Friday 16th July 2021

The good ship Year 1 continues it's journey towards the summer. We've had a lot of fun learning how seasides have changed over time as part of our seasides topic. We learned about bathing machines, penny farthings and 'hokey pokeys'! We went on a seaside adventure in the outdoor area, then wrote a recount of our experience.

In English we've been looking at a story called Sidney The Spider, which explores themes of friendship. We've been developing our comprehension skills, and completing word studies. Can you remember what 'venerable' means?!

In phonics, we've explored different spellings of the oo/u_e sound and the oi/oy sound.

In Maths we've compared time: faster, slower, earlier and later. It gave a great opportunity to look at videos of Usain Bolt, and encouraged us to compare the time it takes to do different activities. It's tricky to grasp that if something takes less time, it much have been faster, but lots of funny drama and comparison activities have helped us.

Thank you for sending in pictures of you completing the home learning. It's lovely to see put them up for the class to see in Celebration Assemblies.

Have a lovely weekend!

Mr Lynn

Friday 2nd July 2021

It's been quite a fun week in Year 1! We've enjoyed following our designs to make some fantastic sea creatures. They are busy air drying, before painting. It was great to get our hands dirty and learn some new techniques.

We've been completing end of year assessments for reading (phonics), grammar and maths.

English has seen the children start to learn the Persuasion Text 'Should Dogs Eat Sausages'. To learn about persuasion, unfortunately our toy shed had been taped closed one morning. The children had to think of how to persuade Mr Hough to let them have all their toys back! It turns out there are some experts at persuasion in the class!

In the rest of the maths time, children have been learning to count in coins to find an overall value, and have begun to look at time through use of the language 'before and after'.

Have a great weekend!

Friday 25th June 2021

As a culmination of our Talk For Writing wishing tales unit, everybody wrote their own versions this week. We saw some really inventive problems, the moral we gleaned from looking at other wishing tales of 'be careful what you wish for' was definitely in evidence, as wished got main characters in all manner of mishaps!

In maths we've spent a lesson using our clocks to explore telling the time to the nearest half hour. For the rest of the week we've focused on recognising and understanding the value of UK coins and notes. Many of us did not recognise most of the different types of coins, so we've spent a few lessons familiarising ourselves. Realising the value of 10p compared to £10 shocked quite a few of us.

In science, we've continued to explore objects, materials and their properties, ready for an exciting investigation next week. In art we've explored the work of Hokusai, and designed some clay sea creatures: we can't wait to get going on those!

Have a fabulous weekend!

Friday 18th June 2021

We've had an amazing Sports Day today. I was really proud of how everybody cheered each other on, and however the race went, there were seas of beaming faces. There's some photos of the class. You can see our class highlights by clicking here.

This week we've been planning our own Wishing Tales, so a lot of genies, wishing wells, and the occasional Pokemon have appeared in our story maps. The class are really excited to write their finished stories.

In Maths, we've been comparing and ordering numbers to 100, paying special attention to the value of each digit. We've shown we can recognise numbers in different representations, such as base-10.

We've enjoyed learning more about how grown ups earn and spend money in PE. We've also very much enjoyed learning about algorithms when programming robot mice to turn and move towards some cheese! Monday also saw us really enjoy a Messy Church session, we hope you've enjoyed exploring what sinks and what floats at home!

Have a lovely weekend.

Friday 11^th June 2021

We’ve really enjoyed the warmer weather this week. Thank you for remembering sun hats and sun cream. This week we have started our new seasides topic, and we kicked off by exploring compass directions, and trying out some new school compasses. We had a lot of fun directing each other around the outside area, using only north, south, east or west. We tried to trick our compasses, but found that they always know where north is, whichever way we turn! We learned how these compass directions can help us read map, and now know which way Scotland is from our classroom!

In Maths, we’ve returned to counting and comparing numbers, but this time we are looking at the all the way to 100. We’ve made numbers using numicon and base 10, and learned the value of each digit. For example, that 42 is four tens and two ones.

In English, we’ve worked extremely hard to write our class story, The Selfish, Spoilt Boy. This is only a warm up to us creating our own wishing tales next week. I wonder what brilliant ideas the characters with wish for in our stories?

In phonics we’ve continued to look at how different graphemes can have alternative pronunciation, whilst continually consolidating our recall of the Phase 3 and Phase 5 sounds. The class is working hard with some complex rules: well done everybody!

I hope the weather holds, and everybody has a fantastic weekend!

Friday 28th May 2021

I’m sure we’ll all agree that our super class has earned a fantastic half-term off! We are not setting any home learning or spellings but we’ve popped a Half Term Reading Record sheet in everybody’s Pupil Planners, where you can earn up to 5 more stamps for reading across the week.

This week, Maths has seen the class enjoying learning about quarter, half and full turns, as well as directional language such as left, right, forwards backwards. We’ve been sending teachers and children Gruffalo hunting around the classroom, and have loved using the cha-cha slide to practise left and right with Miss Pryke!

In English we’ve been becoming experts in Rumplestiltskin. Thank you for all the hard work in learning the text, including amazing videos from home, and writing in Home Learning books: they’ve been lovely to see.

In Phonics we’ve begun to look at alternative pronunciations of different graphemes (letters and digraphs), including i, o, c and g. We’ve been using English KIPPT to consolidated ‘asking, telling, or yelling’ sentences, and have been introduced to the value of coins and notes in Maths KIPPT. We had a lot of fun exploring how much different notes are worth, and were amazed that a £10 note is worth 1000p!

