed by the state of your children’s clothes!  On Monday the children really enjoyed watching a video about how to make animals from clay.  First we designed our animal and numbered the parts of the body to know how many pieces we needed to cut our clay into.  The children learned how to join legs, trunks, ears etc to bodies and the results were fantastic.  Here are a few pictures of the process and end results:

We have also been making colour washes with paint to camouflage our animals and blending paints to make an African sunset for a silhouette picture.   The children drew around animal stencils and used their cutting skills to cut out their silhouette animal before sticking it on their painted African sunset.  The results were striking.

 

If you have any old t-shirts or large shirts that could be used as an apron to protect clothes during our messy activities I would be very grateful.

On Monday the children will be making a habitat for their clay animal.  Please could you send your child in with a  small cardboard box or container so that they can make their animal a home?  Many thanks.

We will be recapping the following sounds next week: oi, (coin), or (born), ar (car), ow (as in snow) and alternative sound (as in cow) and ice (split i-e with a soft c).  Please see if your child can spot these special friends when reading at home.

Our code words to enter the classroom will be: sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen and twenty.  Please help your child to read and spell these words.

Many thanks for all your support.  It is making a massive difference.  Have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Poole

 

 

 

 

 

Term 4 – Week 3

In Maths this week we have been learning to read the mathematical symbols for division and multiplication so we know which operation to use.  The children have been confident dividing and multiplying using a range of methods over the last couple of weeks but this week they had to be detectives to check the symbol before attempting to answer the questions.

On Thursday we had a great time visiting Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm.  When we arrived it was raining and very windy so we stayed inside the barns and the warm reptile house and learnt all about the farm animals, the crocodile, snakes and lizards.  We also had the opportunity to milk a cow (not a real one).

Then it was Year 1’s turn to go into the educational workshop where we learnt about the special skills that some animals have to adapt to their environment.  We learnt some fascinating facts, for example, giraffes have dark blue/purple tongues to stop their tongues getting sun burnt and cockroaches can survive for two weeks if their head gets chopped off because their brain is in their body!  The children were very brave and touched a cockroach and a snake to find out what they felt like.  Beth was surprised that the snake wasn’t slimy at all.

After our workshop we washed our hands before eating our packed lunch whilst watching an animal show in the Ark Arena.  We learnt about the foods and products that we get from different groups of animals.  We also learnt that chicks are born with one tooth to help them hatch from their egg.

As we walked out of the arena after our lunch to go and see the zoo animals we were welcomed with blue sky and even a flash of sun shine.  The wind had dropped too so we had a very enjoyable afternoon walking around the outside enclosures.  Our first stop was the elephants.   The elephants came over to say hello so we had a great view of these magnificent creatures.

We then made our way to the lions, tigers, bears and giraffes.  We saw two baby lion cubs playing with their daddy.   We spent a long time watching the giraffes use their long tongues to strip the branches – the children were so excited to see the giraffes tongues after learning so much about them.  You really can’t beat first hand experiences for putting learning into a context.

After our encounter with the giraffes we made our way back to the play barn via the zebra and bison enclosures.

We said goodbye to our friends the meerkats.  I think the meerkats were sad to see us leave.

Thank you for supporting our trip to Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm.  The impact of real life learning on the children’s writing the following day was priceless.

Next week we will be recapping the following sounds: au (launch), aw (yawn), ew (chew), oa (boat) and ou (shout).

Our code words for entry to the classroom will be: eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.  Please help your child to read and spell these.

Many thanks.

Mrs Poole

 

 

Term 4 – Week 2

This week we have had an English focus as it has been World Book Week.  We have been learning to use the correct punctuation when writing different types of sentences including question marks and exclamation marks.  The children have also used some great adjectives to describe the different animals and remembered their every time we write skills.  A different story was read every day to support this learning.  Here are the books we read – perhaps your child could retell them to you.

We also read a non-fiction book all about big cats and found out about a caracal; a cat we hadn’t heard about before.  A caracal can jump over a car and has 12 different muscles in its ear to hear its prey!

 

On Monday it was lovely to see so many parents reading with the children at the start of the day.  Thank you.

On Thursday (World Book Day) the children and staff enjoyed dressing up as book characters from one of their favourite books.  We have shared so many beautiful, funny and exciting stories this week.  All the children show a great love of reading which is fantastic – long may it continue!

 

In Science this week we have been learning about life cycles, carnivores, herbivores and omnivores as well as habitats and the classification of animals.  It was really interesting to watch how the children sorted the animals before learning about the different categories of animals: mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds and fish.  They sorted fierce animals into one group and farm animals into another.  We found out lots of interesting facts and then sorted the animals into groups again based on our new learning.  One of the things we discovered is that mammals give birth to live young and do not lay eggs, however, there are a couple of mammals that do lay eggs, for example, a platypus!

Next Thursday (14th March) we will be taking Year 1 and Year 2 from both campuses to Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm for the day to study animals first hand.  Children will need to wear their school sweatshirt but can wear any trousers.  Wellies and a raincoat will be needed if wet.  If you have any questions about the trip please ask.   Packed lunches will be provided for all children but if your child prefers to bring their own that is fine.

Next week we will be having one more week on split vowel digraphs to cement children’s learning of these special friends: o-e (home), a-e (cake), i-e (bike), e-e (evening), u-e (June).  Please continue to look for these when you are reading at home with your child.  Many thanks.

Code word spellings to enter the classroom will be: six, seven, eight, nine and ten.   Please help your child to read and write these words.  Many thanks.

Mrs Poole

 

Term 4 – Week 1

Welcome back to term 4.  The year seems to be whizzing by.  Spring is on its way – my favourite season.

This week we have been concentrating on our maths and in particular multiplication.  We have used the language of groups of, times and multiply when using concrete objects to find the total.  Counters were very useful because they helped us to make the array  (arrangement) for our multiplication sentence first before drawing it in our books.  I was very impressed by the presentation of arrays in books.  Here are a couple of examples below.

We have had a couple of fun PE lessons this week.  On Monday we had our first lesson of curling.  The children were brilliant at it – some future Olympic champions I think.

On Friday Bella came in to teach dance.  She showed the children how to move as different animals.  The children then chose their favourite animal and we had to guess what they were.

We had butterflies, rabbits, crocodiles, frogs, chimpanzees and a flamingo to name a few.

We have also been talking about our dreams and goals in Year 1 this week.  The children made special boxes to keep their dreams and goals in and thought about the stepping stones to get there.  They found a buddy that was working towards the same goal and cooperatively painted a pair of wellies representing their goal.  The children also made stretchy flowers to show how we can grow into something beautiful.

