A short and sweet week this week contained a walk to the field to see how it had changed since we had seen it in autumn 2 to learning the difference between fiction and non fiction texts!

The children returned full of fizz and excited about their Christmas holidays but after sharing what they were lucky to be given they got on to learning.

On the field they looked at changes, the children noticed all the leaves had fallen from the trees, the field was muddy and one child even saw a fox lurking in the bushes!

For maths we looked at numbers to 50 and helped to fill in the missing tiles on a snakes and ladder board to 50.

English this week we looked at the difference between fiction and non fiction texts. They children started to identify some of the features, such as a heading or a real life photograph.

We explored forces for science, looking at push pull when playing with toys.

Next week:
Topic – Terrific Toys

Maths – The children we will be learning how to count in 10s to 100. The children will begin by grouping objects in 10 and then place it above the 10 on the number line before counting in 10s.

English – We will continue to learn about non fiction texts and why they are important. The children will also be learning about the features of a non fiction text (heading, real life photographs, labels, paragraphs and questions) and being able to identify them on a page, as well as telling what they mean.

How can you help at home?

If you know your child is struggling with recognising numbers or counting reliably please practise this at home.

Find a non fiction text at home, can your child identify any of the following: heading, real life photographs, labels, paragraphs and questions.

Have a discussion about the toys you played with when you were younger. What were they made from? Can you think of any adjectives to describe what they were like? Did you have any toys that are similar to the ones your child has?

This week we presented our nativity to our grown ups. After lots of practising the children pulled off a good show, we hope you enjoyed it too! Here are some pictures from the big day:

For maths we have been counting in twos. We’ve been looking at physical resources and placing them alongside a number line to count in twos.

Next week:

Maths – We will be continuing to count in twos. Please support your child with this at home, by encouraging them to count in groups of two. The best way to consolidate this skill is to count with physical objects, such as toys. You could ask, how many groups of two are there?

English – We will be having a big focus phonics next week, and ensuring children use all the phonics that we know to successfully write sentences. If you know your child is unable to confidently use their phase 2 or phase 3 sounds, these are the sounds children learnt in Year R, please make this a real focus to practise at home.

4 more school days to go until the Christmas Holidays! Monday is Christmas dinner day for KS1…

Our focus book for this week is The nativity. We had a look at the language and had a go acting some of it out, e.g. gazed, astonished, travelled etc. We noticed that they all have ed endings and reminded ourselves that this means it had already happened.

We then retold the first part of the nativity story and wrote it in our English books.

For maths we have been learning how to count in twos. We know that when we are counting in two we are counting two lots of something. We made a sock number line, ensuring we were counting in twos.

Next week:

English – We will be writing the middle part of the nativity story. Can your child tell you what happened after Mary and Joseph travelled on a donkey?

Maths – We will be continuing to explore counting in twos. We will pair this  with a number line and draw a jump of two. Please encourage your child  to count in twos at home.

This week the children have spent some time in the hall practising for our nativity. Please can you ensure that your child knows their lines.

For English we had a visit from a pirate who left us poems. She told us that she is bored of the poems she has and wants us to write her a new one. We have been learning what a poem must have and had a go at creating our very own verse!

Next week: 

Maths – to halve a number. The children will be helping the pirates with a problem: the pirates sail has broken, they have 8 bits of material to fix the sail. Half of the material is red. How many are red? The second half of the week we will be looking at the different ways the materials could be arranged to fix the sail.

English – We will be starting our learning on the nativity and thinking about the order of the Christmas story. Phonics is key for your child to be able to write correctly, so if you know your child struggles with any sounds please recap them this week!

This week, as well as a school trip and launching our stewardship project, the children have started practising for our nativity and will be coming home with parts and words to learn tonight.

This week we also came to end of our Night Pirates text and we ended on a debate as to whether all pirates are bad. The children explored this by drawing on what they thought was good and bad. We then voted and the general consensus was that all pirates are bad!