In Science we compared our pictures of our flourishing runner bean plants to the control ones in class, which hadn’t grown at all. We had one that received no sunlight, one no water, one no soil, and following a suggestion from the class, one had no bean seed! This showed us that for plants to grow, they need sunlight, soil, water…. and a seed!

Please enjoy your break, and long may the improving weather continue. Thank you, as always for all your hard work at home and in class, and positive attitude to your learning… it makes all the difference!

Mr Lynn

Friday 21st May 2021

It's been another busy week in Year 1, with children working really hard on making some amazing pirate puppets, right up to home time on Friday! We can't wait to finish them off and show them off at home. The classroom has looked a little bare without the jungle of runner bean plants taking over one window, but it's been lovely to hear how many are zooming up at home!

In Maths this week we've been finding a quarter of an object, shape or quantity, whilst again remembering that each part must be fair, or equal.

In English we've started a new story, Rumplestiltskin. It's a bit longer that some we've learned, but we've shown the typical Year 1 enthusiasm to master learning it all: well done team! We've also been examining how to use the conjunction 'and' correctly in a sentence.

In phonics, we've covered the remaining split digraphs: o_e and u_e, and continued to do lots of practising writing words and sentences containing them.

I hope you all have a great weekend!

Mr Lynn

Friday 14^th May 2021

This half-term seems to be really flying by, with the rapidly changing weather adding to the sense of speed! I can’t remember a time when it’s gone from bright sunshine to hail and back again in a matter of minutes. It’s a shame we are still not doing our weather topic!

In English this week the class has written their final pirate reports, about their own fantastic pirates. As usual, everybody has been trying really hard with their presentation, spelling, and most importantly, creativity. I’ve read about riding sharks, octopus wresting, and making pirate teachers walk the plank! We’ve also learned about the rules for s/es plurals, which were also in our spellings this week.

In Maths we’ve been taking the first steps towards division by both grouping and sharing different amounts. The class were very keen that when we share things should be fair!

In phonics we’ve looked at the split digraphs e_e and i_e, and have done lots of sentence writing practice to help us when writing in English.

Our bean plants continue to explode with life, which has been a constant source of fascination to the class!

I hope you all have a great weekend.

Mr Lynn

Friday 7th May 2021

Thank you so much for all the wonderful ‘Creation Collages’ we’ve been receiving across the week. They show a fantastic range of different things our class find amazing in the natural world, and have become a ‘collage of collages’ in our reflection area: it looks brilliant!

This week we really enjoyed exploring the 1950s. We read some amazing memories from grandparents of our class, which really helped us to get the idea of how long ago it was. It amazed lots of us to think our grandparents were once little children! We then explored some ‘mystery objects’ from the 1950s, and even experience an episode of Muffin the Mule, to much amusement!

In English, we ‘innovated’ our pirate report as a class to write one about the Gruffalo. We came up with some super adjectives, and worked hard on our handwriting, letter sizing and spacing. Then we had a very exciting drama lesson, where we all became pirates and explored the different adventures we could go on. Mr Lynn was Captain Horrible, but there were much fiercer pirates, such as Captain Snake Hair and Captain Grumpy Pants! We’ll now use these amazing ideas to create reports about our pirates.

In Maths we learned all about arrays: how to make them, what rows and column are, and how to use them to count groups. We found all the new concepts a little tricky a first, so home learning will help us to consolidate in this area.

In phonics, we are now exploring the split digraphs a_e and e_e in class. We are mastering both reading, and writing words containing these challenging sounds.

Finally, to great excitement, our beans have germinated, and are now reaching towards the sunlight. We did our weekly measuring, and had oodles of ‘wow moments’ observing just how much they’ve changed!

Have a super weekend everybody!

Mr Lynn

Friday 30th April 2021

This week we’ve become real experts of the Captain Yellowbeard report. Thank you for all the hard work learning it at home: it really shows at school! We’ve explored the language used to make the report more interesting, such as ‘Have you heard…..?’, and come up with our own ideas. We’ve also continued to practise recognising whether a sentence needs a ? ! or . Finally, we’ve looked at the ‘un’ prefix, and how it changes the meaning of words.

In Maths we’ve been counting forwards and backwards in 10s. Maxwell tried to catch us out playing a counting stick game, but we were too good! We’ve also been learning about grouping equally, and adding equal groups, which are the first steps in year 1 towards learning about multiplication.

In phonics, we’ve recapped the au and ey sounds, whilst continuing to practise lots of sentence writing.

In Science, we are straining our eyes to see if our seeds have germinated! There’s definitely a few first signs in some of our cups, and after exploring Mr Lynn’s bean seed in detail, we realise there’s a lot going on underneath the soil!

Thank you so much also for the great memories received of the 1950s and the coronation. We watched a film about it, and are fascinated that some of our grandparents can remember it. Next week we will be looking more broadly at the 1950s, and some of the memories and photographs that have been sent in.

Have an awesome weekend!

Mr Lynn

Friday 23rd April 2021

What a busy week it’s been! We kicked off with some fantastic costumes in the class. Thank you for going to such an amazing effort; the excitement of the children to show off their costumes was such a fantastic way to start off the half-term. There were kings, queens, emperors, pirates and several astronauts, to name a few. My costume was apparently more ‘Willy Wonka’ than time traveller, so I’ll have to try harder next time! Then children used their costumes to write clues as to their identity. We had a lot of fun reading them out at the front and guessing who they were about!