Next week we will be concentrating again on split digraphs in our phonics lesson because the children are finding it hard to recognise these special friends in words when reading: a-e (cake), i-e (bike), o-e (home), e-e (evening), u-e (huge).  We also have one trigraph (three letters, one sound) left to recap from last week (ire – as in fire).

Our entry words to the classroom will be: one, two, three, four and five.  Please help your child to read and spell these words.

Many thanks for all your support.

 

 

Term 3 – Week 6

Thank you for attending the learning review meetings this week, it was lovely to catch up with you all and to share your child’s progress and achievements.

In Maths this week we have been learning how to record division sentences in our Maths books.  The children have drawn circles in their books to help them divide equally.  Great recording, presentation and understanding observed.

In English  we have been learning to write about why exercising is so important using our every time we write skills.  The children took part in circuit training exercises and then wrote about the benefits to our bodies.   We have also been working hard on our handwriting this week and will continue to do so after half-term to ensure all letters are formed correctly.

Mr Fraulo taught the children about computer programming.   The children had to program the route for the creature to find a way through the maze.   They had to concentrate really hard!

After half term we will be recapping our trigraphs (3 letters, one sound): igh (as in high), ear (as in hear), air (as in hair), are (as in share) and ure (pure).  It is important when reading that children look for trigraphs first before deciding it is just a digraph (the first two letters) as they are quite different sounds, for example:  ar (car) are (care).  Please support your child to look for trigraphs when they are reading at home.

The sight word buttons to gain access to the classroom will be: come, there, where, call, what.  Please help your child to read and spell these common sight words.   Many thanks.

Wishing you all a lovely half-term break.

Mrs Poole

 

Term 3 – Week 5

This week we have had Safer Internet Day and NSPCC Number Day.

The children  watched a short film about keeping safe when using the internet and designed their own poster to advise other children how to keep safe.

To celebrate NSPCC Number Day the children wore a number to school.  We had fun putting our numbers in the correct order.  We had to look again at place value to do this.

We also estimated how many children would fit into our classroom.  28 children lined up across the room and then we worked out how many lines of children we would need to fill the whole room and multiplied the two numbers 20 x 28 = 560 children!  This is a good example of a Fermi question which involves estimating.  We talked about what the word estimating means and the children decided it meant ‘using your best thinking to make a guess.’

In other Maths lessons this week we have started to look at division by sharing items equally between children, then between plates.

We then moved on to represent these items when sharing equally by making marks to represent the items and drawing circles to represent the plates.  We crossed through a mark each time we drew it in a circle.  We made sure that we shared in order to ensure it was equal.

We have also worked really hard at our handwriting this week, ensuring that we form all of our letters correctly.

We have learnt about the artist Pablo Picasso and how to draw a portrait step-by-step.    I was very impressed with the quality of  the children’s artwork.  The children enjoyed smudging the oil pastels to get the desired effect.   You will have the opportunity to see your child’s portrait at the learning review meetings next week but here are just a few for now:

We have had quite a cultured week as we have also been learning how to compose music on the glockenspiels.

We have also been running a mile around the playground and then noticing the change it makes to our bodies, particularly our hearts.

Next week’s sounds to recap will be: ue (as in blue), aw (as in paw), ur (as in nurse), ea (as in tea), ou (as in out).

Our sight word buttons to enter the classroom will be: of, said, all, does, some.  Please also help your child to spell these words as well as be able to read them.

Thank you for continuing to read every day with your child.   Even if you only have a spare 5 minutes to hear your child read every day this will still have a massive impact on their reading ability.

Learning review meetings will be held on Tuesday 12th and Wednesday 13th February.  Please sign up for a slot if you have not already done so.

Many thanks for all your support.

Mrs Poole

 

 

 

Term 3 – Week 4

In Maths we have been learning to tell the time to the hour and half past the hour.  The children each had a teaching clock and were able to move the hands to show the correct time for o’clock.  Some children are finding half past a little trickier so please help them with this at home.  The children also recorded the times displayed on clocks around the classroom.  These were feeding times for the different animals at the farm.   Children wrote the name of the animal and the time it needed to be fed using the words o’clock and half past from their word bank. The children have drawn the hands on a clock face to show the hour and half past remembering that the hour hand is shorter than the minute hand.

 

This week we have been learning about our five senses: touch, taste, smell, sight and hearing.  The children have learnt a poem about our senses and have planned their own senses poem.  They have used words to describe how their secret item in the box feels, tastes and smells like, looks and sounds like.  Their poem is entitled ‘What am I?’ They will be writing their poem on Monday and reading it to the class to see who can guess what their secret item is.  I used chocolate in my secret box to model and the children were very good at guessing what it was by the way I described it using my senses.

We had a fun but messy science session experimenting using our five senses.  The children found out that a mixture of gloop is hard and smooth before it is agitated by fingers and then it turns into a liquid form and feels very different.  Many thanks go to Mike, our cleaner, for helping me tidy up the classroom afterwards.

The children used their eyes to see where the cards were placed back down in a game of pairs.

They used their noses to smell what was in each of the numbered smelly pots and then recorded their thoughts on their sheet.  We had some contrasting ideas for some of the pots!  They all recognized the smell of coffee.  Egg was not one of their favourite smells.

They used their tongues to taste.  We recorded whether the taste was sweet, bitter, salty or sour.  I think they were shocked at how bitter the lemon was and how hot the chilli dorito was by the look on their faces!  Jam was the favourite taste for many.

We listened to various recordings of noises and the children were quick to guess where the noises came from: the waves crashing, a motorbike, a baby crying etc.  My favourite was the different people laughing, we were all infected by the laughter and couldn’t stop – such fun!

In art we have been looking at some of the work by pop artist Andy Worhol.  The children used different colours to change their own portraits.

In RE this week we learnt about the story of Jonah and the whale.  The children’s understanding of the story really amazed me.  The children had to guess what Jonah was going to do next when the whale spat him back out onto the beach.  Some great ideas:

“Jonah is going to say sorry to God that he didn’t go the first time and then he will go.”

“I think he is going to go to the town to tell the naughty people to be good.”

“He is scared to go to Ninevah because the bad people might beat him up and he is all alone.”

“Jonah is sad because he doesn’t know what to do.”

“I think he should go because we have all got to listen to God.”

“Jonah has to go to Ninevah because they are going to be destroyed by God unless they start being good.  He has to tell them to be good.”

We will have to wait until next week to see what Jonah decides to do.

