Friday 17th January

This week in English the children have continued learning about instructions.

At the beginning of the week the teachers explained that we had written to the National Institute of Dragons. This was because over the weekend we were wondering how people put their pet dragons to bed at night. Fortunately they replied very promptly:

We then decided that this would be a great stimulus for instruction writing.
First we ordered a set of pictures to help us visualise the steps involved in putting a dragon to bed.

Next we created a list of bossy verbs which we might use in our instructions:

The children then worked in groups to come up with some sentences so that we could write a set of class instructions:

We recapped the features of instructions as well:

Later in the week the children worked with a partner to plan a set of instructions to put a dragon to bed.

Finally on Friday the children wrote their instructions in their books.
At home you might like to look for instructions around the house, write a set of instructions for a well known activity or play a game of Simon Says to identify the bossy verbs that are used. 

Next week in English we will be looking at animal poems. The children will be learning a poem, identifying their favourite descriptive words and phrases and performing it. Over the weekend you might like to look at some poems with your child and try to add some actions and expression in together when you read it.


On Tuesday we had a visit from Steve from the Blue Cross. He explained how to look after pets and what their 5 welfare needs are (you may have seen the poster that was sent home). 
Later in the afternoon the children made a poster to explain how to look after a specific pet. Ask your child which animal they chose and what they need to live a healthy, happy life.

We have booked for Steve to come back on Tuesday 28th January to give an assembly to the whole school about safety around dogs.



 This week in maths we have been looking at subtraction and what happens when we take away numbers to make a smaller total. We have been using a range of resources to build draw and solve a variety of calculations and then showed this learning in our maths books using our maths pots challenges.
We used Deanes, tens frames and counters and number lines to show and learn the process of counting back and subtracting and then learnt how to show this process by drawing each calculation out in each resource to find out our end total.
An activity to try at home if you would like to is to roll a dice and then build that number of counters on the table. then roll the dice and see if that number can be taken away from the first number if it can you win a point and if it cannot you don't. first player to ten points wins.

Next week on Friday we have a visit from Ark Farm. They will be bringing with them a range of animals including:
Small ducks, bantam chickens, guinea pigs, 2 Friendly Labradors, Sugar Gliders, Pickles our Pygmy African Hedgehog, Tobias the Horsefield Tortoise and Plop our Barn Owl


Please let us know if there are any allergies that we are not already aware of. 

Have a lovely weekend,
The Year One Team