Friday 8th March

We had a super day on World Book Day and spread the word that you can read at any time of day, anywhere and with anyone.  Thank you for helping your children choose their books and costumes.  Just look at all the wonderful costumes!

The children all talked to their learning partners about the book they had bought in and had the opportunity to write their own book review.  They were also able to share their books with each other.  During the week the children have also created their own book token design for the World Book Day competition.  We are sending these home as you may like to send it off to the address given in the Bulletin.  We have filled in all the details apart from your child’s surname and age.

This week  in English we continued our learning about non chronological reports.

We have made our own non fiction books about Harpenden and as a class co- constructed a toolkit of what a good non chronological report looks like.

We began the week by writing the first section entitled ‘Where is Harpenden?’ We could choose to use these relevant words in our sentences. The following day we wrote the second section entitled ‘Harpenden in the Past’ We reminded ourselves of what we had learnt about Harpenden in the past last week and used these pictures and a wordbank to help us when composing our sentences.

We could chose to use some of these sentence starters.

In the past….

A long time ago……

In Harpenden there was…..

Did you know….?

On Wednesday we wrote the third section entitled ‘Harpenden Today’

We reminded ourselves of what we had learnt about Harpenden in the present day,  last week and used these pictures and a wordbank to help us when composing our sentences.

                                    

We could chose to use some of these sentence starters.

In Harpenden now…..

Today Harpenden has…

Did you know……?

On Friday we had a ChIL and could chose to add more interesting facts about Harpenden  or write a blurb to hook the reader in.

During the ChIL we worked with the adults to edit and improve our books.

Home Learning  You may like to follow the link to find out more about Harpenden, there is a wealth of information and something that will appeal to everyone.  Within the website there is a section entitled Walks about Harpenden that you may like to do. http://www.harpenden-history.org.uk/page.aspx?id=4

Your child may like to write some more simple sentences about Harpenden.  Can they challenge themselves to using the joining word ‘and’or ‘because’ to make the sentence more interesting.  Remember it needs to have relevant facts and words. Use the toolkit above to see what a good report looks like. They may like to bring their sentences in to share with the rest of the class.

Phonics

This week in phonics we have been learning about the split digraph ‘u-e’ and consolidating  ‘ew’ ‘oo’ and ‘ue’

Can your child show you how they use their phoneme fingers to segment these words fortune, include, salute, flute, nephew, knew, new, baboon, kangaroo, spoon, rescue, tissue, continue, fuel, and then blend them back together again? Can they spot the digraph or spilt digraph in the words above.

Is there only one digraph in these words or do some have more than one?

Can they read these alien words – strupe, mube, glews, yewm, quoop, floons, slues, tuel

Spelling ideas.

Perhaps you could get your child to think of a sentence using the words above with this week’s digraphs and the sentence starter  Today………    to practise the common exception words.

Don’t forget all the Year 1 common exception words are in your child’s Progress Book.

This week in maths we have been learning about measuring. We started by comparing the height and length of objects using the words longer, shorter, taller or equal. We each found a measuring object of our choice and measured objects in the playground. Please encourage your child to compare the length and height of objects using these words.

The next day we compared pictures of objects, using mathematical vocabulary. Here are some examples:

On Wednesday we measured the length and height of objects using non-standard measures. We chose our own non-standard measures and these included our hands, multi-link, number lines, leaflets and water bottles. We recorded our measurements.

Finally we have been reasoning and problem solving using our learning about measuring. Here are some examples:

Please think of some reasoning and problem solving questions you can ask your child. These do not need to be written down, just ask questions as you walk to school! 

 

In art we are working collaboratively to make a group collage of a Harpenden building. We have looked carefully at the patterns and shapes in our chosen building.    Each week over the next three weeks we will be using different techniques and materials that will then be used in our group collage.

   Last week we used the ipad to take photos and this week we made rubbings of     
   different surfaces.

In computing we have been continuing our learning about word processing. This week we have been using the shift key to create symbols, and checking that we can save our work in our own files. Please continue to help your child practise their typing skills. This website is a fun way to do this:

https://toybox.tools.bbc.co.uk/activities/id/activity-dance-mat-typing/exitGameUrl/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.uk%2Fguides%2Fz3c6tfr

Have a great weekend.

The Year One Team

Friday 4th March

This week we began our topic about Harpenden and in English used the topic to learn about non chronological reports. We began by talking about what we already know about Harpenden. After we wrote our own sentences about what we know.  We had to remember

·         Title - What I know about Harpenden

·         Get sentence in head before you start writing

·         Capital letter at start of sentence

·         Finger spaces

·         . (at end)   (challenge ! ?)