This led nicely to our new Talk for Writing text. On Tuesday we found a note from ‘Captain Yellow Beard’, and actually managed to find some of his hidden treasure in a hole in our field! We are now learning all about the character, by coming up with some great actions, and adding a lot of enthusiasm!

In Maths we’ve been solidifying our ability to count in 2s and 5s, and solving reasoning and problem solving questions around these areas. Lots of us are already experts from all the fantastic work that went on when we were doing Remote Learning. Thank you to all the grown-ups at home: this week really showed how well the class had learned to do these things.

As part of our plants topic in Science we all planted a bean seed in a clear plastic cup. We have started ‘bean diaries’, and will record every week how they are growing. The class we a bit disappointed that they hadn’t all sprouted overnight. I think Jack and the beanstalk may have created some unrealistic expectations!

In phonics we’ve continued our Phase 5 recap, with lots of sentence writing. We focused on the sounds ew and oe.

Have a fabulous weekend!

Mr Lynn.

Friday 1^st April 2021

It’s been an exciting day here! This morning there was a trail of large paw prints into the classroom, and a basket of eggs had been left. It looks like the Easter Bunny has been busy! There was also great excitement for the Easter Egg raffle.

The class have worked very hard to write their very own stories. There’s been a lot of knights, dragons, cowboys, fairies and aliens making an appearance. Everybody tried their hardest and was really proud of their work.

In Maths we’ve been mastering odd and even numbers. We learned a ‘trick’, meaning that we know whether any number in the world is odd or even. Even massive ones like 9463!

In phonics, we’ve recapped the wh and ph sounds, and worked on mastering the ‘ould’ spelling pattern. There’s been a lot of ‘oh you lucky ducky’ talk!

I hope you all have an exciting, but also restful Easter, and look forward to seeing you all in a couple of weeks!

Friday 26th March 2021

Thank you for bringing in so many Easter Eggs, with donations. The class smells like a chocolate factory, and it’s taking a lot of willpower for the adults to not touch anything!

We’ve really been enjoying the improving weather this week. It’s coincided with looking for signs for Spring around the school grounds. There is real excitement observing the Horse Chestnut tree in our outdoor area for budding leaves. We are finding the magic of the seasons really comes alive when you look closely at what is happening all around you. Please see the pictures below.

The children have been working through some assessment activities this week, to give us a better picture of what to focus on when we return after Easter. In Maths, we’ve also been completing our capacity work by measuring in cups the capacity of different containers. A very wide, shallow lid shocked up all by how much it held. We learned to estimate, or make a ‘thinking guess’, based on what we’d already found out.

In English we’ve had time to complete some ‘shared writing’ of the first half of our class story, about the explorer, a cruel T-Rex, and a scorching volcano! Next week, we’ll be story mapping to make our very own stories in a similar style.

In Phonics, we’ve had a spelling focus on this week’s spelling words, as we continue to boost our ‘red words’ spelling abilities, whilst also looking at the ‘ue’ sound.

In Art, we’ve moved on from making our versions of the Snail by Matisse, to creating our own collages. Dinosaurs were popular again!

Have a wonderful weekend.

Many thanks

Mr Lynn.

Friday 19th March 2021

Well, everybody today looks resplendent in their fabulous sock choices. Thank you for such a great effort and supporting Sunshine and Smiles. I know it is very much appreciated. The children have had a fun afternoon engaging in some sock related activities!

In English, the class were most excited to get to the ending of the Nadira and the Cruel Pirate story. The cruel captain turned out to have a very strange name indeed!  We are now ‘innovating’ (changing) the story into one of our own, which is becoming about an explorer, a cruel and ferocious dinosaur, and an erupting volcano. I can’t to see where the story takes us next week!

This week, we’ve continued to recap Phase 5 sounds in Phonics (ea, oy and ir) and have been learning tricky/ red words, and then embedding them with correct spelling within our sentence writing. The class are all beavering away, and have begun to learn to check their work by ‘ticking or fixing’ each sentence.

In Maths we’ve been using balancing scales to measure and compare mass. We pondered on the question ‘are bigger objects always heavier?’, and had a lot of fun finding the heaviest book in the book corner! On Friday we begun to explore capacity, and had a lot of fun comparing the capacity of different containers, especially when the containers had to overflow!

In Science we’ve explored the difference between objects and materials further, and have ambitiously begun to create our own little songs describing materials, to the tune of Frère Jacques.

I hope you all have a super weekend.

Mr Lynn

Friday 12th March 2021

A huge well done to our class of super stars. I’d sum up the week as ‘tired but terrific’! The sheer delight and excitement of seeing all their friends has been wonderful to see. We’ve worked hard together to re-establish our routines and continue our learning journey together. As always, the class shows consistently excellent application to their work. I’m so proud of how they’ve all handled the transition, and reminded me of how great it is to be all together!

In Maths this week we’ve continued to measure anything we can find! We’ve been mastering rulers, and learning about our first unit of measure: centimetres. Be prepared for your rulers to be borrowed at home to engage in a spot of shoe measuring!

