Year 1

This week in English we have been learning the text ‘Supertato’.

We were very surprised to come in to our classroom to find vegetables tied up around the room. Then we spotted Supertato flying through the air with his cape on.

We have been working hard to learn the text, by drawing a story map and adding actions. We have also been predicting what could happen next in the story. Here are some of our predictions:

We looked carefully at the text to find out what made it a great story. We noticed that all the sentences had a ‘who’ and ‘what’ in them, they started with a capital letter and finished with end of sentence punctuation, such as a full stop. We also noticed that there were lots of past tense words, and some exclamation marks.

We looked at some different past tense verbs and sorted them according to the end sound they made.

We will also be learning that exclamation marks are used to show strong feelings, such as shock, surprise and anger. We will read sentences and decide whether they need an exclamation mark or a full stop at the end.

How to support at home:

• When reading, look out for the ‘who’ and ‘what’ in each sentence.
• Use objects around the house and turn them into characters by adding facial features. Make up some adventures for your new characters.
• Look out for exclamation marks in your reading books – identify the strong emotion that is being shown in the sentence.

Our significant person that we are learning about in History is Louie Braille.

Louie Braille is still significant today because he invented a system which supported people who are blind. When Braille was young he was sent to a special school for children who were blind. However, there were only 14 books available to read. Louis Braille decided to invent a new system made from six dots. He invented the Braille system at only fifteen!

We have sequenced Louie Braille’s life onto a timeline. We then established whether the sequenced events were a happy moment or sad moment in his life:

How you can help at home:

Use the knowledge organiser to answer the following questions…

1. Why do you think we remember Louis Braille today?
2. What were the most important moments, and who were the most significant people in Louis Braille’s life?
3. What changes to people’s lives has Louis Braille made?

Year 1 Knowledge organiser History – Autumn 2 updated

This week in Panthers and Lions we have innovated a report about the Gruffalo. We created a class alien called  Zapper who is a fierce creature just like the Gruffalo.

We have been working very hard to write sentences that start with a capital letter and end with a full stop. We have also learnt that every sentence needs a ‘who’ and a ‘what’ to make sense. For example, ‘ Zappers have hard purple skin.’.

Here are some examples of great work in Year 1 this week:

How you can help at home:

• Design a character at home.
• Create a word bank of adjectives to describe your monster.
• Make 3 ‘who’ and ‘what’ sentences about your character.

This week in Year 1 we have been learning about Remembrance Day.

We enjoyed an assembly with Padre Nicoll on Wednesday. We met some of the forces parents within the Merry Hill community and found out about their jobs. We listened carefully to the ‘Poppy Poppy’ poem recited by the children from Forces Club; they did a marvellous job!

In class, we learnt why poppies are used as a symbol of remembrance and were surprised to find out that remembrance poppies are not always red.

We worked hard to make our own poppies using a variety of materials:

How to help at home 

• How many people can you spot wearing poppies on the TV? Or when out and about? Can you make a tally to show how many you saw?
• Visit the memorial at the end of School Lane – can you see the Merry Hill poppy wreath there?
• Create some poppy artwork at home – remember to send us a picture on Seesaw.

Subtracting:

This week we have been using part part whole models and tens frames to subtract. We learnt how to identify the missing part by using tens frames. We placed the right amount of counters on the tens frame to represent the whole. Then we took off the counters shown in the known part. we discovered that the number left was the other missing part.

Problem solving

Later on in the week we looked at tricky word problems such as:

1. What is the biggest number you can make by throwing 2 hoops onto the cones?
2. What is the smallest number you can make by throwing 2 hoops onto the cones?

How to help at home:

• Can you create your own subtraction word problems?
• Practise using items from around the house to subtract with and make all the possible number sentences.

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This term in Geography we have been looking at our school grounds. We have been learning how to use maps, practicing the use of directional language and sharing our opinion of the playground.

All Geographers have curiosity about the world and the people in it.

First, we learnt the word ‘aerial’ and then produced a messy map of an aerial view of the classroom.

We then spent time in the forest designing aerial maps of the forest school.

Finally we have been offering our opinion of the playground and discussing how we could improve it.

