Year 1 - Let it snow...
Brrr – it has been a chilly week but in Year 1, we have been keeping ourselves warm with plenty of learning!
In maths, we have been building on our division skills by thinking about what fractions are (halves and quarters), and how we could find half or a quarter of a number. We discussed what would happen if we had to find half of a number that we couldn’t share equally and had some very creative answers! We used our fractions knowledge on Thursday to create a ‘Fair Feast’ with a partner, sharing food items in halves or quarters. Some children noticed that when they put two quarters together, they could make a half – the start of recognising equivalent fractions!
Next week, we will be learning about time, building on our previous knowledge of o’clock, and learning to read and make half past. We will be ordering events into chronological after, using the vocabulary of ‘before’, ‘after’, ‘earlier’ and ‘later’.
We are learning about non-fiction texts in English, in preparation for writing our own information about a fruit for our topic, ‘Go Bananas’. To develop our understanding and vocabulary, we enjoyed a tropical fruit tasting session on Tuesday, where the children sampled mango, pineapple, passion fruit, avocado, tangerine and many more! This stimulated some fantastic adjectives and similes, which we used later in the week for our writing. We also recapped on the rule for adding ‘s’ or ‘es’ to mark plural nouns.
We thought about where different fruits come from in Geography and plotted this on a world continents map which the children created themselves. We identified the hottest countries in the world, then added the equator line; the children then explored why the countries closest to the equator are the hottest.
In RE, we continued to learn about the importance of Passover for Jewish people and thought about which parts of the story of Moses are most significant for Jewish people at Passover. We used this to create a thought bubble to express our ideas.
On Wednesday and Thursday, we welcomed Warburtons, who came in to talk to the Year 1 children about healthy eating. We learned about the ‘Eat Well’ plate and the food groups important for health and growth. After washing our ‘baker’s hands’, we donned aprons and hairnets ready to make a healthy sandwich to take home.
In music, the children are learning ‘a’ and ‘b’, using them to start to play a variety of tunes.
As always, we continue with our phonics and reading daily.
Notes:
Reading books
Many thanks to Mrs Lowy and Mrs Faulkner who have been labelling our new books for the book band boxes. We hope to have them in circulation very soon!
Reading books and diaries
Some children are regularly forgetting to bring in their coloured band reading books and reading diaries each day. Whilst we understand that this make happen once or twice, children should have them in school every day so that we can move them through the book bands appropriately.
Spellings
A huge ‘thank you’ to everyone who helps their child practice their spellings at home. It is very pleasing to see how many children are scoring well (7 or more out of 10) in the spellings test on a Wednesday, but more importantly, using the spellings they have learnt in their writing.
To make learning spelling a little more fun, please see the ideas sheet below.
Home learning and Outcome
Thank you for the home learning already received! The date for it to be handed in is Friday 7th February.
We look forward to welcoming parents and carers to our fruity outcome on Thursday 14th February from 2.30pm.
Here are some ideas to make learning spellings a little more fun!
Make a Video - Use an iPad, tablet or phone to record your child spelling their words.
Bath Spelling - Use foam letters in the bath and stick onto the wall to make words.
Scrabble Spelling - use scrabble pieces to build words. For some sneaky math fun have child total the amount for each word.
Torch Words - Set up an Alphabet chart, turn out the lights and use a torch to shine on each letter (one letter at a time) to spell words.
Clothes pegs words - Write letters on clothes pegs and have child pin letters to make words. They can pin onto hanging string (think clothes line) or even an index card.
Flower Words - Draw a flower for each word, 1 petal for each letter of the word.
Cotton Bud Writing - Use cotton buds and paint to dot letters to spell the word or write the word using the cotton bud as a paint brush.
Build a Word with Lego - Using some tape, write the letters needed for each word ahead of time on some Lego bricks. Mix them up and then call out a word and have child(ren) build it using the appropriate bricks and you will end up with some spelling word towers.
Small/Medium/Large Words - Write the word using the smallest letters you can possibly write (this one is a favourite), then doing it normal sized and finally jumbo sized.
Shaving Cream - Make a thin layer of shaving cream on a tray and use a paintbrush or a fingertip to spell out the words.
Salt/Sand/Flour Tray - Spell words using finger or paintbrush
Paint It! - Use a paintbrush and paint to spell words.
Stamp It! - Use alphabet stamps and ink pads to stamp out words or let child use fingerprints to write words if you don't have letter stamps.
Rainbow Words - Spell words using different coloured markers or crayons for each letter.
Jumpin' Jack - do jumping jacks as you spell words - 1 jump per letter
Froggy Spelling - leap like a frog and spell words - 1 letter for each leap.
Swat & Spell - put letter cards on the floor and using a flyswatter, swat the letters in the order necessary to spell words.
Memory Game - Write 2 sets of words onto flashcards or paper and then play a Memory Game with them.
Mystery Letters - write words with missing letters. Child must figure out which mystery letters are missing in order to complete words.
Spelling BINGO - Make or print a few blank BINGO cards to use with spelling practice. Write spelling words in boxes and randomly call out (or use flashcards) words. Child should cover appropriate words when called. To make things extra challenging, write words spelled incorrectly in a few spaces as well so child has to discriminate between the correctly spelled words and the incorrect ones.
Wordsearch- you can visit sites like PuzzleMaker , type in your child's spelling list and create a word search that you can print. Then have your child search for the correctly spelled spelling words and circle them. Maybe they could make one of their own?
Which is Correct? - Write words on dry erase board and include misspelled words. Have child identify the correctly spelled words.