In English, we’ve begun to learn a new story: ‘Nadira and the Cruel Pirate’. We’ve learned some pirate expressions, and come up with some very energetic actions to help us to begin to learn the story! We’ve interspersed this short bursts of caption and descriptive writing, to help us keep the basics ticking over.

In Phonics we are exploring different red/ tricky words, and how to use them in sentences. This week we looked at what, when, do, so and little. We all agreed that whoever agreed on these strange ways of spelling words should have had another go! We’ve also been recapping the phase 5 sounds: ay, ie, and ea together.

In Science, we’ve begun to look at the difference between objects and materials. We learned materials are ‘what objects are made out of’, and not just different types of fabrics!

In Art, we have begun to learn about Henri Matisse, and we will use his work as inspiration for creating our own collages.

Have a super, restful weekend everybody!

Mr Lynn

Friday 18th December 2020

We'd all like to wish you a merry, joyous and peaceful Christmas from Year 1. Thank you for all the children's amazing efforts in class, combined with all the wonderful Home Learning going on. We'll see you all back in January!

Best wishes,

Mr Lynn, Mrs Slater and Mrs Hough

Friday 11^th December 2020

The week began with a really special treat. After excitedly entering into the hall, we all thoroughly enjoyed meeting Trixie the Pixie and Santa Claus, and helping them to ‘Keep Christmas Cracking’. It was a wonderful performance and definitely got us all in the Christmas spirit!

We also enjoyed a rather chilly walk down to the Community Orchard. It was zero degrees on our outdoor thermometer as we set off, which helped us to recognise which season we are in! The class spotted human and physical features of the local environment, as well as deciduous and evergreen trees. When we were there we explored the Willow Sculpture and said hello to Hootie the owl. We also foraged for leaves, twigs and other natural materials to created collages in the style of Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert when we returned. The next day, the class wrote some fabulous recounts in English, using Talk For Writing actions to help them. They also created journey maps of their adventure in Geography: it was a very productive trip! Behaviour was excellent: the whole class were super role models for the school the whole time.

In Phonics, they’ve learned the oy ‘toy for a boy’ and ir ‘whirl and twirl’ sounds, as well as all practising a Phonics Screening Check with Mr Lynn. Their enthusiasm for reading, fuelled by so much practising at home, was wonderful to see.

In Maths, they’ve taken a couple of assessment as a class, as well as beginning to learn the names and properties of different 2d and 3d shape.

In Spanish, the class have been learning the words to ‘Feliz Navidad’. As part of Home Learning, please practise at home, for a special performance by the class (for those with permission to be on the website), to be uploaded next week!

Friday 4^th December 2020

It’s great to be back. The sight of the class coming to line up with the morning with beaming faces, full of enthusiasm for the day ahead, has been so wonderful to see this week!

We enjoyed a fun-packed Messy Church afternoon on Thursday, with live-streamed crafting from church into the classroom. The class were very sensible creating their Christingle oranges, as well having sufficient self-restraint to not snaffle away any gummi bears from theirs! The children created some more lovely things across the day, and on Friday, which will come home at the end of term.

In English, children wrote the story of Bob the Bubble with Mrs Lewis, and some completed their own five part stories based on the story mountains shared previously. In Phonics, we’ve focused on the ‘ie’ sound, with the rhyme ‘a fried pie’, and ‘ea’ (cup of tea).

We also had a preview of next week’s spellings: the number words one, two, three, four, five and six. Some of these have some very unusual spellings! We learned some rather amusing mnemonics to help us to remember the spellings, and had great fun acting them out in class. When practising their spelling homework, encourage your children use these to help them to remember them. It might also be fun to draw them!

One: Orange nosed elephant.

Two: Tigers wearing overalls.

Three: Tiny hares race eager emus.

Four: Flying otters under rainbows.

Five: Fairies impersonating vultures excellently.

Six: Snake in x-ray.

In Maths, the class have been tackling finding the difference, in relation to subtraction, as well as comparing statements such as 3+2 and 4+5, and working out which greater than/less than/ equal symbol should be used to compare them. We also completed some questions that covered the whole addition and subtraction unit: they all tried their hardest as always, and showed some fantastic mathematical thinking.

In Geography, we learned the different between human and physical features, and had a lot of fun searching for them around school.

Numbots continues to be a roaring success in class. We gave out 32 certificates today for children who had completed different metal levels on it: this proved very popular! We’ll continue to award them each week for those who complete levels. The class also continue to strive to earn badges, bookmarks, and books through their home reading. As their teacher, I cannot explain how valuable all the home reading is, and how much it is benefitting the children in both their reading and writing, so thank you very much for all you do at home!

Thursday 26^th November 2020

This week the children have become Weather Forecasters! Using their knowledge of weather and the countries of the UK, they’ve been planning and creating their own weather forecasts in class. I hope their predictions are more accurate than the week of dreary weather the professionals are predicting. In Science they’ve learned what shadows and light sources are, and been on a shadow hunt, which can be quite challenging in Winter!

In English, the class used the story ‘Bob the bubble who wanted to be useful’ by Jane Ralphs to develop their reading comprehension skills. They’ve learned the importance of understanding what you read, as well as being able to sound it out. They’ve discussed some tricky comprehension questions, and also completed a word study. They learned that what a word is unfamiliar, re-reading the sentence around it can give a big clue as to what it means! They’ve also been writing questions, learning how to form a question mark, and how to use different question words.