The children are really good at spotting the split vowel digraphs in words now.  Please keep looking for these special friends as you read with your child (o-e (as in home), i-e (as in bike), a-e (as in made), u-e (as in huge) and e-e (as in Pete)).  They have also tried really hard to use their split vowel digraphs in their writing this week.  I am preparing laminated mats of our phonics wall for your child to take home to support them with their phonics learning.  They refer to the wall every day when reading and writing so it will be useful  for them to have a miniature copy at home.  Thank you for all the reading you are doing at home, it really is making a huge difference.  Some children are bringing writing in that they have done at home too; this is great to see.

Next week our phonics sounds will be: oi (as in coin), oa (as in boat),  or/ore (as in for and more), ar (as in car) and ai (as in rain).

Our sight word spellings will be: when, where, what, was and were.

Our family worship will start at 2.30 pm on Monday 4th February in the hall at Hewish.  It will last for about 20 minutes and then you are welcome to stay for a cup of tea or coffee and a slice of cake in the hall.  The Year 1 crew will go back to their classroom to get their things ready to go home.

Many thanks.

Mrs Poole

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Term 3 – Week 3

Last week in our Maths lessons we measured items using multi-link cubes.  However, we have noticed that cubes come in different sizes so they are not a standard unit to measure with.  The children  were then given rulers to see how big the standard unit of a centimetre is.  We found out that there are 100 cm in one metre.  To accurately measure something we also found out that we must start measuring at 0 cm.

On Friday the children worked in pairs to have a bean bag throwing competition in the playground.  They measured the distance of each throw using metre sticks and recorded their scores.  They compared the distances thrown to see who had thrown the bean bag the furthest.

In English we have been adding the suffixes -er, -est and -ing to words where no change to the root word is needed.   To help us with our writing we did a lot of practical activities first, for example, finding who was taller, tallest in our group, looking at items on a tray to compare how smooth, rough, bright, dark, light they were.   The children also took it in turns to come to the front of the class and mime an action which the children had to guess and then add -ing to the action, e.g. jump, shout, pull, crawl, and put it in a sentence.

The children learnt how to log on to a computer using their username and password.  They then used a programme called ‘Paint’ to draw a picture of foods that were healthy to eat.

In music this week we have been learning a blues piece of music called ‘In the groove’.  We tapped the beat on our laps and then listened to hear what instruments we could pick out.  The children then pretended to play those instruments, keeping the same beat.  They heard pianos, trumpets and trombones.   Next week we will be using instruments to accompany our singing.

In RE we have been learning about the ten commandments that God gave to Moses and we also added a few of our own.  I was impressed with how thoughtful your children are: “Look after poorly people,” “Give the homeless a home,” were a couple of my favourites.

In PSHE we have been looking at how to keep healthy.  We looked at things in the house that were safe and unsafe and sorted pictures accordingly into groups.  There was some debate whether medicines were safe or unsafe.  I explained that medicines can help you to be healthy but I reminded the children never to take medicines unless a grown-up gives them to you.

In Science this week we have learnt about the amazing journey of a red blood cell. When the cell has no oxygen left, it has to go back to the heart for pump one to the lungs. Here, the blood cell picks up oxygen. Back to the heart it goes for pump two. Then it travels around the body making deliveries. We made comics of the journey of the blood cell.   After our circuit training in PE the children felt their heart pumping and some children commented that the red blood cell would be going really fast around the body on his lorry delivering oxygen to our muscles because the heart was pumping fast – great learning!

The children have worked really hard learning the split vowel digraphs (a-e, e-e, i-e, o-e, u-e) this week but we are going to have one more week concentrating on these sounds to consolidate their learning.

Spellings for next week will be: could, should, would, there and all.  I have noticed that these are the spellings that children are asking for the most help with at the moment.

I have been really impressed this week by the progress the children are making in their reading.  If you can take just 10 minutes out of your day, every day, to support your child’s reading it really does make a difference.  Little and often works best for memory recall of sounds and sight words.  Please write in their partnership book when you have read with your child.

Our family worship is on Monday 4th February at 2.30 pm in the school hall at Hewish.

Many thanks for your support.

Mrs Poole

Term 3 – Week 2

In Maths this week the children have continued to find a half and a quarter of an amount.  They can now distinguish between the symbols for a half and a quarter.  I was particularly impressed with their presentation in their Maths books.

We also started measuring items using a non-standard unit.  The children used cubes to accurately measure the length of objects and then compared their measurements to find which object was the longest and the shortest.  Some children were able to find the difference between the longest and shortest object.

In English this week we have been learning to write numbered instructions for the recovery position.  We used photographs from last week’s learning to help us.  We used bossy verbs and challenged ourselves to use adverbs and conjunctions too.  This piece of work will be going into our ‘Brilliant bodies’ books that the children will be bringing home at the end of our learning theme.

We learnt about skeletons and the role our bones play to support and protect our body.  The children then used chalk to do an observational drawing of a skeleton.  We looked at real x-rays and guessed which part of the body each one showed.   Some of the children have brought in Funny Bones books from home to read at the end of the day and Bethany brought in her lift-the-flap body book which helped us learn even more about the body – thank you!

Liz, a children’s nurse, visited us on Friday afternoon.  She explained about the function of each of our organs and where they are in our bodies.  The children had fun placing the organs on the correct part of our body.

In handwriting we have been practising to join a few three letter words.

Next week we will be recapping split vowel digraphs in phonics: a-e (cake), e-e (evening), i-e (bike), o-e (home), u-e (use).  I have noticed that these are the sounds that children are finding the most difficult to read and use in their writing.  We introduce these sounds to the children as chatty friends – they have to be split by another sound.  The ‘e’ changes the short vowel sound into a long vowel sound.  When reading with your child at home this week can you ask your child to look out for these split sounds please?

To consolidate our phonics learning this week our spellings will be:

make, these, like, bone, rule.

You are invited to our family worship on Monday 4th February at 2.30 pm in the school hall at Hewish.  The worship is on the value of Service and will last for approximately 20 minutes.

Many thanks for your support – keep reading!

Mrs Poole

 

Term 3 – Week 1

Welcome back and Happy New Year.

We have had a busy start to term 3.  We have been learning how to find halves and quarters of shapes and amounts.  On Monday the children each made a sandwich and cut it in half.  We talked about the need for the two parts to be equal so Bobby suggested getting a ruler to measure our bread to make sure we cut our sandwiches accurately.  The children then cut the halves in half to make quarters and were allowed to eat 1/4 of their sandwich before lunch.