This week is road safety week. The children helped super cat with teaching children how to cross the road safely. His super cat rap was: first stop and look from side to side, then you listen and think, that is super cat’s guide! We then looked at some pictures of children wanted to cross the road and voted whether it was safe or unsafe.

Next week:

Maths – The children will be continuing to explore halving amounts as this is something, we have noticed, that the children are not overly confident with. Please practise this at home, we are sharing equal numbers between two. Explicitly ask your child what half of the amount is.

English – We are staying with our pirate topic but instead moving on to poetry. We will be reading a pirate poem, looking at the key features and then we will write our own line to create a whole class pirate poem. This week could you have a go at reading some poems to your child. Is there any poems that you like yourself and want to share with your child?

Here is some information about our walk to Waterlooville on Tuesday. The children were brilliant walkers, even if we did get some tell us that they were tired! Click on the link to see our learning.

Geo deep learning day

We have introduced our stewardship project: Everyone is special. The children have been asked to bring in their empty crisp packets so we can can send them off to a charity that makes blankets from crisps packets. These blankets are then given to people who are less fortunate than us, people who are homeless or people who can’t afford to turn on their central heating.
To find out more please visit their website: https://crisppacketproject.com

What a busy couple of weeks we have had! The children have returned to school with brilliant attitude to learning!

For maths we looked at 2D shapes and reminded ourselves what they looked like by storing them. We spoke about the properties of shapes, talking about the number of sides and corners.

We had a pirate visit us and ask us to help find the treasure that has been stolen. The children agreed to help!

We practised getting to role to become a pirate, looking into some vocabulary that we weren’t sure of. Such as stealthy, adventurous and disguise.

Then we found a map had been left for us and followed it to find some treasure we had great fun!

Next Week 

Maths – we will be learning how to share equally between two. You could practise this at home with your child through the week. Can they share out their toys, chocolate or Lego between two

English – we will be continuing on our pirate adventure and learning how to become a pirate!

What a half term it has been! The children have worked very hard these last 8 weeks and we are keen to see them continue their hard work over the second half of the autumn term.

This week for RE we had a look at the liturgical calendar and coloured it in. Most children were able to recall the colours for the special events of the liturgical calendar.

Some children took part in an inter-sport football competition this week and bought back a medal. Thank you so much for representing Year 1 Norbert, Hollie, Erin, Michael, Melody and Emmanuel.

Today we visited the field to see how it had changed since the last time we saw it. The children loved exploring the field and even watched the builders resurface our school car park!

Home learning 

The children have been given some activities to do over half term. This includes looking at the different types of coins, counting to 20 and some phonics worksheets. All children are to do this learning over half term.

Please check your child’s book bag over half term. Remove any bits of learning or letters that have been the book bag during autumn 1.

After half term:

• Maths – Shape. We will be looking at 2D shape and using mathematical vocabulary to describe the shapes, such as ‘a circle has no corners (vertices) and has one curved side’.
• English – Pirates. We will starting a pirate topic and becoming our very own pirates! We will be thinking of questions we may like to ask pirates if we were to ever see one.

We hope you have a lovely half term. We will see you on Monday 1st November.

This week we conducted our first science experiment: does our hoods or hat prevent us from hearing the whistle at play time? We started by listening for different sounds and identifying how they help us. We then spoke about what could prevent us from hearing the whistle at playtime, such as children shouting, children running, wearing ear muffs etc. Finally we had a go at playing outside without our hoods and listening for the whistle and then with our hoods listening for the whistle. Ask your child what the outcome was…

In maths we have been looking at solving problems with our number bonds to 5. The first problem was to work out how many ways they could score 5 when playing a game of skittles. The children loved playing skittles and noting down all the different ways! 

For topic this week, and celebrating black history month, we looked at Claudia Jones who spoke about the right for equality no matter what race or gender people are in the 1950s. She started the Caribbean carnival. It is now known as the Notting hill carnival. The Children had a a go at making a carnival headdress to temper Claudia Jones.