In Maths, subtraction has continued, both through using drawings and crossing out to subtract, and the using counting back to help subtract, which can be very challenging. Home Learning is based upon counting backwards, which is an underlying skill we need to develop subtraction fluency.

There’s been a great response to numbots from the children. The majority of the class have been using it, and some have made some incredible progress. Well done Yew!

In Phonics, children have begun to encounter some different ways of spelling familiar phonemes. They’ve learned about ‘ay’ (may I play?’), and ‘ou’ (shout it out!).

Have a lovely weekend.

Mr Lynn

Friday 20th November 2020

This week it’s been Anti-Bullying week. We learned what bullying is, and that it’s everybody’s responsibility to make sure we look after each other in class. We created our own class charter, and had some great discussions about how to show kindness. The class really impressed me with their mature and caring responses.

In English we finished ‘innovating’ the Monkey See – Monkey Do story to our one about cheeky children, and then to great excitement, we learned how to use a 5-part story mountain to plan stories. We learned how to follow a structure to introduce a character, a setting, and have that character encounter, then overcome a problem: just like in the monkey story we know so well. We also practised including adjectives to make our descriptions more interesting.

As a class we quickly sketched out some masterpieces following this structure. We planned one about princesses and poisonous bats, and another about a flying superhero, who loses his powers mid-air due to hunger, only to be saved by well-placed bouncy castle and hot dogs! Then it was on to planning our very own stories, and we have begun having a go at writing part, or all of them. As always, the creativity of the class was quite amazing!

In Maths we have immerse ourselves in ‘take away’. We quite enjoyed the action ‘take it away!’ to help us to learn and recognise the take away symbol. We told subtraction stories to help us to understand the concept, and learned to draw images to help us to interpret a number sentence.

In phonics, we focused on the ‘ure’ (‘sure it’s pure’), and ‘oi’ (spoil the boy) sounds.

Across the week we continued to record the weather every day. After a mild week, seeing the temperature drop to 3 degrees on Thursday morning really helped the class to link what their recording to how it ‘feels’ outside.

Friday 13^th November 2020

It’s been enough great week in year one! All the hard work learning ‘Monkey See – Monkey Do’ at home shows with some very confident performances in class. Key conjunctions such as ‘but’ and ‘because’ are now confidently remembered! This week we’ve begun to innovate, to create a class story involving a poor toy seller dropping his wares in the park, with the monkeys now being replaced by a hoard of cheeky children!

In Phonics we’ve learned the ‘ear’ phoneme. This is a difficult trigraph (three letters, one sound), to recognise, and is often confused with ‘air’. Therefore, we’ve played the ‘ear/air’ game: leading to a lot of jumping in the air, grabbing your eyes, and general hilarity! It’s also great for distinguishing between the sounds, so have a go at home! We’ve also learned the ‘er’ phoneme, with the rhyme ‘a better letter’.

In Maths we’ve looked at adding together using images, and concrete materials, and have begun to explore counting on from an initial amount. This is a key concept within addition, which will help support solving missing number problems, and finding inverse operations as we go through the year.

In Geography and Science, we’ve set up our own weathers station, and every day we collect data on the temperature, rainfall and type of weather. It’s one of the few times you see children desperate for it to rain to see how the rain gauge fills up! We also went on a walk to look for as many signs of Autumn as we could. Given the amount of leaves the children have been playing with the for past few weeks, they were definitely able to show themselves to be ‘Autumn Experts’ when looking for that evidence!

Have a smashing weekend everybody!

Friday 6^th November 2020

Well, what a busy week it has been! We’ve started a new story in English, called Monkey See – Monkey Do. We were visited by a mysterious hat seller (with a surprising resemblance to Mr Lynn), and made our own hats to help us to learn the story. As always the class were amazing at learning a large number of actions, and grasped the humourous elements of the story really quickly. You’ll find the model text and story map as part of the English Home Learning this week, so I’m sure everybody at home will get to know it really well as well! We also learned about verbs, which involved a lot of dancing, jumping and other movements, and also nouns. The whole class are amazing at spotting them now!

In Maths we’ve mainly been consolidating our knowledge of number bonds to 10. We’ve made them using a coat hanger and pegs, tens frames, numicon, and using the class themselves. We played some fun games to help us to recall them quickly, such as ‘number bond tennis’ and ‘around the world’

In Phonics we’ve been learning the ur and ow sounds, as well as spending time practising the ‘be/she/we/he/me spelling pattern. We played some very fun games from Phonicsplay.co.uk that you can access at home: Picnic on Pluto, Dragons Den and Buried Treasure.

In History we learned about Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot. We imagined we were Guy Fawkes, under the Houses of Parliament with the 36 barrels of gunpowder, and role played the scene to explore how he must have felt. With the lights turned off, and only flickering (electric) candles, we got some small insight into what it must have been like.

Friday saw our science launch, we really enjoyed seeing teachers from across the school show us some amazing science experiments. This leads us into our topic, where we will be finding out about seasonal change, how the days are getting shorter, and all about the weather. We've already enjoyed some weather dance in PE, pretending to be the rain and the snow.

Have a lovely weekend.

Friday 23rd October 2020

It’s been great to be back again seeing our wonderful class. Thank you for all the kind messages I’ve received for the changes in my family life! My highlight on returning with was in definitely in design and technology. We studied some real rockets and discussed their shapes. Then we followed a design to make our own rockets, with which we attempted to defy gravity! Using all the breath in our lungs, and a straw to create thrust, we launched our own little Apollo 11s. We didn’t quite make it to the moon, but we definitely managed to trouble the ceiling! Please see below for some of our photos. Please enjoy excellent your half-terms, and I look forward to seeing you all a week on Monday.