In English we have been learning to use a question mark.  The children wrote questions about how our bodies work for the nurse to answer when she visits our class next Friday.  On Monday the children drew around the smallest person in their group and then labelled parts of the body using their phonics for writing.  This showed what the children already knew; however, there are many questions that they still want to find the answers to this term, for example: How does our blood get to our fingers?  What makes our legs run so fast?  Where does our food go?  Why do we have holes in our eyes?  What is our brain like?  How many bones do we have?

On Thursday we continued our theme of ‘How Amazing Are We?’  Sarah from St John’s Ambulance taught us how to save lives.  She taught us how to help someone who is choking and to check if someone is breathing and put them into the recovery position.  The most important thing to remember is to tilt the head gently backwards if someone is unconscious to stop their tongue falling over their airway.  Sarah talked the children through the steps of the recovery position using me as the dummy; the children thought this highly amusing.  Then the children worked with a friend to practise saving someone’s life by putting them into the recovery position.  Sarah explained that this was really important in case the casualty was sick so they wouldn’t choke. The children were all amazing and remembered so much.

We also all went outside to see, and listen to, the defibrillator, located on the wall to the right of the front door to our school.

Today we met Little Miss Bossy and looked at bossy words (imperative verbs).  We used bossy words to tell our friends what they had to do.

 

We then used bossy words to tell each other how to put someone in the recovery position.  Next week we are going to write the instructions for the recovery position.

In RE this week we looked at blame and forgiveness.  Some children owned up to blaming their siblings for things that they had actually done.  We agreed that this was not the right thing to do even though it sometimes got us out of trouble.  We read the story ‘It was Jake’ where the boy, Danny, blamed his dog, Jake,  for everything but Danny’s mum knew it wasn’t Jake because dogs can’t cut out shapes or turn on taps!

In PSHE we have been discussing what a ‘healthy me’ looks like.  The children agreed that 5 bars of chocolate, lots of fizzy drinks and lots of crisps are not healthy for you.  They also said to be healthy you need to go to bed early and get more sleep, ride your bike more, run more outside, drink more water and milk and eat lots of apples and other fruit.  You must also wash your teeth.

The children will have a professional gymnastics coach on Tuesday afternoons for the next 5 weeks and will be taking part in circuit training on a Friday with me.  Please could all children have a PE kit in school so they can take part in these PE lessons.  The children enjoyed getting fit this afternoon and could all notice a change in their heart rate and temperature.

Next week our sounds will be: or (fork), aw (dawn), au (launch), th (teeth) and wh (wheel).

Our spellings will be: use, your, because, many, when.

If you have not logged on to TTRockstars to practise the 2, 5 and 10 times table your child’s login may have expired.  Some of you have mentioned you are having trouble logging in using your child’s existing username and password given out at parents evening in October.   Please ask me and I can issue a new username and password.

In your child’s book bag there is a sheet of paper informing you of all the things we will be covering over terms 3 and 4.  There is a list of key vocabulary which you might like to go through with your child.  On Monday 4th February at 2.30pm in the hall at Hewish, Year 1 will be leading family worship and you are all invited.  There will be tea/coffee and cake afterwards.  Our value this term is service.

Thank you for listening to your child read at home, it really is making a massive difference to their phonic knowledge and to their writing ability.  I am really impressed by the progress all of the children are making.  Thank you for your support.

Have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Poole

 

 

 

 

 

Term 2 – Week 7

We have enjoyed celebrating Christmas at school this week.  The Christmas dinner on Wednesday was delicious.  The children looked so smart in their Christmas jumpers and moved around three classes (Busy Bees, Year 1 and Year 2) in mixed aged groups to participate in the fun activities in the different classrooms.  In Busy Bees they made melting snowmen biscuits and party hats, in Year 1 they planted a tulip or daffodil bulb and decorated their pot and in Year 2 the children made crackers and tags.  The children have also made a Christingle this week and learnt about what each symbol represents: the orange represents the world, the red ribbon represents Jesus’ blood, the four cocktail sticks with sweets on represent North, South, East and West and the four seasons and the candle represents Jesus coming as the light of the world.

In Maths the children also had a go at making 3D models with marshmallows and cocktail sticks and straws.

We have read the story ‘We Three Kings’ and looked at the difference an exclamation mark makes when reading.   We then thought about what we would have taken as a gift to Baby Jesus – there were a lot of footballs and sweets suggested as well as baby bottles, dummies and blankets.  A couple of children said they would give Jesus their love and drew a  big heart in their outline of a present.  The children have also been writing the Christmas story and can say why Christmas is important to Christians.

Thank you very much for our cards and presents, much appreciated by us all.

We wish you all a very happy and healthy Christmas with your families and best wishes for the New Year.

Next term

Our sounds will be: er (letter), ir (stir), ur (nurse), ch (church) and tch (fetch).  When reading with your child over the holidays please ask them to spot these special friends (and other digraphs and trigraphs) in words.

Spellings for the first week back will be: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

Next term Mrs Gray will be working Thursday and Friday mornings at our West Wick site.  We will all miss her greatly here at Hewish.  The children made her a card and gave her a present to say thank you for all her support.  Mrs Wickens will be working Thursday morning in Year 1 @ Hewish and Miss Poole will be working in Year 1 on a Friday morning from the start of next term.  Some of the children will know Miss Poole from Little Farm and from when she was a TA in Year 6 at Hewish.  We will also have a student teacher, Mr Fraulo,  in Year 1 from 7th January until the end of March.

Many thanks.

Mrs Poole

 

Term 2 – Week 6

Thank you so much for all your support with our nativity production.  The children really were superstars and performed with such enthusiasm. You must be so proud of them, I certainly am.  It was very special to be in St. Andrew’s Church again, we were made to feel extremely welcome.

In Maths this week we have immersed ourselves in 2D and 3D shapes.  We went on a 2D shape hunt at the beginning of the week and learnt the skill of tallying with the gate method to support our counting in fives.

We have also used 2D shapes to make Christmas pictures.  We recorded the number of shapes used.  The super challenge was to write the number in words as we have also been learning to spell number names over the last couple of weeks and will continue with this next week as there are a few that we are finding a little tricky to spell.

We tried to remember to add an ‘s’ when there was more than 1 of each shape in our recording.

When we were all secure with 2D shape we progressed to 3D shapes.  I was very impressed with the children’s observational skills and the mathematical language they used during our 3D activities.  The children found various spheres in the classroom noticing the globes and baubles on the tree.

We also played Kim’s game.  The children studied the tray of 3D shapes and then one shape was removed (outside of the room to stop any peeking!)  The children wrote the name of the shape that was missing.  This is a good game to help memory and concentration but to add the language of shape would be even better if you are playing it at home.

