Friday 10th November 2017

This week in English we have been writing our own firework poems. First we used a selection of words and poems from poems we had heard to finish the lines ‘Fireworks go’ or ‘Fireworks are’. We shared our favourite lines with the class. 

The next day we worked with a partner and made up a four line poem, starting every line with Fireworks…. We could think of our own ideas or ‘magpie’ ideas we had heard previously.

The following day we wrote our own poems, following the same format. Again we could use our own, original ideas or ‘magpie’ from the poems we had written in pairs or from those we had heard. We created a class success criteria for our work. This included:

·         Start each line with the word ‘fireworks’

·         Start each line with a capital letter

·         Start each line on a new line

·         Use finger spaces

·         Use phoneme fingers to spell the words

·         Use finger spaces

·         Use a full stop or exclamation mark at the end of each line

·         Choose our words carefully to ‘put a picture in the reader’s head’

Finally we wrote up our poems in our neatest handwriting and decorated them to make class poetry book. Please have a look at it when you come for consultations next week. 

We have also made up a class poem using numbers, adjectives and verbs. 

Please encourage your child to make up a poem using one of these formats. They could make one up about fireworks, animals (One spotty pig, rolling in the mud), or anything they are inspired by! If your child writes them we would love to share them in class.  

In maths this week we continued our learning about addition. 
We looked at the sign for add and equals and talked about what they mean.

We worked practically at first using teddies.  We talked about the addition number sentence the teddies represented and identified the two parts.  We then talked about how we could work out the whole.

We decided putting the biggest number in our head and counting on from that was a good strategy. Did you know addition can be done in any order?

We also noticed that by adding the parts the whole is always bigger that the parts unless one part is zero.

These are some of the resources we thought could help us.
Fingers, counters, Numicon, number facts, doubles, near doubles 
Here are some examples of our recording.

On Tuesday we did some problem solving using our addition skills.

On Wednesday we revisited our Reception learning about subtraction.
On Wednesday we started looking at subtraction. We talked about the vocabulary used when subtracting: take away, subtract, minus, less and how many left. We all had 6 counters and were asked to take away a certain number of counters. We talked about what was happening to the whole (the number we started with). Next we were given the takeaway calculation 6 -1 = 5.  We then thought of a story to go with the calculation.

Here is one of the children's ideas.  

There were 6 planets.  Then 1 got burnt.  Now there are 5 left.

You may like to ask your child if they can make up a story for 9 - 6 =3    10 - 2 =8

On Friday we did some problem solving using our subtraction skills.  We talked about how we could work the question out.  Some of us used our fingers, some of us used jottings and others used resources while others used our number facts.  Here are the problems we had to do.

Carry on encouraging your child to practise their number facts using Hit the Button.

This week in science we talked about the properties of different materials.  We used the word bendy, rigid, shiny, transparent, hard, smooth, see through, stiff and strong to name a few.  We talked about why certain materials are used to make certain things. Can you talk to your child why windows are made of glass and not metal.

We hope that you have a lovely weekend!

The Year One Team