Friday 15th February

We started the week calculating one more and one fewer of numbers to 50. We realised that we are adding to the ‘ones’ digit and so that digit changes. We recognised that the ‘tens’ digit changes when we ‘cross the ten’, for example going from 39 to 40, or 50 to 49. We discussed this is because we are ‘exchanging’ ten ‘ones’, for one ‘ten’. Some of us represented the numbers in different ways, for example using sticks and bricks or tens frames.  The next day we played a game comparing and ordering numbers. We used dice to create a 2-digit number and wrote this in the centre of our while boards. The we rolled the dice again and made another 2-digit number. We put this number before this first number it is was a smaller number, or after the first number if the number was greater. We used the greater and less than symbols between the numbers. Some us thought of which other numbers would be between our numbers. This is a good game to play at home to help think about place value and the relevance of each digit in a 2-digit number. Another game we played this week is ‘What’s my rule?’.  In this example the ‘rule’ is even numbers, so they go in the circle. If an odd number is suggested they are written outside the circle. Please ask you child to suggest some more 2-digit numbers and decide where they should be placed. You might like to ask your child think of a new rule and challenge you to work it out. They may be able to show demonstrate the tricky rule we had this week! We have also been looking at numbers to 50 represented in different ways, recording the number as a numeral and comparing the numbers using the < and > symbols. Some of us made up our own numbers and thought of different ways we could represent them. Some of us also worked out all the possible numbers that are between the two numbers. Over half term please continue to practise counting up and down to 50 from any number. Some children find ‘crossing the tens’ tricky and our work with place value has been supporting this. It is really important that children can now count fluently forwards and backwards to 50. We have also been practising counting in 2s to 20, 5s to 50, and 10s to 100. We will be using these number facts after half term and it would really support your child if they have practised during the holiday, thank you!  This week in English we have been writing our own Naughty Bus stories.  We thought about what a good one looks like and came up with a toolkit to help us remember what to include. On Monday and Tuesday we wrote our stories using our plans. The ideas the children had were wonderful.  Everyone had the Naughty Bus as the character.  The settings included Legoland, a garden, a farmyard, the jungle, London and a volcano.  The Naughty Bus drove through barriers and puddles, bounced on  a trampoline, crashed into scarecrows, trees and  Lego models. In all our stories the Naughty Bus learnt his lesson in the end and was never Naughty again! On Wednesday and Friday our teachers told us what they liked about our stories and we made improvements to make our stories even better. During these sessions we had a Naughty Bus ChIL and could write our own speech bubbles, stories, postcards or newspaper reports.  Each group also worked with their class TA creating a photo story of the adventures of the Naughty Bus around school. Your child may like to magpie the ideas from the Naughty Bus stpry to write their own vehicle story for the ’500 Words’ writing competition run by Radio 2.  Follow the link to find out more. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00rfvk1 When you are reading with your children talk about the nine friends that make a story great. Talk to them about -      Where the story is set? -      Who is the main character and other characters are? -       What events happen in the story? -      What obstacle happens? -      What are the setbacks? -      Who is the helper(s)? -      How is the problem solved? -      How does the story end? -      What have we learnt from the story? This will help them when they come to write their own stories. After all our work on the Naughty Bus we thought the children may like to enter this competition. Phonics This week in phonics we have been learning about the split digraph ‘e-e’ and consolidating ‘ee’ and ‘ea’ Can your child show you how they use their phoneme fingers to segment these words see, screech, queen, thirteen, three, street, sea, peach, squeak ,jeans, wheat, these, compete, complete, extreme, even, evening and then blend them back together again? Can they spot the digraph or spilt digraph in the words above. Is there only one digraph in these words or do some have more than one? Can they read these alien words – quete, prebe, strepe, bleme Spelling ideas. Perhaps you could get your child to think of a sentence using the words above with this week’s digraphs and the sentence starter  The people went………    to practise the common exception words. Don’t forget all the Year 1 common exception words are in your child’s Progress Book. Over the last two weeks in science we have done two more experiments using vehicles.  Last week we investigated which was the best surface for a toy car to move along.  We tested the car on the tile floor, the lino, the carpet and the rug.    This week we investigated which paper made the best paper aeroplane.  We used wrapping paper, tissue paper, crepe paper, newspaper and sugar paper. In both experiments we thought about what would happen before testing and then after testing we recorded what had happened and possible reasons why. You can see we have had a very busy week and half term. We are looking forward to a relaxing next week and we are sure your children are ready for a break too! We hope you all have a happy and safe half term!  The Year One Team