Please see Mrs Brough’s update for the rest of the week below.

Mr Lynn

Year One have been little superstars on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday with Mrs Brough. They have been so happily engrossed in a wide variety of rich learning experiences that the days have simply gone in a flash!

During Music we enjoyed listening to and following Miss Linky’s Seasons Song in the hall. We also had great fun tracing our fingers along our individual sheets of symbols representing classical music. The children were amazed at the speed of the child on screen. Here is the link if you would like to watch the short video and try it at home: https://tinyurl.com/y5au93gv

In English we managed our Troll problem holding an extraordinary meeting! We considered British values in holding a truly democratic vote which led to the appointment of a Chair and Deputy who led the meeting. In our follow-up meeting we generated and allocated Troll management roles to every child! Excellent learning for this awesome Year One team.

We had a super PE session dancing to Miss Linky’s Alphabet song with rather tricky movements which were attempted conscientiously by all children. You can try this at home if you dare! https://tinyurl.com/y34o93ja

In Geography we studied a world globe and identified the seven continents, labelling them carefully. It was very interesting to see the masses of land and the amount of surrounding sea. We had fun practising the word ‘sphere’, which is tricky.

Last week in Science Mrs Brough turned into a marmalade sandwich making robot! She followed instructions from the children and it all went wrong! We learned very quickly that when a child said “put the butter on the bread”, the robot did just that – all of it! It took a little time for children to think very carefully about their instructions! There was a lot of laughter. This week we have organised sentence strips to sequence making of the jam sandwich.

In Phonics we have continued to practise all sounds covered so far and their accompanying ditties, every day. Our new sound is ‘air’, which has the ditty ‘that’s not fair’. We generated lots of words with this sound and completed a variety of ‘air’ activity sheets.

In Maths we had another carousel of activities set up on different tables.

We used counters to show all number bonds to ten, for example 3+7, 2+8…

We practised writing number fact families, i.e. 2+4=6, 4+2=6, 6=2+4, 6=4+2.

We placed numicon in order from 1-20 and tried to make the largest number possible.

We used number fans, selecting three numbers and writing their number fact families.

In RE and PSHE we discussed making mistakes, forgiveness and friendships. We learned that everyone makes mistakes and that we always learn from them. This was linked to our feelings changing from anger, to forgiveness within our friendships in class and at home with siblings! Each child received a little picture of The Rainbow Fish. Mrs Brough placed multi-coloured glitter on one scale on each fish. The children coloured the rest of their pictures beautifully and whilst doing so, thought about being kind friends.

Mrs Brough read The Rainbow Fish, The Scarecrow’s Wedding, One Snowy Night, Superworm and the Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch. From these we discussed and practised writing interesting words to build our vocabulary, memory and sequencing of the stories.    

I must now hand your wonderful children back to Mr Lynn. It has been a pleasure to teach each and every one of them and be supported in class by the wonderful Mrs Slater and Mrs Hough.

Enjoy your half-term holiday! Mrs Brough

Friday 16th October 2020

It has been another fabulous busy week of learning for Year One which has flown by. We were delighted to let the children know that Mr & Mrs Lynn welcomed a baby girl to their family last week. The children have each made a little picture for Mr Lynn to see on his return.

Now, Year One have been having trouble with a naughty green Troll with a very big nose which is excellent for smelling our fruit bowl and packed lunches! We were a little worried that he might eat our lovely school dinners too. We talked about this problem and decided we must ‘Trap the Troll’! We knew that his favourite food was snail pie. So, we dug a pit, put our rug on the pit, put our pie on the rug, and put our snail on the pie! Then, we hid behind a tree and… BOOM! He fell into our pit. No more naughty Troll! One young lady was particularly frightened of the Troll. She was very brave and became Mrs Brough’s assistant. We used this language repeatedly to help our sequencing, our memory of the story and language within it, and to write about what happened, forming our sentences carefully using capital letters and full stops.

We had super PE sessions making fabulous jungle movements and farm animal movements. We then danced ‘freestyle’ to Jungle Boogie, Can’t Stop the Feeling and Happy. Mrs Brough was impressed with some creative individual moves! During our Spanish lesson, we looked at flags, currency and discussed football.

In Geography we were very excited to see an ariel view of our school using Google Earth. We traced our route to the field at playtime and identified trees, the playground, the car park and the bandstand. We then looked at the area surrounding the school, identifying the cricket club and allotments. Many children were interested in looking at their own house which would be a great Geography investigation for home.

During science we learned about different features of amphibians. We completed a wordsearch containing key words which was a new skill for many children and a super way of practising recognition of our lowercase letters.

Covering Science, Geography and Literacy, we read ‘The Tiger Who Came to Tea’ again. We noted that the book was written more than forty years ago and looked carefully at a picture of what items were being used to hold the shopping. We discussed that one was made of net and the other was a woven basket. A discussion regarding caring for the environment ensued where the children made the link between plastic overuse, littering and bags for life.

In Phonics we have continued to practise all sounds covered so far, every day. Our new sound is ‘or’, which has the ditty ‘or shut the door’. We generated lots of words with the ‘or’ sound and looked at where the ‘or’ sound was positioned within words.

