Friday 22nd June

This week in maths we have been learning about time.  We began by thinking about how time was measured, we came up with days, months, years and even decades! We have learnt two songs to help us remember the order of the days of the week and months of the year. You may like to ask your child to sing the songs to you.  We ordered the days of the week and then wrote our own sentences using the words today, tomorrow, yesterday, before and after. Next we ordered the months of the year and identified which month our birthday was  in and said which number month it was and which season it is in. You may like to talk about the days of the week and months of the year at home using these words.

Later in the week we talked about the units of measuring time, seconds, minutes and hours. We then went on to tell the time to o’clock and half past.
We had to read clock times, draw the minute and hour hands on the clock and say what the time will be in one hour or what it was one hour ago. 
You may like to help your child tell the time at home, talk about the long hand being the minute hand and the short hand being the hour hand. 
You may like to follow the links below with your child.  

http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zcmdwxs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TA5z_DE204

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIgzCOZNT6o

This week in English we have been learning about the life cycle of a butterfly as we are planning to make a non-fiction information book. First we used a variety of sources to discover factual information about the life cycle and then we wrote sentences in pairs on white boards about the interesting facts we had learnt. The next day we wrote our sentences in our neatest handwriting for our display.

We have now started writing our lifecycle books and we are remembering our ‘non-negotiables’ that we have to include for all writing. Please ask your child what these are. We then thought about what we need to remember when we are writing this genre of book. Please ask your child what is special about non-fiction information texts. We thought about which page we should write first and we decided we would start with the eggs. (We had a debate about which comes first – the chicken or the egg?!) We have drawn detailed diagrams and written interesting facts about the eggs and the caterpillar. Please ask your child what they can remember and what they plan to write about the chrysalis and the butterfly stages. Here are some lovey videos about the lifecycle of butterfly here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AUeM8MbaIk  
https://www.dkfindout.com/uk/animals-and-nature/insects/butterfly-life-cycle/

Don’t forget it is the Rothamstead Festival of Ideas this weekend. It is open from 11-5 so you might like to go after the summer fair! 

This week in science we went on a mini-beast hunt around the school grounds.  We visited the allotment, the ‘Bumps and Hollows’, the Robin Hood Trail and the playground.  We found spiders and ants on the bark of trees, woodlice under rocks and worms in the soil. We talked about all the different micro habitats mini-beast live in and that they chose the micro-habitat because it provides shelter and food.  Your child may like to go on a mini-beast hunt around the local park or in a garden.  They could even take photos of what they found and bring them into school.

We had had lots of fun at sports day on Friday as we hope you did too. We enjoyed the range of activities and loved watching the toddler and adult races!

We also had a sporty morning today too! Daniel Lewis (who is a triple jumper) came to visit as part of the Sports For Schools scheme. We enjoyed a very active circuit and an inspiring assembly. He encouraged us to persevere, practise and eat healthily. Have a look at a video about Sports For Schools here: http://youtu.be/XDNoRdH2adI

We hope you have a good weekend -  see you at the summer fair and Rothamstead! 

