Friday 25th October.

This week has been another busy and full week for year one. Our final week before half term has seen us exploring adapting and editing our story of Jack and the Beanstalk in our English lessons with children sharing ideas on which aspects of the story they could change.

Children made story maps to plan their writing. They shared them with each other in partner talk time. For the next few lessons the children worked on writing their story into their books and using the ideas discussed to improve their written texts to produce a final piece in their books.The children were focusing on sitting their letters on the line, using finger spaces, capital letters, full stops and maybe extending their sentences with an 'and'.

In maths this week we have been using part,part whole models, which look like this:

We use part, part whole models to partition one whole number into parts. e.g. 7 can be partitioned into 5 and 2.

Children have been building these models with counters and then using this to complete our written examples using the templates provided.

We have discussed the relationship between the numbers and how the parts are always equal to the whole.

In science this week we have been exploring the senses and how we  use them in our everyday lives.
The children went on a sensory walk and made a list of all the senses they explored in our outdoor learning space. In lesson two we talked about the body parts associated with each sense and then we labelled a body map to shoe where we would find each sense. We watched a video about our senses and then shared ideas about what we had learnt. If you would like to watch it you can find it on u tube. The title is Dr.Binocs show: the five senses. Well worth a look as a fun information tool.

On Friday we explored the five senses further by, moving round stations in the classroom to test our different senses.
The stations included these activities:
Magic eye pictures, 
Smelling jars - the children smelled the contents of a sealed jar and had to match the jar to a picture of the item inside. 
Reading books about or senses.
A touchy feely tray where the children described how different materials felt. 
A listening walk to identify the different sort of sounds you hear inside and outside. 

You might like to try some of these activities at home over half term. 

We have had a really positive first half term with a wide range of learning and exploring taking place everyday. The children have worked hard and are now settled into year one life. we hope everyone has a really happy half term and look forward to seeing everyone ready for more learning after the week's break.
During your busy half terms you may want to try some of the activities below if you get time and want to re visit some of the things we have been exploring in class.
sentences in our learning books.

1.Going on a sensory walk and listing down all the things that you can see, hear, touch and smell in the local area.
2. Singing head shoulders knees and toes and then trying to add in as many of the sensory organs as you can to the song.
3. Having some simple tasting jars such as sugar, honey, apples etc and seeing if the children can identify them without looking.
4. using simple objects such as conkers or leaves to make number bonds up to ten or twenty.
5. Roll a dice and add the bonds together to race to the finish. First one to reach 20 wins.
6. collect some objects on a walk and then use them to create a story with each other taking turns to create the next part of the story.

Many Thanks

The year one team.

Friday 18th November

This week in maths we have been comparing numbers using the vocabulary; greater than, less than and equal to. The children were introduced to these symbols > (greater than), < (less than) and = equal to.
The children enjoyed watching this video to help them remember which way round the symbols go. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6Efzu2slaI
We recommend you watch it at home to help consolidate their understanding. 

The children worked with a partner and played rock, paper, scissors with numbers on their fingers. They both made a number on their fingers and then compared their numbers using the > < or = symbols in a number sentence on their whiteboard. This is a fun game you might like to play with your children at home to consolidate their learning. 

Thank you to everyone who sent photos in of the children when they were younger. We discussed how the children have changed as they have grown and how some things have stayed the same. We looked at a range of photos, some were of the children as babies, toddlers and some were photos of them from the last year. It was lovely to see such a range of types of photo and it gave us lots to talk about. The children looked at each other's photos and tried to guess who was who. 

Next the children used their observational drawing skills to draw what they saw in their photo of themselves. 

In English this week we used the  Jack and the beanstalk narrative to discuss and explore what the characters might be saying and feeling at each stage of the story. We used this to create our own character speech bubbles. 

This week saw us all taking part in our Year one assembly performance and the children all worked super hard to re tell the tale of the room on the broom using actions, songs and props to bring the story to life. The assembly was a huge success and the year one team would like to thank you all for attending and supporting the children. We hope you enjoyed looking around our classrooms and seeing examples of your children's marvellous work in the their topic folders and books.

On Friday we had our first Year One archery competition. The results will be announced next week but the children did so well, the skills they have picked up in such a short period of time are very impressive and we look forward to watching their progress over the course of the year.

If you find time in your busy weekends and have five minutes spare you might want to try one of the activity ideas below.

Number snap game matching and making numbers to make ten ie: 6 and 4 would be a snap as they make 10 etc..

Rolling  a dice and then using objects to make up the missing number to ten.ie: 7 rolled on the dice and three counters= 10.

Playing "Go fish" with number cards where players have to collect sets of numbers in fours by asking other players and collecting sets. For example collecting ones and asking each player if they have a one card in their hand that you can take to make a set of four ones...

Re telling a familiar story together but then taking turns to think of different possible endings.

Reading a story and then trying to predict what might happen next in the text....

So that's week seven 
See you all next week for week eight.

Have a lovely weekend, The year one team.