On Friday afternoon the children enjoyed making models from all of the 3D shapes.  They explained to me which 3D shapes they had used in their design.  “I’ve used a cone for the top of my rocket!”

In Phonics this week the children have been applying their knowledge by spelling words containing our sound of the day.  I really love to see the children challenging themselves by putting the words into their own sentences.

In RE we are learning about the importance of Christmas for Christians and writing about this in our English lessons.  We are remembering to use our ‘Every time we write skills’ (starting each sentence with a capital letter and ending it with a full stop, clear finger spaces between words, using our best handwriting, reading our sentences back to make sure they make sense, using our phonic knowledge to segment for writing and looking at our sight word wall to help us spell words that can’t be sounded out).

Next week’s spellings will be continuing to revise our number names one to twenty.

Next week’s phonics sounds will be oa (boat), ow (snow), oe (toe), o-e (code), ph (phone).

We will be making Christingles next week.  Please could you send your child in with an orange on Monday.  Many thanks.

Please continue to read with your child over the Christmas fortnight.  It makes such a difference.

Mrs Poole

 

 

 

Term 2 – Week 5

This week in our phonics lessons we have looked at all the different ways of spelling the long ‘e’ sound (ee (deep), ea (tea), e-e (evening), ie (chief), ey (donkey) and y (Billy)).  We were amazed at how many children’s names in Year 1 finished with a ‘y’ to make the long ‘e’ sound.  Perhaps you could look out for these sounds with your children when they are reading at home.  It is a little confusing as ie also makes a long ‘i’ sound as in pie.  Ask your child to try the long ‘i’ sound for ie first as this occurs more frequently, as in pie, lie, then if this makes a nonsense word try reading the word with the long ‘e’ sound.

The children attempted to spell the dictated words containing these sounds and some children really challenged themselves to write sentences remembering to use a capital letter at the start of a sentence and a full stop at the end with clear finger spaces and correct letter formation, something we have been working on all week in English.   I am always amazed at how the Year 1 children love to learn without limits, they feel safe to have a go and really push themselves to be the best they can be.

 

In Maths this week we have been concentrating on numbers to 100 and place value.  The children enjoyed playing the game ‘guess my number’ with their partner.   One child wrote a two digit number within 100 on their whiteboard and their partner asked questions, for example, ‘Does it have 5 tens?  Does it have 3 ones?’  If the answer was no the child guessing crossed out all the numbers on their 100 square that contained 5 tens or 3 ones.  I observed some very clever questioning with children using their place value knowledge to articulate questions that ruled out certain groups of numbers until they only had one possible number left that it could be.  This is a good game that children can play on a tablet, ipad or computer at home too.  If you google ‘100 square splat’ they can choose a colour to splat on the numbers they want to cross out and it makes a great noise too and it’s free.   The children will find maths much easier as they progress if they truly understand the value of numbers.  Thank you.

 

 

Rehearsals for the nativity play next Tuesday are coming along nicely.  The children in Year 1 really know their lines well.  Thank you for practising them at home and supplying their costumes, they love wearing them.  We have tried the costumes on a couple of times to avoid being over excited on the day!  We look forward to seeing you on Tuesday 11th December at St. Andrew’s Church, Congresbury, either at the 1.30pm or 6pm performance.

Next week’s sounds are: oo (zoo), ue (glue), u-e (rude), ew (blew) and sh (shrew).

Next week’s spellings are: eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty.

Keep reading at home – it makes all the difference to their reading and writing.

Thank you.

Mrs Poole

 

 

Term 2 – Week 4

In English this week the children told their innovated story based on Julia Donaldson’s ‘The Snail and the Whale’ using some great story language and adjectives to practise their oracy skills.  The children then wrote their story using their ‘every time we write’ skills.  We have also been adding s to words to make plurals and adding the suffix ing to words as well as er to compare, e.g. tall = taller.   We also looked at words that start with a silent k, e.g. knight, knife, knee.

In Maths we have been recapping the value of numbers by looking at numbers to 100.  We have discussed how many tens and how many ones there are in each number and drawn sticks of ten and dots for one to help us remember.  We then used the greater than, less than and equals symbols to compare numbers.

We have spent time with Year 2 and Busy Bees to practise our Nativity performance.  Please can we have costumes in a named carrier bag in school by Wednesday 5th December so that we can have a full dress rehearsal.  If you have any questions about your child’s costume please let me know if I can help.

Next week’s sounds are: ee (deep), ea (reach), e-e (evening), ey (donkey), y (Billy).

Next week’s spellings are: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

Many thanks for your support.  Keep reading at home – it makes all the difference!

 

 

 

Term 2 – Week 3

This week we have been learning to solve missing number problems that involve subtraction.  The children used number lines successfully to find the missing number by counting the number of jumps between the whole and the remainder to find how many had been taken away.  They also pictorially represented the whole number then drew a line around the amount that was left and counted those outside of that group to find how many had been taken away.  On Friday they recorded their answers in their Maths books and really thought about their presentation.   I was very impressed!

In English we have continued reading the story of ‘The Snail and the Whale’ by Julia Donaldson.  The children have written about two destinations that their innovated characters visited.  They had to decide which continent their characters would visit and what physical and human features they would see.  The children have also written about the problem their characters faced and thought about a solution.  Next week they will be using their story map to write their whole story. I can’t wait to read their stories.  We will be publishing them for our library.

During our daily phonics lesson we are now applying all of the sounds we have learnt by writing words and even sentences containing our sound of the day.   Some children are also going home and writing words containing our sound of the day and when we have our story at the end of the day under the visualiser children are still spotting our sound of the day in words as I read.  I love the enthusiasm for learning that all of your children show.  Well done to all for the massive support with phonics; it is making such a difference. Thank you.

We have been practising our Nativity performance and all of the beautiful songs.  Thank you for helping your child to learn their lines at home.   The shepherds have some excellent accents.  I hope you will enjoy it as much as I am enjoying rehearsing it.

Our phonic sounds for next week are: igh (high), ie (pie), i-e (like), ou (shout), ow (brown).

Our sight word codes to get into the classroom will be:

Monday = do

Tuesday = they

Wednesday = today

Thursday = of

Friday = one

Please can you help your child to read and spell these sight words.

Have a great weekend and thank you for all your support at home.

Mrs Poole

 

 

 

Term 2 – Week 2

This week in Maths we have been solving missing number problems that involve addition.  The children were given the total (the whole) and one of the parts and had to find the other part.  They used unifix cubes to support their learning.