Year One Team

Friday 15th June

We have finished our mini beast poems this week and we are feeling very proud of them! We used the poem ‘The Farmyard’ by AA Attwood as a structure for our own poems and we thought very carefully about the verbs and adjectives we should use to ‘paint a picture’ in the reader’s mind. We then used our neatest handwriting to copy our poems for display. We hope that you enjoy looking at them during the open evening and we think you will be very proud! Here is a little preview!  We have enjoyed reading poems written at home and inspired by our learning. If your child would like to write a poem this is a great format to follow and can be adapted to wherever you are. For example:  One brown horse, standing by the gate.  One smooth shell, glistening in the rock pool.  This week in maths we have been continuing our learning about place value to 100.  We began the week by using greater than (>), less than (<) and equal to (=) language and symbols to compare numbers to 100. We played ‘Lions and Tigers’ ask your child how we play this. If you roll a 0 should it be in the tens column or the ones column, can they explain why? Looking at two numbers, 37 and 73, we asked the children which number is the biggest? Which number has most 10s, which has least? Which has most ones which has least? We practised ordering numbers, thinking about possible sequences of numbers to 100. We looked at ordering a series of numbers from smallest to largest and largest to smallest as well as thinking of possible answers to gaps in a number sequence. Ask your child if they can tell you how the numbers below are ordered and how they know this. We have practised looking at one more and one less than a given number. We looked at making a 2 digit number from single digits, ask your child to look at the numbers 7, 5, 9, 6 what 2 digit numbers can they make using these? We thought about logical systems for finding all the possibilities, can they tell you how they know all the number options? The always, sometimes and never told us that when finding 1 less the tens digit stays the same (sometimes with the exception of if the number ends in a 0).

  

This week in science we have been learning about what it means for something to be alive, dead or never been alive. We sorted pictures into the three groups and had to prove why we thought that. 

We learnt all living things can

·         Move

·         Reproduce/have offspring

·         Responds to stimuli

·         Takes on nutrients/eats

·         Excretes waste/poo/wee

·         Respire/breathe

·         Grow

We then recorded our findings in a table.

In art in the next few weeks we are going to make our own clay mini-beasts so this week we had an exploration lesson.

We tried cutting, rolling, moulding and carving. We then used tools to make marks using lines and different textures and finally we used slip (watery clay) to join pieces of clay together.

We hope you have a lovely weekend – enjoy the sunshine!

The Year One team

  

Friday 8th June 2018

This week in English we have been looking at poems about mini-beasts. We started by reading the poem ‘Eeny Mini Mini Beasts’ and identifying the verbs, nouns, alliteration and rhyme. The next day we read a selection of mini-beast poems by Giles Andreae. In pairs we each had a different poems and we marked the verbs, nouns, alliteration and rhyme again. Please encourage your child to do this when you read poems together. The next day we became performance poets! We created success criteria as a class. Please ask your child what you need to remember when performing poems as a group. We worked with our partner to plan actions and expression and we tried to learn our poems to help our performances. We then had the opportunity to perform and listen to each other, commenting on which aspects of the performances we enjoyed the most.

We are now planning to write our own mini-beast poems next week, in the format of ‘The Farmyard’ by AA Attwood. Here is a Crabtree version, amended to be about mini-beasts!

One hairy spider spinning a silky web,

Two busy bees, buzzing quickly to and fro,

Three pink worms, slithering through the squelchy mud,

Four delicate butterflies, fluttering in the summer air,

Five glittering dragonflies, gliding over the sparkling pond.

We will be using this format next week and today we have looked at how the poet constructed this poem. We noticed each line:

Starts with a number

Adjective

Mini-beast

Verb

Place

During the weekend please look at poems with your children and you might even want to write a poem too!

This week in maths we have been learning about place value to 100.  We began the week by using a 100 grid. We were given numbers to locate on the hundred square and talked about how to find them quickly. You may like to help your child at home. Using a hundred grid ask them to find a number and tell you how they found it so quickly. We then used the hundred square to count forwards, backwards and identify a number between two given numbers. On Tuesday we used base 10 to read, write and make numbers using a grid representation. On Wednesday we used base 10 again to read, write and make numbers using the part, whole model. Follow the link to play Shark Attack http://www.ictgames.com/sharkNumbers/index.html

In computing this term we are making a booklet about mini-beasts using ‘2 Simple 2 Publish’. We have typed our title and the author’s name, and we used a variety of tools to make a bright and interesting front cover. They will be full of information and beautiful pictures of mini-beasts! 

We have been very luky to have had an extra woodland learning lesson this week.  We used lots of equipment and made bug houses. If your child's bug house is not quite finished have a look below for some ideas to help you finish it! 

We hope that you have a great weekend! 
The Year One team