Welcome to the last week of our first half term of this academic year. What a busy start we have had to this Autumn term. The children are now all settled into the routine of Year 1 and we have finished this half term with yet another super busy week.
In English this week we have been looking at rhyming couplets and using some poems from Dr Seuss including extracts from green eggs and ham and red fish, blue fish, old fish, new fish.
On Monday we read the poems together and made a word bank and mind map of the words we liked the most from each poem. We looked at the patterns of the rhyming words and where they could be found in the poem. We explored the concept of rhyming couplets where the last word of each pair of lines sounds the same and we then played our "silly" soup game where we matched rhyming words in pairs to put into our cooking pot as we chanted " I'm making silly soup, I'm making it silly. I'm putting it in the fridge to make it nice and chilly".
On Tuesday we played rhyming word bingo and then explored the words that rhymed in order to collect words for our treasure chest mind map activity. We used them to draw matching word pictures on our white boards and then found the missing words in a range of rhyming couplet example sentences.
On Wednesday we re-capped the poems and underlined all of the rhyming couplets we could find before creating a rhyming couplet poem in our class shared writing activity. We talked about which words would best describe the theme we had decided on and which words could be used to make the poem rhyme in the correct place to mirror the structure of the Dr Seuss poems.
We then enjoyed a cat in the hat and Dr Seuss English CHIL in the afternoon, where we completed a range of activities including word searches and creating our own comic strips of cat in the hat stories.
On Friday we used the word banks and mind maps we had created across the week to write our very own rhyming couplets poems. We shared ideas of themes to write about and then re-capped the way the poems had been written in order to capture the poems original style. We then shared our poems in class and gave each other feedback to identify what aspects were good and what areas we could improve on.
Activities to try at home over the half term break:
reading some Dr Seuss poems and then making a poster that shows the main theme of the poem you like best.
writing down some rhyming words on squares of paper or card and then using them to play rhyming snap.
Creating a poem together by taking it in turns to write alternate lines and matching each pair of lines with a rhyming word.
Reading a Dr Seuss poem and then drawing your own story map of that poem.
In maths this week we have been exploring the concepts of re-capping the skills, methods and number knowledge we have learnt during this half term and answering a range of mathematical questions in our maths booklets. We also enjoyed a number maths CHIL session, building and recording our calculations on how to group, sequence and calculate greater and smaller numbers from 0-20. We compared groups of numbers and then drew pictures to represent each calculation.
Activities to try at home over the half term break:
Playing some maths board games such as snakes and ladders and making a note of the numbers you land on during each dice roll. I.e. 4, 3, 6 and 2. You could then sequence these numbers in order from smallest to largest.
Making your own number line and then rolling a dice to generate numbers to place counters on and then add together to get a combined number total. You could even compare the two numbers you roll and record which one is the largest or smallest of the two.
We enjoyed a second black history month lesson and learnt about more of the important and world changing individuals who stood up for the things they believed in despite facing some opposition to their ideas, actions and beliefs. On Tuesday we learnt about Mae Jemmison, the first female black astronaut. We wrote questions we would like to ask her, ask your child what they wanted to ask her. We then had a CHIL session all about the key figures from black history we have studied over the last two weeks.
Ask your child what they can tell you about any of the people mentioned on this page:
In computing on Tuesday we were set a task that tested us on all of the ICT skills we have been learning this half term and took turns to complete a series of computer keyboard and mousepad skills in order to find an application, write on a word document and edit and change a range of its features.
It has been a very busy and productive term and we are especially impressed with how well the children have settled into year one and worked so hard on all of the subjects we have explored. We had the results back from the skipping competition that we entered a few weeks ago along with some of the
other local schools and Year 1 from Crabtree came second overall which is fantastic!!!
We wish everyone a healthy and happy half term and look forward to seeing you all at the start of November.
Have a lovely half term,
The Year One Team
