Friday 6th July

We had a great day out at Childwickbury learning from real artists. Look at our photos and ask your child what was their favourite part of the day. 

This week in maths we have been learning about money. 

On Monday we looked at a selection of coins from 1p to £2 and notes from £5 to £50 and said how much each coin was worth. We talked about how many 1ps in different amounts.

Later we used our skill of counting in 2s, 10s and 5s to count the amounts given and to make amounts. We also compared amounts using the words and symbols for more, less and equal to. You may like to help your child practice at home using real money. 

Follow the link to choose from a variety of money games to play.

http://www.ictgames.com/moneyPage.htm

This week we have been learning a new story – The Giant Jam Sandwich. First we listened to the story and then we drew a story map. This is when we draw 10-12 simple pictures to remind ourselves of the main events. Please look at the example below and ask your child to tell you the story.

The next day we ‘stepped the story’. We used our story maps and worked in pairs to retell the story. When we step we only short phrases as we are trying to learn the sequence of the story. Here is an example of part of the stepping script:

Hot day

Wasps flew

Wasps buzzed

Chased farmers

Stung Swell

Wasps dived, hummed, buzzed

Ask your child to use the story map to show you how we step the story.

Finally, we have been working in pairs to tell the story. We pass a bean bag to each other to help us remember when it is our turn to listen and speak. When we are telling the story we try and use lots of expression to make our story interesting to listen to. If we cannot remember parts of the story we can pass the bean bag to our partner – we are good learning partners!

We also stepped the story to help us embed it in our minds so next week we can write our own class version and then our own version.

In art this week we painted our clay mini-beasts.  Next week we will finish them off ready to be displayed for Open Evening.

                                                                                                           

Have a great weekend in the sun!
The Year One Team

Friday 29th June

In English we have finished our 'life cycle of a butterfly' books and we are all very impressed! As they are information books we ensured that we included lots of detailed information, as well as remembering the 'non-negotiables' that we remember for all our writing. 

During the weekend your child might like to investigate the life cycle of a different mini beast and we would love to share their findings in school. Here is a good place to start researching:  

https://www.dkfindout.com/uk/animals-and-nature/insects

This week in maths we have been learning about time. After telling the time to o’clock and half past we learnt to tell quarter past times. 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.  All week the children have been telling us when the class clock says o’clock, half past and quarter past times. You may like to encourage them to do this at home too! 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 Later in the week we went outside and timed ourselves doing some activities including star jumps, hopping and writing our names.  We estimated first, then timed ourselves and then recorded the time.  After we compared our times with each other and talked about who was slower or faster.

On Friday we read the story the ‘Tortoise and the Hare’, we looked at who was faster and who was slower and talked about whether the quickest animal won and why. We noticed that the faster time is less time and the slower time is more. We compared times of animals and people in races and made our own time comparison sentences. http://www.ictgames.com/mobilePage/hickoryDickory/

This week in science we looked at another microhabitat.  We did a tree shake to find out which mini-beasts live in a tree.  We predicted first and then went outside to find out.  We found spiders, ants, aphids, and other tiny minibeasts living in the tree.  We collected our data and then made a block graph showing our results.  After we used the block graph to ask questions like which minibeast was the most/least common, how many spiders did we see and how many minibeasts did we see altogether.

In art this week we used our plans to create our own clay minibeasts.  We used a range of techniques to make them including rolling, flattening, coiling, pinching and marking with tools.  Next week we will be painting our minibeasts.

We hope you have a fantastic weekend in the sunshine! 
Year One Team