Friday 7th June

Welcome back to our final half term of Year One! This half term our topic is ‘Water World’ and we have lots of fun learning to do!

This week in Maths we have been learning about place value with numbers to 100. First we used the 100 square to practise counting up in ones from zero to one hundred and back again. We were very good at using the 100 square to help us. Then we tried with a blank 100 square to help us and this was trickier! We used our fingers to help us, particularly when ‘crossing the tens’, for example going from 79 to 80, or 60 to 59.  We also thought about the layout of the 100 square – numbers with the same amount of ones are in the same column. Ask your child the other rule of the 100 square. We then had a blank 100 square and worked with our partner to fill the squares. One of us said a 2-digit number and the other found where it should go on the square. Please practise counting up and down with your child until they can count fluently.

The next day we thought about what each of the digits in a 2-digit number mean and we partitioned numbers into their tens and ones. For example, 58 can be partitioned into 5 tens and 8 ones. Here are some examples of questions we answered:

Please ask your child to tell you how many tens and ones are in a given number.

We have also been comparing 2-digit numbers to 100 using the greater and less than symbols. We had questions on the tables and we used a variety of resources to represent numbers that answer the questions. We also recorded the numeral and used the < and > symbols to compare to the given numbers. He are some pictures to explain!

Lions and Tigers is a wonderful game to play to practise comparing numbers. You only need a dice, piece of paper and a pencil to play. Please play Lions and Tigers at home with your child – it is lots of fun!

We have used our learning about comparing numbers to 100 to solve problems. Here are some examples.

This week in English we have been reading poems about water.

We started the week by looking at a selection of poems written by Shirley Hughes.  We worked in groups, reading our poem and then talking about our favourite words or phrases in the poems.  We thought about our reasons of why we made those choices.
Here are some of the poems we read.  Which was your child’s favourite? Can they explain why it was their favourite.  Which do you like and why?

On Tuesday we read the poem below Splish! Splash! Splosh!

We talked about what words we liked in the poem. Then worked in groups of three to learn the poem.  We made our own actions to help us rememeber the words.  After some practise we performed the poem to the class.

We had to remember to 

·         say the words together

·         keep to the rhythm

·         invent actions to go with poem

·         say it loud enough so when you perform it to everyone they can hear the words

·         work as a team

 On Wednesday we read a poem by Tony Mitton called ‘Voices of Water’.  We talked about our favourite words and phrases  We then looked at the poem in pairs and highlighted

·         our favourite words and phrases

·         repetitive patterns  used by the poet

·         rhyming words

·         words that showed onomatopiea

On Friday we used Voices of Water again.  We used the pattern ….

The water in the _______ says_______.

First we co-constructed our own toolkit thinking about the features we needed to include. 

After that we created two sentences as a class and then went off in pairs to write two more of our own sentences. 

Next week the children will be writing their own poem using the pattern of Tony Mitton’s Voices of Water poem.

We listened to these water sounds this week in class you may like to listen to them again and talk about words you could use to describe the sounds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgT2Y9JN6eI

If you find any other water poems please bring them in for us to share.

In Geography we have been thinking about the features found at the coast and how they are different to the features found in Harpenden. We sorted the geographical features in to physical and human features. Please ask your child to name a physical feature found at the seaside that we do not have in Harpenden. 

In Science we drew pictures of our favourite animals this week. We then worked in groups to decide how to sort them. Some of our ideas were: 

• Land animals or water animals
• Fur or no fur
• Fly or not fly

In Art we have been learning about the work of Henri Matisse. We watched a video to show how he made his cut outs ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlnBcaZEGb0 ) and an exhibition of his work ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLgSd8ka0Gs ) We then used his work as an inspiration for our cut outs to look like seaweed. 

So that has been a very busy first week back! Next week we have our Sports day on Thursday morning (weather permitting). Please ensure your child’s PE kit, sun hat and water bottle is in school. If they would like to wear trainers, please send them in to school on Thursday. We hope you have a good weekend,

The Year One team