How you can help at home:

• Make your own map of your bedroom.
• Make a questionnaire for your friends about how to improve your local park.
• Practise using directional language on your way to school/on the way home.

This half term in Science we have been learning about ourselves.

We started off by thinking about the names of some of our body parts and used them to play a game of ‘Simon Says’. We thought about where our wrists, ankles, knuckles and nostrils are.

Then we used mirrors to look closely at our faces and our facial features. We noticed that everyone looks different, some people have brown eyes, some people have blue eyes, we also realised that everyone’s noses are slightly different too.

This week we have been starting to think about our 5 senses and the body parts associated with each sense. We will take part in experiments to find out how our senses are useful to us in our everyday lives.

In English we will be writing our own senses poems.

How to help at home 

• Play ‘Simon Says’ using body parts e.g. Simon says touch your ankles.
• When eating dinner discuss the taste of different foods, challenge your children to use words like sweet, sour, bitter etc.
• Have a go at a senses calming activity – write down 5 things you can see, 4 things you can feel, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, 1 thing you can taste.

For Inclusion week we looked at the story ‘Mixed’.

‘Mixed’ is a story about a world with only three primary colours. The reds were the loudest, the blues were the coolest and the yellows were the brightest.

Until one day the reds said ‘WE ARE THE BEST!’.

In Year 1 we talked about how it would make us feel if all the children were grouped by their hair colour and they were not allowed to be friends with each other. We all said that this would be unfair.

However, the story ends when the three primary colours all decide to mix to make different colours and shades. We all thought the world would be very boring if everyone was the same.

We then painted shapes in the style of Clarice Cliff by colour mixing and making sure that all colours were included.

How you can help at home:

• Have conversations that celebrate individuals and their differences
• Listen to the story ‘Mixed’ by Arree Chung being read online https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIbGioTNs4M
• Visit the library and see if you can find other books to enjoy that celebrate inclusion

This week in Year 1 we have been learning about how to represent numbers up to 10 with tens frames, beadstrings, dice and numicon. We have been discussing different patterns on the dice and using our subitising skills to recall numbers quickly.

Firstly, we looked at pictures of numicon, dice, digit cards and cubes. We had to use one to one correspondence to add the items together or find out what number was being represented. Next, we played a game called ‘Tens Frame Flash’. We had a tens frame displayed on the board for 5 seconds. Then we had to use our subitising skills and represent it on our own tens frame. Finally, we have used real resources to match the representations to the correct digit card.

We even spent time in our forest school finding different natural objects to represent number.

How you can help at home:

• Go on a walk and collect some natural items to create your own representations of number. Please upload any pictures to Seesaw for us to share.

This week in English we have been reading ‘Funnybones’ by Janet and Allan Ahlberg. We looked carefully at the front cover and tried hard to predict what might happen next at different points in the story.

We learnt about labels – what they are and why they are important. We used the Word Aware approach to help.

We decided that a good label would have the correct word to match its object, letters that were evenly spaced, not too far apart and not too close together and writing that went from left to right.

We used post it notes to label things around our classroom.

We linked our Science learning about body parts to our English and labelled the different parts of the Funnybones’ skeletons. Have a look at some of our wonderful label work.

We have also been learning about lists – what they are and when they might be useful. We had a go at writing our own lists to remind the skeletons of all the different places they could visit. We tried really hard to make sure we wrote each word on its own new line. Here are some of our lists:

How to help at home: 

• Ask your child to help write shopping lists, birthday lists etc
• Encourage your child to label any models or artwork they complete at home – post it notes are good for labels.
• Visit the library – can you find any non-fiction books that contain lists or labels?

Lions and Panthers have had a lovely first week back in our new classrooms. We have been exploring our classroom areas and settling into year 1 routines. This week we hunted for useful classroom belongings while learning about our Golden Rule ‘Do look after property’. We have also practised the Golden Rule ‘Do be Kind and helpful’ by visiting our safe places within our classrooms. We practised using breathing balls, worry monsters and calming toys to remind us what we can do when we need to self regulate. We are extremely impressed with how well the children have settled back in after the summer holidays and cannot wait for next week in Year 1!