In Maths we recapped our ordinal numbers at every opportunity and ordered animals using the part-whole model. We went on to look at the addition symbol and number families. We also held a ‘Maths Carousel’ where the classroom was organised with seven different activities to recap essential skills for all children.

During PSHE we considered the question: Why should I be good? We watched a short film in which a boy finds a ring that makes him invisible. This opened an interesting philosophical discussion around knowing the difference between right and wrong.

In RE we thought carefully about what we are thankful to God for. The children each wrote their special word on a pebble picture which will form a little display. The children chose many words, from naming their special grown-ups, to popcorn and their pets! We also discussed the meaning of kindness and explained examples of being kind.

During Art, we looked carefully at the Starry Night painting, by Vincent van Gough. We looked at the shapes and colours and drew our own in crayon, whilst listening to Don McLean singing ‘Vincent’. The children compared their artwork carefully to the original and then returned to their picture to add certain features.

In History, we read an inspiring true story written by Floella Benjamin and Diane Ewen, entitled ‘Coming to England’ which celebrated the Windrush Generation. In this story we learned that Floella’s family came to England from Trinidad. She joined them later but did not feel welcome in England at first because of the way she was treated. Floella went on to make lots of friends and was even honoured by the Queen! We also watched a dramatization of the life of Rosa Parks.

We read and watched a beautiful animation of ‘Can’t You Sleep Little Bear?’, by Martin Waddell. This is a lovely story about the relationship of Big Bear and Little Bear which mirrors that of a parent and child. We will be doing activities relating to the book next week.

Mrs Brough has continued to read books from the Percy the Park Keeper series which we have used to generate sentences. We have also watched the animated stories which all children were engaged by.

Have a wonderful weekend. We have lots of fun planned for next week!

Friday 9^th October 2020

Year One had an amazing week participating in lots of exciting activities. All children have settled brilliantly with Mrs Brough. I am proud of each and every one of them and their kindness towards each other. We have settled into the routine of enjoying eating our lunches in the school hall at our allocated time. We and learned to clear our trays and practiced using cutlery correctly.

During PE great fun was had. The children pretended to be monkeys and trees, swaying in the wind. They performed movements to music from The Lion King and gave their peers feedback, suggesting that they could ‘swish a tail’, or ‘eat a banana’ during their dances. We also followed ‘Miss Linky’ in learning jungle exercises.

In Science we went scavenging for Autumnal treasure and discovered amazing creations of Mother Nature, such as seeds from the astounding sycamore tree, leaves, twigs, sticks, branches, feathers, conkers, ferns, moss, slugs, snails, spiders, woodlice, worms and of course mud!  We used our sense of touch to feel objects and our sense of vision to admire the beautiful changing autumnal colours, shapes and sizes of our findings.

In English we used our scavenger hunt word list to write interesting descriptive sentences and compare opposites such as short and long, or rough and smooth. We have also been building our range of vocabulary at every opportunity, across the curriculum subjects.

The children have enjoyed listening to some wonderful fiction and non-fiction this week. We have read and discussed The Tiger Who Came to Tea, Superworm, The Inner Planets, Percy’s Friend the Hedgehog, After the Storm and Rosa Parks. We used prediction to consider how stories may end.

In Phonics we practised all sounds we have covered to date and learned the ‘ar’ sound, which has the ditty ‘ar start the car’. We generated lots of words with the ‘ar’ sound and looked at where the ‘ar’ sound was positioned within the words. One amazing young gentleman cleverly said “Mars has the ‘ar’ sound!” Mr Lynn will be delighted! This inspired Mrs Brough to introduce the children to Holst, The Planets, Mars, in our Music lesson, where we combined art in drawing to rhythm!

In Maths we learned ordinal numbers, using this language at every opportunity, such as when lining up on arrival at school: ‘first, second, third…’.  We practised number formation ensuring that our pencils travelled in the right direction and continued to use mathematical vocabulary to discuss the ordering of numbers. We rearranged the seating position numbers of astronauts in rockets! We also practised using the part-whole model. In our ‘guess the number game’, children had to guess a number between one and a hundred. They could only ask ten questions. We had a fabulous discussion around thinking of questions carefully, in order to gain the most information to help us reach the target number. The fascination on the children’s faces was a joy to behold as they developed reasoning and problem-solving skills.

In History, we read a super book from the ‘Little People, Big Dreams’ series about the life of a lady named Rosa Parks. We discussed her life and work towards making life fair for black people. The children were surprised that a bus driver asked Rosa to give up her seat on a bus, to a white person. They were amazed that when Rosa had the courage to say ‘no’, she was sent to prison that day. Just like Neil Armstrong – Rosa was a brave young lady. Morals shone through as a Year One child commented that the bus driver was not kind.

We attended a live, virtual Harvest Festival. It was wonderful to see inside Barwick-In-Elmet’s beautiful church and listen to live guitar playing and singing! The children were intrigued that they were watching remotely, such are the wonders of technology. Our heartfelt thanks to everyone who kindly donated food to support those in need.

Have a wonderful weekend. We have lots of fun planned for next week!

Friday 2^nd October 2020

It’s amazing that we’ve already been back for four weeks. We are definitely ‘in the swing of things’ now, and enjoying learning about Moon landings, Van Gogh, and our noses!