In English we have started the story of ‘The Snail and the Whale’ by Julia Donaldson.  The children have used adjectives to describe their innovated characters.  They have also used the conjunctions ‘and’, ‘but’ and ‘because’ when writing about what they would pack in the suitcase for their journey.

The children have used their bridge designs to make their bridge.  They spent an afternoon being engineers, just like Brunel, with some great results.

We have also had a visit from the NSPCC this week about how to stay safe.  They bought their mascot Buddy, the speech bubble, to remind children to always speak out about any of their worries.

We have finished introducing all of the phonic sounds so we are now applying them in our writing.

Our sounds for next week will be: ay (play), ai (snail), a-e (whale), oy (toy), oi (coin).

Our sight word spellings will be: all, are, ask, does, going.

Please can you continue to read with your child daily at home, it makes such a difference to their reading and writing.

Next week we will be practising our Nativity play.  Your child has a letter in their book bag about the costumes they will need and the lines they need to learn.  Our Nativity will be held at St. Andrew’s Church, Congresbury on Tuesday 11th December.  We may need some extra adults to help during the day.  Please let me know if you would be available.  The coach will be leaving school at 9.45am and returning at 2.30pm.  The performance times are 1.30pm and 6pm at the church.

Many thanks for your support.

Mrs Poole

 

Term 2 – Week 1

This week we have been learning about why we celebrate and remember certain days.   On Monday the children enjoyed hearing about the original gunpowder plot and Guy Fawkes and his friends.  They asked many questions and wrote a sentence or two about why we have bonfire night still today.   The children also designed a firework safety poster to keep safe on bonfire night.

On Wednesday we watched a shadow puppet story of Rama and Sita to understand why Hindus celebrate Diwali.  The children made diva lamps using clay and tea lights because Diwali is a festival of light. They will be decorating their divas with beautiful colours when they are dry.

On Wednesday we also had a visit from a war veteran.  He talked to the children about why Remembrance Day is so special for him.  The children made poppies and we talked about why it is important to wear a poppy and why the poppy was chosen as a symbol of remembrance.

In Maths this week we have been recapping addition and subtraction.  On Friday the children had a mix of addition and subtraction number sentences so had to carefully read the symbol to check if they needed to add or takeaway to find the correct answer.

In our theme learning we are now studying Brunel and his local engineering successes.  We have started by looking at different types of bridges: beam, truss, arch and suspension.  We have discovered that the strongest shape to be used in bridge building is a triangle.  The children have designed their bridges ready to make them next week.

On Friday we had a visit from Tarmac to teach us about road safety.  The children learnt about how difficult it is for lorry drivers to see them if they are too close to the lorry.  The children also had an opportunity to hear the warnings a lorry makes and were able to go inside the cab.  The Tarmac men were very impressed that the children could read the sign on the side of the lorry, ‘Warning – keep clear’. The lorry’s wheels were as tall as Zachary!

Next week’s sounds will be: ow (cow), ou (shout), oo (book), ire (fire), tion/tious (station) (cautious).

Our sight words will be: some, come, said, was, you and your.  The children will need to press the sight word button to enter the classroom.

Please continue to read with your child at home.  It makes a huge difference to both their reading and writing.

Many thanks.

Mrs Poole

Term 1 – Week 7

It has been a very busy last week of term.  I so enjoyed meeting you at your child’s learning review meetings.  Thank you for attending and all the support you offer at home, it really does make a world of difference.

In Maths this week we have been concentrating on subtraction.  We started by using concrete objects and then moved on to pictures to support our learning of subtraction.  We even acted out scenarios where the children were horses in a stable.  We used the words first, then and now  ‘First there were 9 horses, then 6 galloped away, now there are 3.’  This picture has really helped the children understand taking away.  Perhaps you could use these words at home if your child writes subtraction sentences.  The children also enjoyed drawing tiny circles to represent the first number in their subtraction sentence and then crossed out the number of circles they were taking away and counted the circles that were not crossed out to see how many were left.   This was their favourite method for completing their subtraction sentences but they have also used a number line to jump back to find the correct answer.

In English we finished our story ‘Journey on a cloud’.  The main character Zephyr (the village postman) jumped on a cloud which took him to lands that he had never seen before.  The children then discussed with their partner whether people should go and see the world or not.  We had several excellent reasons for going: to eat different food, to see different animals, to learn other languages, to find a girlfriend!  Reasons against travelling the world consisted of: you might get lost, there are bombs, they don’t speak English, the food might be poisonous!  The children used persuasive language to convince their partner that they should/should not travel the world.  They then used their every time we write skills to write sentences to persuade people to either go or not to go.

In RE this week we have been looking at our world and counting our blessings.  The children worked in groups to create a poster of all the blessings they wanted to thank God for.  The list was endless, here are some of the highlights: my house, my school, my family, the sun and the rain, the flowers, my cousins and pizza!

In art we finished our Marc Chagall artwork.  The children traced over their sketches of famous landmarks, musical instrument crossed with an animal and their character/s onto the inside of a laminating pouch and then block coloured their features using sharpie pens.  They sealed the colour inside the laminating pouch by passing it through the laminator.   This then appeared like a stained glass window and the children enjoyed seeing the bright sunshine lighting up their artwork and the beautiful colours it made on the floor.

The first week back we will be recapping the following sounds: air (fair), are (share), ar (car), ear (hear) and ure (pure).

Our sight words to read and spell will be: any, once, saw, two, talk.

Many thanks for your support.  Have a wonderful half-term break with your children.  I have put a couple of extra reading books in their bags for the holidays if you get a chance to read with your child that would be great!

Mrs Poole

 

 

 

Term 1 – Week 6

This week we have been adding using a number line to ‘jump on’ to find the total.  The children could choose whether to add two single digit numbers together, to add a one-digit number to a two-digit number or add a two-digit number to another two-digit number.  They recorded their addition sentences on whiteboards.

In English we have been practising our oracy and presenting skills.  We have watched good presentations, for example the BBC weather forecast to help us spot what we need to do.   We used the forecast to look at the weather in the four countries in the United Kingdom.   Scotland was particularly wet this week.

The children then had a character card and described the character to their partner using full sentences.  Their partner had to guess the character.  The next day half of the children learnt about glass frogs and half of the class learnt about green sea turtles.  The children then used full sentences to present facts to their partner about each of their animals.

Once the children had grasped the hang of presenting they then wrote about their achievements and challenges in term 1 ready to present them at their learning review meeting next week.  Please book a slot if you haven’t already done so.  Many thanks.

