Friday 22nd March

We have had an amazing day today walking around Harpenden and seeing how Harpenden is a town and how it has changed over the years.  When walking in Harpenden ask your child to point out different landmarks and how they have changed.

We think we walked six miles today (plus all the running around at lunchtime!) 
Happy Healthy Handa would be very proud of us all!

In maths we have been continuing our learning about measuring. On Monday we considered the ‘Animal Sports Day’ question. We could give any answer, but we needed to use our reasoning skills to explain our thinking. Here is the problem for you to try at home: Please think up a similar problem for your child to use their reasoning skills to solve. On Tuesday we enjoyed a measuring ChIL. We used rules and tape measures to measure height and lengths in centimetres. We started to use balance scales to compare weights.  If you have any balance type scales at home, please encourage your child to investigate the weight of a variety of objects. Here are some examples you might like to use at home. These encourage your child to use their reasoning skills: Next week we will be using non-standard measures to measure weight and investigating volume and capacity. This week in English we continued our learning about instruction writing. On Monday we had an instruction ChIL. We could chose from a range of activities that involved us either following and reading instructions or writing our own instructions. During the ChIL we worked with the adults to edit the instructions we had written last week.  We used to toolkit (below) to see what features we had included and which we needed to improve. On Tuesday we had an instruction and Harpenden ChIL where we could choose to extend our own learning in English from this term. Home Learning Your child may like to collect some instructions to bring into class for us all to see. On Wednesday 'World Storytelling Day' we enjoyed a storytelling workshop with Mrs Fantozzi who runs ‘Drama Llamas’.  The children thoroughly enjoyed going back in time with a magic key. Ask your child what they enjoyed most. Ice skating on Cock Pond, going to the British School, helping the farmer at Yew Tree Farm, meeting Sir John Lawes or having pizza at Prezzo! Phonics This week in phonics we have been learning about the digraph ‘oo’, ‘ue’, ‘ew’, ‘u-e’ Can your child show you how they use their phoneme fingers to segment these words food, proof, scoop, gloom, glue, statue, argue, continue, cashew,jewel, Andrew, knew, cue, costume, perfume, fortune 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 – stroop, jues, quewm, glukes 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  Put………    to practise the common exception words. Don’t forget all the Year 1 common exception words are in your child’s Progress Book. Year 1 History  - We have been learning about the events of the life of Sir John Bennett Lawes and Katherine Warrington. We had a lot of fun sorting out facts, deciding who the fact was about and attaching it to our life models.  We then asked the models questions about their lives. Following this we sorted similar facts on to paper and used these to help us in our writing. Music  -  Year 1 We have been looking at different stimuli for creating music.  Our stimulus has been water.  We have learnt how melodic lines can be smooth – legato, or spikey – staccato.  We used the glockenspiels to explore creating both sounds.  This week we have been working as a group to create the musical soundtrack to a video of a canoe going down a river.  It started slow and legato, picked up tempo and was very staccato, before calming down again. We were really successful. We hope that you have a good weekend - we think the children will sleep well after all that walking and fresh air!  Year One Team

Friday 15th March

This week in maths we have continued our learning about measuring height and length. We have practised using rulers to measure and we wrote some top tips to ensure we measured accurately. These are: ·         Make sure the start of the object lines up with the 0 mark ·         Keep the ruler (or tape measure) straight ·         The number next to the end of the object is the measurement ·         Record showing the unit of measurement – we used centimetres or cm We practised measuring the length and height of objects in the playground and we recorded our measurements using our clip boards, remembering to use ‘cm’. Please encourage your child to compare and accurately measure the height and length of objects this weekend. We then moved on to measuring pictures of objects. We checked that we were lining up the ruler and pictures carefully. We checked that we used the correct number on the ruler to record the length or height as it was easy to use the next number! Please find some pictures that your child could measure at home and see if they can teach you to measure carefully!  This week in English we have been learning about instruction writing.  First we talked about the instructions we have around school on doors, displays and in the classroom. As it is Fairtrade fortnight we have been using a set of instructions to make banana and chocolate Fairtade muffins. In our first lesson we were given a set of unnumbered jumbled instructions that we had to unjumble as a group. Once we had put them in order we discussed the order we had put them in. We then looked carefully at the instructions and talked about the features a good set of instructions have. Using this knowledge we co-constructed our own toolkit for writing instructions. On Tuesday in our groups we made our own banana and chocolate Fairtade muffins.  We had to  read the instructions carefully, follow the instructions in order and check as we went along that  we hadn’t  missed anything out! On Wednesday we enjoyed sharing our muffins with you at the Fairtrade Café.  We hope you thought they tasted delicious! Here is the recipe for the Fairtrade banana and chocolate muffins just in case you want to make your own at home! Later that day we wrote a set of instructions with a partner checking we had all the features on the toolkit. On Friday we wrote our own set of instructions of how to make banana and chocolate muffins. Again we had to remember what a good set of instructions have. Instructions have got to make sense to the reader so it is very important to re-read them to check. Home Learning Your child may like to write a set  of instruction to bring into school to share with the rest of the class.  It may be how to make something ( a lego model,  a sandwich, something out of paper) or how to play a game, or how to brush their teeth. Phonics This week in phonics we have been learning about the split digraph ‘a-e’ and consolidating ‘ai and ‘ay’ Can your child show you how they use their phoneme fingers to segment these words make, made, cupcake, flames, space, skate, plane, again, brain, paints, afraid, waist, birthday, crayon, hoiliday, yesterday 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 –   strape, hapes, braib, quait, slaym  paymp 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 We have been learning to edit our work in Computing. We used the arrow keys, back space and delete keys to correct our work. Please continue to encourage your child to practise their typing skills and also edit their work. Today Kingfishers have enjoyed a 'sleepover' as their ten apple treat. They all behaved wonderfully and the night flew by!  We hope you have a good weekend, enjoy the film evening! Year One Team