In English we’ve used our shark story to continue to explore writing super sentences. Thank you for the help with mine in last week’s home learning! We’ve written captions, and a ‘Wanted Poster’ for that nasty shark. We even handled a real shark tooth, just to check how sharp they really are! We’ve learned the importance of orally rehearsing what we want to write several times, so we don’t lose the thread halfway through.

In Phonics, we’ve learned about the oa and oo (long and short) sounds, and begun to practise writing sentences to support our learning. Handwriting (both letter and number formation) is a huge focus for us all, and phonics gives us another chance to practise in this area.

In Maths we’ve been ordering objects and numbers. We’ve worked hard on using mathematical vocabulary such as most, more, greater than, equal, less, least, and the tricky ‘fewer’ and ‘fewest’. We keep practising regular forwards and backwards counting, as well as rehearsing the days of the week and the months of the year.

In History, we’ve looked at the life of Neil Armstrong, his life from childhood, and how his personal qualities of being brave, intelligent and patient helped him to become the first man on the moon. He also was a passionate reader at a very early age, which we found quite inspiring when looking at our reading chart!

In Science we learned about some more senses: smelling the contents of some mystery pots and predicting what they might be, and whether they liked the smell. Marmite was definitely more favoured by some of us than others! We also did a ‘blind’ touch test: using our hands to try to describe and guess some mystery objects. We showed we knew some great adjectives, and particularly enjoyed exploring ammonite fossils and a starfish. Can you now name all five of your senses?

Have a super weekend!

Friday 25th September 2020

What a fantastic effort we are seeing with home reading. Our reading chart is rapidly filling up, and all of us are excited to work towards the first target of 25 reads at home: thank you for super support at home with this. This week a change in the weather has come, but our fantastic class has continued to show an excellent attitude with their learning.

In English, we've done a bit of a magic trick. Keeping the same structure of the Billy Goats Gruff story, the class has adapted it into 'The Three Fish'. The story is now about three hungry fish looking for seaweed, who run into a 'vast fast shark'! The class's enthusiasm for the story has been wonderful to see. We also learned a clever way to help us not to confuse b and d, by making a bed with our hands. Can you remember how to do it at home?

In Phonics, we've been consolidating the vowel digraphs ai and ee, and the trigraph igh, with lots of blending and segmenting practice to help us in our writing in other lessons. We also continue to have a strong focus on our letter and number formation, with 'little and often' practice through the week.

In Maths we moved from 'one more' to 'one less'. We looked at representing one more/ less in lots of ways, and particularly enjoyed using pom-poms! We learned they are the 'number after' and the 'number before', and using our forwards and backwards counting skills to help us.

We then moved onto comparing groups, and had a lot of fun pretending to be greedy alligators to help us to learn 'greater than', 'less than' and 'equals' symbols. We learned that greedy alligators always eat the greatest number. 

In Art we refreshed our knowledge of primary and secondary colours, made our own colour wheels, and began to learn about The Starry Night by Van Gogh, through the beautifully illustrated book, 'Katie and The Starry Night' by James Mayhew. 

History saw us explore the Space Race. We were all surprised to learn about the animals (and fruit flies!), which went into space before any humans did. Finally, our Music lesson saw us exploring Old-School Hip Hop, learning about pulse, rhythm and pitch. It's fair to say the class are much better dancers than their teacher is!

Friday 18th September 2020

I'm sure we'll all sleep well tonight, because the whole class has been putting so much energy into their learning and their playing! In English, we've learned the entire Billy Goats Gruff story as a class! We used a story map, and learned lots and lots of actions to help us to remember it as well as we can. The class have really outdone themselves, and pushed themselves to learn the whole thing. The story maps, to support Home Learning can be found in the 'English' part of the Home Learning page. We made some stick puppets to act out the story, and discovered we all have a very mean troll inside: I certainly saw some very fierce faces!

In Phonics, we've consolidated 'ch' and 'sh', and then moved onto 'th' and 'ng'. We did learn these in reception, but a refresher is really helping us to improve our blending when reading words. I've added 'Our Reading Routine' in the English part of Home Learning as well: this is the way the children learn to read individual words in phonics sessions.

In Maths, there's been a blur of counting forwards and backwards, which we learned was the key to understanding missing number sequences. We have started applying our counting skills to find 'one more' of a number, and will look at 'one less' next week.

We've also begun to explore the life of Neil Armstrong, and compared his achievement to that of Christopher Columbus. The class gave some really considered responses to what Columbus did, with much discussion about how he treated the people he found when he crossed the Atlantic.

I hope everybody has a brilliant weekend: next week we'll be learning more about our senses, looking at some very famous art, finding out about the moon landing, and much more besides!

Week Commencing 7th September 2020

I have been so impressed with how the class have settled into their new classroom, especially in current situation, and with a considerable gap since being in 'full time' for them. They've mastered the routines of the class, are experts at 'thumb cuddles' and other key aspects of handwashing, and are already well on their way with their learning!

In Phonics we've begun to recap Phase 3 digraphs ch and sh, with a strong emphasis on blending sounds together to read words. We remember lots of sounds from last year, but we've realised it's blending that we need a lot of practise of as well.

In Maths we've learned about grouping and representing objects in different ways. We found it fascinating that the same things can be grouped in different ways depending on what you are looking for.

A little note:  our outdoor area is wonderful, but is definitely best experienced with wellies. If your child hasn't sent any in so far, please do so as soon as you can.