·         Capital letters for names of places

·         Use ‘and’ to join (challenge - because)

·         Choose words carefully

·         Phoneme fingers for spelling

·         After each sentence read it and check it makes sense

·         Correct letter formation so others can read it    

The following day we learnt about Harpenden now following a Power point text.  After we had a quiz about what we had learnt.  We worked in teams.  Here are some of the questions we answered.

How many people live in Harpenden? 30, 300, 3000 or over 30,000?

Name three shops in Harpenden.

What is Harpenden world famous for?

On Wednesday we learnt about Harpenden in the past following a Power point text.  Ask your child what they know about Cock Pond.

After a discussion we wrote our own sentences about what we had learnt. We had some sentence starters to help us. 

In the past……

Did you know……?

Harpenden had…..

Next week we are going to be authors and write our own non chronological reports in a little book that you will be able to read at consultations.

You may like to follow the link to find out more about Harpenden, there is a wealth of information and something that will appeal to everyone.  Within the website there is a section entitled Walks about Harpenden that you may like to do. http://www.harpenden-history.org.uk/page.aspx?id=47

This week in maths we have been continuing our learning about place value and practising counting in 2s, 5s and 10s.

We started by counting in 2s from zero and we marked these numbers on a hundred square. We noticed that when we count in 2s from zero the numbers are all even numbers and then end in 0, 2, 4, 6 or 8. We then used our skills of counting in 2s to count objects such as 2p coins or 2s of Numicon. We also filled in numbers on a number track, but the number track did not start at zero! We also worked out how make 2s we need to make numbers. Here are some examples of the activities:

The next day we practised counting in 1os from zero. We marked these numbers on our hundred square and noticed that all these numbers end in zero and are in a column on the hundred square. We then practised our counting in 10s with the following types of activities:

After that we practised counting in5s from zero. This was much trickier! We marked these numbers on our hundred square and noticed that the numbers end in 5 or 0, and the ones that end in zero we say when we count in tens. We realised this is because ten is two lots of five! We again using our counting in 5s to answer some questions. We used our hundred square to help!

On Friday we used our skills of counting in 2s, 5s and 10s to solve problems. We needed to work out how many 2p, 5p or 10p coins we would need to buy a Harpenden postcard. We could choose which price postcard we wanted to buy! Here are some examples:

  

Please practise counting in 2s, 5s and 10s at home, in addition to counting forwards and backwards to 50 in 1s. You could make up some problems for your child to solve using these skills. You might like to print off a hundred square for your child to use at home to mark the multiples of 2, 5 and 10. It may also be useful to help practise ‘bridging 10’ when practising counting backwards in 1s.

Phonics)

This week in phonics w have been learning about the split digraph ‘0-e’ and consolidating ‘oa’ (mostly found in the middle of words) and ‘ow’ + ‘oe’ (mostly found at the end of words)  

Can your child show you how they use their phoneme fingers to segment these words stroke, whole, home, wrote, envelope, cockroach, throat, toast, croak, grown, known, show, shadow, yellow, tomorrow, toes, Joe, and then blend them back together again?

Can they spot the digraph or spilt digraph in the words above.
Is there only one digraph in these words or do some have more than one?
Can they read these alien words – sloke, grobes, quoar, stroab, bload, cupow, jows, chow, koe, poes,

Spelling ideas.

Perhaps you could get your child to think of a sentence using the words above with this week’s digraphs and the sentence starter  At school………    to practise the common exception words.
Don’t forget all the Year 1 common exception words are in your child’s Progress Book.

IIn computing we have started our new topic about word processing. This week we have been trying to type using two hands! This would be a really useful skill for your child to practise and a good game to play is Dance Mat Typing on BBC Bitesize. Here is a link to level one: https://toybox.tools.bbc.co.uk/activities/id/activity-dance-mattyping/exitGameUrl/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.uk%2Fguides%2Fz3c6tfr

In science we began growing cress.  We are recording our observations in our Cress Diaries just like real scientists.  We drew what we saw and predicted what we think will happen in one week. 

You may like to grow some cress seeds at home.  Follow the link to make a cress head.  Your child can bring it into school when it has a full head of hair.  We look forward to seeing them!  https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/makes/mr-blooms-nursery-cressheads

Don’t forget next Thursday is World Book Day.  We are looking forward to the children dressing up as their favourite character.  Remember to bring in the book their character is from to share with the class.

Today we have very much enjoyed a visit by Sean Rose, in conjunction with Sport for Schools. In 2000, while he was working as a ski instructor with the RAF, Sean had a freak accident in which he broke his back which left him paralysed from the waist down. In spite of this, Sean Rose is a double winter Paralympian,  as well as a world skiing and water skiing champion. He was very inspiring and the children had lots of fun. Find out more about him here: https://www.seanrose.co.uk/

Enjoy your weekend,

The Year One Team