Spring Term 2024

WC 25th March.

In English this week, we have completed our little story books. We then enjoyed illustrating them, reading them ourselves and sharing them with our peers. We all thoroughly enjoyed this and everyone should be proud of themselves as emerging story authors! We were so inspired by our little alien character - we finished the term by writing a series of neatly written, dictated sentences to record a new and unusual imaginary alien who had arrived in Sleaford in a shiny rocket. We then drew what had been described. What a strange, pink alien he was with his three legs and a wide smile! Perhaps you can create a new, fun alien character for another story over the holiday?

In Maths, we carried on with our addition and subtraction. We have been finding the difference using cubes and our number line skills. We have also been developing our skills by completing related facts.  We used part whole models, tens frames and bar model equipment to rehearse this then had a go to independently record our answers to some fact family questions. Super job! 

In Geography, we went on another adventure with the 'Go-jetters' cartoon characters! We explored the continent of Africa and recorded the facts we found out. In PSHE, We completed our learning on how to be healthy by learning about and role playing the green cross code and how to cross the road safely.  Science and Art has immersed together this week with learning about the features of summer and some lovely practical collage activities. We enjoyed learning about dynamics and timbre in music by learning a little song about the stormy rain. We used our body as a percussion instrument to make gentle 'pitter patter' sounds building up to loud 'bitter batter' hail stone sounds! We split our class in half so we could take turns to practise the song using the different sounds. To finish the term, we had fun by learning how to use glockenspiels! 

If anyone missed seeing the spellings - they are: book, cook, foot, wood, good, shook, brook, stood, took, wool. Please learn these over the holiday ready for a test on Tuesday 16th April. Keep reading with your grown ups too. :)

Happy Easter. Stay safe over the holidays and enjoy some yummy chocolate! We are looking forward to more learning adventures with you next term.

WC 18th March.

In English, we have asked and answered questions about how our alien puppet moves. It slithered, wriggled, jumped and hopped! We then decided to write our own version of our alien story. We have enjoyed being real authors to create our own little book. We carefully structured sentences for each part of the story. We are looking forward to finishing them, adding any extra illustrations and reading them to our peers. 🙂

In Maths, we have started subtracting. We have subtracted ones on our tens frames and also used counting back skills on our number lines. We did lots of rehearsal of this with our resources. We have also started to learn how to find the difference. We are becoming much more confident at how to take away and use our preferred method.

We continue to work hard in phonics with reading and spelling - our spellings are getting trickier now we are using different sounds to spell - keep reading and working hard on your weekly spellings. You are doing a great job!

In Geography, we have learnt how many continents there are in the world and have started to research the difference between two of them - Europe and Africa. We will continue to explore this next week. The Go- Jetter cartoon adventures helped us think about this. Have another watch if you have time - they have some fabulous, daring experiences! https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00086jl/go-jetters-series-3-6-the-continent-of-europe    https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b06mz91z/go-jetters-series-1-4-the-sahara-desert-africa

In PSHE, we continued to think about being healthy and what we do when we are poorly, who helps us and most importantly how we can keep safe. In Science, we have started to think about the features of Summer and what we do when the weather is warmer. We even spotted the temperature rising on our thermometer!

We were lucky to finish the week with a dry, sunny and very exciting whole school Holi festival. What a wonder of colour! Happy weekend.

WC 11th March.

This week has been assessment week across the school so everyone has been busy with Maths, Reading comprehension and Science tests.

We have still found time to do some more Maths work on our doubles and near doubles. We also recapped our adjectives in English and wrote some descriptive sentences about our weird and wonderful alien sock puppets. Great job year 1 - you have worked really hard all week and should be proud of yourselves.

We have enjoyed locating the continents on a map in Geography. We have been thinking about the sound of the wind in Music, singing a song with actions for the rustling, flapping and crashing! In RE, we have continued learning about the Muslim faith; how we prepare to pray and where we pray. In Art, we have worked on paper art and in PE we have been balancing on equipment and also continued with our games skills by controlling a ball to hit a target. For Science; we have been busy thinking about activities we do in spring by planting some potatoes of our own...watch this space! Once they have grown it will be tasting time! Finally, we finished our week with ICT. Certainly a class favourite. Phew - what a busy week! Enjoy your weekend Year 1. 😊

WC 4th March.