Either myself,  Mrs Wickens or Mrs Gray will hear your child read every day as part of a guided reading group.  Whilst the children are waiting to read to the adult they read to each other.  One child holds the lolly stick and is the ‘teacher’ whilst the other child reads a sentence and then they swap over.  This helps children to pause at the end of sentences and also help each other with unfamiliar sounds and sight words.  I am really impressed at how quiet our guided reading sessions have become and the children are really good at teaching each other.  Please continue to read at home.  Perhaps you could adopt the lolly stick approach, where you read one sentence whilst your child points to the words and then you swap over.  They love being the teacher.  I have spare lolly sticks you can have!

In art this week we have been continuing to sketch our images for our stained glass window in the style of Marc Chagall.  The children chose an animal and an instrument to combine in one sketch.  Here are a few examples.  I particularly liked the flamingo crossed with a tambourine.

Next week our sounds will be: or, aw, au, th and wh.

We will be looking at handwriting zig zag letters: v, w, x, y and z and the sizing of lower case and capital letters.

Our sight words will be: does, love, your, going, school.

Thank you for all your support.

Mrs Poole

 

 

Term 1 – Week 5

In Maths this week we have been finding number bonds to 10 in many practical ways, including making paper chains in two different colours.  “8 + 2 makes 10, but so does 7 + 3!”  The children soon noticed the pattern.

We have also recapped the addition and equals symbol and have added two or three groups of concrete objects together to find a total.  We then recorded addition sentences pictorially in our maths books remembering to put one digit in each square.

In English the children wrote a diary entry as if they were the main character from our story book ‘Journey’.  They challenged themselves to use I, adjectives and time conjunctions.

This week we have also started our new book called ‘Journey on a cloud’.  We talked about the importance of using a capital letter at the start of a sentence and a full stop at the end of a sentence.  Then we played a game where the children stood in a circle and had to say one sentence about a very busy picture from the story.  If the children repeated a sentence someone else had said they had to sit down.  As well as improving listening and oracy skills this gave the children several wonderful sentences to write in their books.   Maddie asked if she could continue writing after lunch because she had spotted so many things in the picture.  She remembered to use capital letters and full stops all the way through her writing.

On Wednesday we had a visit from Liz from Lower Stock Farm.  She talked to the children about map reading and compass skills.  She explained that maps may be drawn in different ways but they all show you where things are.  She explained that often maps are drawn from an aerial or bird’s eye view.  The children had a go at mapping out our classroom from a bird’s eye view, Briley’s map was particularly accurate.

Liz told us that we also need to know our compass directions when reading a map.  The children were each given a compass and asked to point towards North by looking at which way the red needle was pointing.  Liz set out 3 other cones and asked the children to walk towards the East, South and West.  She gave the children a saying to help them remember the order of the compass points:  Naughty Elephants Squirt Water.

 

In art the children were taught different sketching techniques and used these to sketch the four emblems of the four countries in the UK.

The children also had a chance to sketch a selection of famous landmarks found on each of the seven continents.   They will be adding their landmark outline to a piece of stained glass artwork to be completed in the style of the artist Marc Chagall over the next couple of  weeks.   Lilly-Mae chose the Taj Mahal and has captured it beautifully.

You may hear the children singing a very catchy song about the 7 continents – they love it and ask for it to be played every day.  We have now adopted it as our tidy up song. We will be moving on to the 5 oceans song soon.

In RE we have been continuing to look at both the Christian and Hindu creation story.  We learnt about the Hindu Mother goddess Parvati who cares for the world.  The  children then made their own world from clay.  We talked about how we must care for our world and the children remembered from Busy Bees how dangerous plastic can be for animals, especially those living in the sea.  How would we feel if someone destroyed our clay world that we created?

In PSHE we sorted pictures of things we would like to see in our classroom and things that we wouldn’t.  The children worked in small groups identifying what we should adopt as good practice within our classroom to ensure it is a safe and calm place to be.

We even had time to fit in designing our own Christmas cards to be printed!

Next week we will be learning to read and spell the following sight words:

could, people, looked and asked.

We will be recapping the following sounds: er (letter), ir (stir) , ur (nurse), ch (church) and tch (fetch).

Learning review meetings will be held on Tuesday 16th October from 3.30pm – 5.30pm and Thursday 18th October from 3.30pm – 7pm.  Please book an appointment online or drop into the office and book a time.  Your child will be practising their presentation of their learning next week to share with you at the meeting.

Please keep reading with your child at home and look out for our focus sounds and sight words for this week.

Many thanks for your support.

 

Term 1 – Week 4

On Monday the children watched some Olympic races and talked about first, second, third and fourth place.  We then went out onto the playground and had our own Olympic bean bag throwing competition.  Medals were awarded for 1st, 2nd 3rd and 4th place.  The children are now familiar with ordinal numbers and can use them in the right context and even know how to spell them.

Also in Maths the children have been learning how to order numbers by looking at the tens and ones columns.   Some children challenged themselves to order 5 numbers within 100.

Today we have been comparing numbers using the greater than, less than and equals symbols.  The children remembered that when the crocodile’s mouth is wide open he eats the biggest number.

In English the children have been using time conjunctions and adjectives to tell their own story of Mollie’s journey from our text book ‘Journey’.  The book has no words so the children were able to invent their own story to go with the beautiful pictures.   The children practised telling their story to the whole class before they wrote it to practise their oracy skills. MVI_5283 Please click on this link to hear Lacey tell her story.

The children have been great geographers this week.  They have really got to grips with map reading and identifying symbols on a map.  Their challenge was to find our school at Hewish.  They had a few clues and knew they should look  between the railway line and the road.  Zachary knew the name of the road “It’s the A370” he said.  They looked for ‘Sch’ and found lots of schools on the Weston and area ordnance survey map before finding St. Anne’s @ Hewish.  They drew a symbol and then used the key to find out what the symbol represented.

In RE we have been learning about the Hindu story of creation and comparing it to the Christian story of creation.  We learnt that the Lotus flower is a very important symbol for Hindus and that they have lots of Gods who have different roles.  We made a split pin wheel to help us to remember the cycle of creation according to Hindus.

Next week we will be recapping the following sounds so please spot them whilst reading with your child at home:

oa (boat), ow (snow), oe (toe), o-e (home), ph (phone).

Our sight words for reading and spelling will be:

little, there, when, what and were.

Thanks for all your support.  Have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Poole

 

 

 

 

 

Term 1 – Week 3

In Maths this week the children have been learning the value of numbers.  We started by counting out teen numbers with straws.  When we reached 10 we bundled the straws together with an elastic band to make one lot of ten and then counted how many ‘ones’ we had over.  The children soon got the hang of using the language of tens and ones.  Later on in the week we moved on to representing 10 by using one stick for ten and we used individual cubes to represent the ones.  The children were able to record this in their books by drawing lines for sticks of ten and dots for ones for numbers up to 99.   For example 52 would be represented as IIIII..

