Friday 28th September

This week in English we started by listening to ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’. We then thought about the characters in the book and together we wrote them in a list. We remembered that when we try and write a word we: ‘Say the word, finger the word, write the word’. We discussed how when we write a list we write each item under the other and they all start with a capital letter. We added some of the objects from Jack and the Beanstalk, and we noticed that even though these are not the names of people they still all stated with a capital letter as they are items in a list. We then thought about how we try and form each letter correctly – curly caterpillar letters, one-armed robot letters, long ladder letters and zig-zag letters. All the children then wrote their own lists and also tried to hold their pencils correctly. (With a little help from ‘Baby Shark’!) The next day we looked at some pictures from Jack and the Beanstalk and tried to match captions to them. We remembered to: ‘Look at the letters, say the sounds and blend them all together’. On Friday wrote our own captions for pictures. First we chose a picture and decided what to write. We then ‘put the words in our heads’, by repeating them several times. This helps child to check that what they plan to write makes sense and to remember all the words. We then help our pencils correctly and wrote the caption, trying very hard to form our letters correctly and use our phoneme fingers for our spelling of unknown words.  After we had written our caption we then re-read it to check that it made sense. To support your child’s learning you could: ·         Encourage them to make a list of their friends, food they like, games they enjoy or even books they have read. ·         Write a caption for a picture in a book or one that they have drawn themselves ·         Always hold their pencil correctly ·         Try to form letters correctly, using the handwriting families ·         Use their phoneme fingers to spell words Next week is book week and we are asking every child to bring in a book on Monday. We will be looking at the books in school and searching for interesting words and phrases. Please could you look through the book your child plans to bring to school and help your child identify words and phrases that we can add to our lists – thank you. Remember our book week competition to find the best awesome words.  This week we then continued representing numbers in different ways. We worked in groups of three. Here are some of the ways we represented 8 and 10 practically. We used the numeral, the word, Numicon, dice patterns, fingers, counters, number lines, rulers, number fans, bead strings, number grids, drawing pictures and jottings. It was lovely to see the different ways some children represented numbers at home last weekend. Those children were very proud of their home learning. The next day we recorded different ways of representing the same number. During the week we practised forming our numbers correctly.  We know every number starts at the top. Give your child the opportunity to practise their number formation at home. We also ordered numbers to 10.  We gave the children numbers from 0-10 and they had to put them in order from smallest to biggest as quickly as they could. During a maths ChIL session we played a game called ‘Tell me about’. You choose a number and then have to think of as many facts about a given number that you can.  Here are some of our ideas. Home learning ideas Provide opportunities for your child to ·         practise ordering their numbers correctly from 0-10 and 10-0 as quickly as they can ·         practise forming their numbers correctly from 0-9 ·         tell you everything they know about a certain number eg 7

Continue to ·         Count forwards and backwards from 0 -10 using their counting fingers ·         Practise careful counting up to 10 objects, repeat to check accuracy ·         Find ways of representing numbers in different ways.  Your child may like to bring in a photo to show how they represented the number 7 at home and they can share it with the rest of the class. In art we have been learning about the artist Piet Mondrian. He used primary colours, straight lines, rectangles + squares.   Last week we explored in pairs to create our own temporary Mondrian collages.  This week we created our own permanent Mondrian collages.  Look at some of our wonderful artwork. This week in science we went on a plant walk and we were looking for wild plants growing in the school grounds.  We found brambles, ivy, holly, moss, and many other plants. We recorded on clipboards what we saw, like real scientists. Enjoy your weekend. The Year 1 Team