This week in English we have been busy creating a soundscape for our little alien character. We listened to sounds then wrote what she may hear as she travels around the town - including beeping car horns, stomping feet, ringing phones and chatting children! We had lots of fun making a weird and wonderful sock puppet alien of our own - adding lots of eyes, different shaped noses and funny hair. We finished the week naming our puppet and describing what it looked like using different adjectives. How creative!

In Maths, we have been working on number bonds to 20 - spotting the patterns on our tens frames. We have also enjoyed using dice to help us learn our doubles. We have been adding the same number of counters to a second tens frame and worked out the total. 

In Geography, we have added the land to our Globe - we can admire our great work in our classroom now.  In PSHE, we have discussed how to be safe at home. In Art - we thought about sugar art this week and were able to use our senses to compare different icings for cakes and had fun getting sticky! We then made our own sugar art mood board. In Science, we have thought about what we do in Spring. 

Of course we also had World Book Day on Thursday - so many lovely stories to read and super character costumes! Wow! Keep reading!

WC 26th February.

This week in English we received a letter from our friendly alien - Beegu. We realised as she is still learning English some of her words were jumbled! We managed to guess the meaning and then got busy replying to her with our advice. Everyone was very kind and wanted to help her find her mum or fix her spaceship. We also enjoyed translating lots of Beegu’s words using rhyming skills.

In Maths, we have started addition within 20. We did lots of counting on using cubes, counters and number lines. Everyone got very good at finding the starting number and jumping on the correct number. We have also been working hard at our number bond recall – we have used lots of games to help us. Keep working hard on adding two numbers.

In Geography, we are now beginning to learn about our Globe, Continents and Oceans! We have started this learning by making a globe of our own. Did you know two thirds of our planet is water? We have been busy adding the oceans and we will be adding the land next. In PSHE, we are thinking about how we are healthy. In Science, we are learning about the features of spring. There are certainly lots of spring flowers appearing even though it’s still chilly! We have also began to learn about the significant person in History – Isaac Newton – and we had fun testing his discovery of the law of gravity!

We look forward to seeing you on Wednesday at parents evening. Any problems with this date, just ask and we will try and accomodate a different appointment time.

WC Monday 19th February.

It was lovely to see everyone back after the half term break. 

We returned to our English learning with dramatic news of a possible alien spaceship crashlanding into our playground. The small, yellow, alien pilot known as Beegu has been spotted around school and the Year 1 children have been searching for it. They have written descriptions of it and used their ‘bossy’ imperative verbs to send instructions to all the staff to let them know what to do if they should find the alien.

In maths we have been continuing our work on numbers within 20 – this week we have been comparing and ordering numbers using practical equipment such as cubes and our number tracks. We have been thinking again about how our numbers are made up of 10s and 1s.

We finished off our Science learning on materials by addressing the question of what happens to materials over time. We read a story about the problems that plastic waste can cause for our oceans if we do not dispose of it properly. We learned that metal is made from minerals mined from under the Earth and that lots of our waste can be recycled into new objects. We then sorted some rubbish by material and then repurposed it by creating our own incredible junk models.

Our ICT lesson this week introduced the idea of algorithms as step-by-step instructions. We learned that our instructions have to be very clear, otherwise things can go terribly wrong – like my disastrous jam sandwich-making which resulted in unwashed hands, butter spread using fingers and a whole jar of jam added to it! Once the children had re-written the algorithm for the perfect jam sandwich, they all had a go at following the step-by-step instructions and enjoyed eating the results.

In RE, the children have begun their learning on how Muslims express their beliefs – exploring how they use the Qur’an, prayer mats, prayer beads and prayer caps as part of their faith.

PE lessons this week saw children introduced to bat and ball skills and we created our own gymnastics sequence incorporating different balances using only the small parts of our body.

WC Monday 5th February.