In English the children made a word bank of adjectives on post it notes before saying and writing their sentences to describe the pictures around the classroom taken from our book, ‘Journey.’

On Thursday the Year 1 crew used their oracy skills to retell the ‘Journey’ story to their partner.  They used  time conjunctions: first, then, next, after that and finally.  The second partner had to use the same time conjunctions but they could not use the same adjectives in their sentences.  I was really impressed by the complex nature of the sentences and everybody used the time conjunctions in the right order.    Next week the children will be taking on the role of the main character in ‘Journey’ and writing their diary entry using the personal pronoun, ‘I’, adjectives and time conjunctions to consolidate their learning over the last three weeks.  They will also be remembering their every time we write skills: finger spaces, handwriting, capital letters and full stops.

On Thursday afternoon Mrs Collery visited Year 1 to talk to the children about Northern Ireland.  They noticed she had a different accent straight away.  She told the children lots of facts about Ireland and finished with a beautiful story about how the Giant’s Causeway came to be.

On Friday amidst the storms we managed to get outside and learn how to stop the ball before passing in Football.  The children can now dribble the ball with either foot and stop the ball.  They can’t wait until we play an actual match.

Next week’s sight words to learn to read and spell are:

so, do, come, some, one, said.

We will be recapping the following sounds during our phonics lesson:

oo (zoo), ue (blue), u-e (flute), ew (few), sh (sheet).

When reading with your child at home please look out for these in their books.

Many thanks for your support.  Please don’t hesitate to talk to me if you have any concerns.

Mrs Poole

 

Term 1 – Week 2

This week the children have been solving missing number problems, counting backwards and finding a number that is one more and one less than a given number.  We have been counting to 100 every day.  We have played games of snakes and ladders in pairs to help us to recognize numbers to 100 too, perhaps this is a game you could play together at home.  Next week we will be concentrating on the value of numbers (how many tens and how many ones).

In English we have been talking about the importance of adjectives to add description to the pictures in our book ‘Journey’. Some children recorded the adjectives on whiteboards.

We have also been practising forming our letters correctly.  I have been very impressed by how the children have made their letters smaller to fit on the lines in their Year 1 learning journals.

The children enjoyed their music lesson this week, moving to the pulse of the song Hey You!

Our learning theme this term  has a very strong geography focus.  This week the children have studied England and Scotland, next week we will be looking at Wales and we have a visitor coming in on Thursday afternoon to talk to us about Northern Ireland.   We found out that London is the capital city, Queen Elizabeth II lives at Buckingham Palace and a red rose is an important emblem for English people.  The children made some beautiful red roses and wrote two facts they had learnt about England on each leaf.

 

We also made some tartan kilts by weaving facts about Scotland on each strand.

The children remembered that the thistle was the emblem for Scotland and even found a thistle on the walk to the playground.  They were also fascinated by the suggestion of the Loch Ness Monster and some of the boys had a great discussion about which type of dinosaur it could be.

We have also been learning about the difference between physical (natural) and human (man-made) features.  We went outside to see how many of each we could find and drew and labelled them using our adjectives.

Another very enjoyable week with your wonderful children.  Please keep reading with your child at home, it really does make a difference. The sounds we will be concentrating on next week are: ee (bee), ea (tea), e-e (Steve),  ey (donkey) and y (speedy) – so many different ways to write the long vowel ‘e’ sound.

Our sight word spellings will be: my, are, was, you, they and all.

Many thanks.

Mrs Poole

 

 

 

 

 

 

Term 1 – Week 1

In a growth mindset, challenges are exciting rather than threatening.  So rather than thinking, oh,

I’m going to reveal my weakness, you say, wow, here’s a chance to grow.

Carol S. Dweck

Welcome to Year 1.  We have had a fantastic start to the term.  The children have been brilliant and I have enjoyed getting to know all of them a little better.

We started the week by identifying what characteristics a learning champion may have.  We have talked about having a growth mindset and the children have agreed to never give up and always try their best.  I have seen all the children have this attitude this week, which has been lovely.  We have looked at our 3 school rules: respect yourself, respect others and respect the environment and as a crew they have added their own ideas of what this will look like and sound like around our school.

The children  signed their Year 1 contract by drawing a self-portrait.   We learnt how to  draw a self portrait by drawing a cross through an oval shape to ensure our eyes, nose and mouth were in the correct position.  The children used a mirror to check what they looked like first.

The morning challenges this week have focused on strengthening fine motor skills for writing.  The children have had a turn at threading cheerios onto pipe cleaners to make a caterpillar, making the largest number they can from play dough, using tiny pebbles to make beautiful pieces of natural art and squeezing the mouth open on a tennis ball so the ball buddy can eat his favourite food, marbles!

In Maths we have been learning to group as many ways as we can using ‘Guess Who’ pictures.  I was very impressed by the reasoning skills of the children with comments such as “I’ve put them together because they have the same colour eyes and hair and their hair is short in that group and long in that group”, “I have grouped them together because they are wearing hats, but those are wearing hats with flowers in them”, “These have big noses and no hair, but they have little noses and no hair.”

The children have also been counting and representing the number of different items on varying sized pieces of wrapping paper with counters.  The children placed a counter on the particular object they were counting so that they didn’t get muddled and over count the items.  Some children recorded the totals.

In English we have looked at the book ‘Journey’.  The children were surprised that the book didn’t have any words so they discussed in small groups what they would write if they were the authors by looking very closely at the pictures.  Their stories are worth publishing.  What great imaginations you have Year 1!

Today we went on an ‘aeroplane’ to Gambia in Africa and then on to Greece.  The children were served refreshments on board by the air hostess and watched for different physical and human geographical features out of the window as we flew over mountains, rivers, bridges, cities, farms, cliffs, beaches and ports.  When we arrived in Gambia the children had a chance to dress up in African costumes, play with African instruments and animals, go shopping with Gambian money and carry their shopping home in a basket on their head rather than a Sainsbury’s plastic carrier.  They also printed a beautiful African design on material to sell at the market.

Then we went to Greece and made Grecian pots, tasted Greek food and tried Greek dancing.

A very busy but enjoyable week, thank you Year 1.  I am really looking forward to next week.

Please don’t hesitate to speak to me if you have any concerns, however small.  Happy children, who feel confident and safe, learn much better.   Thank you.