In Maths, we have been counting to twenty on number tracks and number lines. We have explored how we can find one more and one less using them and also using tens frames and counters. We have also filled in number tracks and lines with missing numbers. Keep rehearsing digit formation and counting forwards and backwards to 20 year 1. Remember you can start from any number!

In English, we have enjoyed creating our own story mountain of our text Billy and the Beast. With a friend we added words and pictures and retold the story. Super job! We then wrote a story ending. We used lots of role play to help us think about what happened and help us with our ideas to write. What hard workers you have all been! 😊

In Geography, we completed our learning on town and countryside. We did lots of activities to sort out which features we see and discussed how town and country are different. We all decided which we preferred. Some children liked both - others loved town because they love our town of Sleaford. In RE, we have listened to Muslim stories and the call to prayer and thought about what these mean. We are looking forward to a visit to the Islamic centre next term with year 2. We have also had a busy musical week- thinking carefully about high and low pitch. We made animal sounds in high and low sounds and listened to and learnt a little song using different pitch. One half of our class became egrets flying and singing in a high pitch the other half of the class were low pitched scurrying crabs singing in a low pitch! Great job!

Happy half term. Rest and play well. See you back in Year 1 on Monday 19th February.

WC Monday 29^th January
In Maths, we have continued our investigation of numbers from 11-20. We have been exploring the composition of numbers using manipulatives and have been ordering them on our number tracks.

This week we have been inventing our own terrible soup recipes inspired by the soup from our “Billy and the Beast” story. We have been using imperative ‘bossy’ verbs to help us write the instructions for our soup. Our recipes will be compiled into a whole Year 1 recipe book.

In RE, the children learned about the significance of the ‘Night of Power’, to Muslims and where it fits into the holy month of Ramadan. The children painted and decorated their own Ramadan moon and star decoration.

Our Science work on materials continued this week with an investigation into finding the materials with the right properties for their purpose. Our focus was on windows, and we tested several materials to see which had all the properties a window needs – transparent, waterproof and relatively strong. We were able to exclude those materials which were opaque, absorbent or easy to break. We also watched a short film which showed us how glass was made from sand.

WC Monday 22^nd January

In Maths, we have spent the week exploring numbers up to 20. We have ordered numbers – finding them on a number track and counting forwards starting at different numbers. We have also worked at recognising and writing number names.

We retold, sequenced and even acted out events from our “Billy and the Beast” story. Building on last week’s work on adjectives, the children wrote simple noun phrases describing some of the characters from the story.

In Geography, we identified the human and physical features in the countryside using photographs of Lincolnshire. We also shared the story, “The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse” to help support our understanding of what we might find in the countryside.

In this week’s ICT lesson, we learned about pictograms. We created a class pictogram to show how we all travel to school and then we each created a pictogram on Purple Mash to show how many times we rolled each number on a die. The children then successfully named and saved their own pictogram in their own work folder.

Our Science work on materials continued this week with sorting objects by their properties. We sorted objects into 2 hoops in a variety of different ways – soft and hard, transparent and opaque, rough and smooth, rigid and flexible.

WC Monday 15^th January

In Maths, we have spent the week exploring 3d and 2d shapes. The children have been working to recognise and name different shapes and identify key features like the number and length of sides. We took advantage of the freezing temperatures, and on Thursday morning, the children worked to ‘break out’ and identify, some shapes which had been frozen in ice overnight in the Year 1 garden.

We read to the end of our story “Billy and the Beast” and used it to continue using our suffixes, as well as adjectives to write about the characters. The children are working very hard on their simple sentences – using capital letters, full stops and finger spaces. We are also really focussing on getting our handwriting and letter formation spot on – we are reteaching a different letter each day to support this.

In Geography, we used satellite images to discuss the key features seen in towns. Together we labelled some of the human features in own town. We compared this to a satellite view of the countryside to spot the differences.

This week’s ICT lesson focused on E-Safety. The children learned about how to use their devices safely when accessing the Internet. We talked about asking for help from an adult if something unexpected appears on our device, asking for help if someone is being unkind to us online and recapped the importance of password privacy and not sharing personal information like photos with strangers.

This week’s Science lesson included investigations into the properties of different materials. We used water to help us check how buoyant materials were – recording whether they floated or sank, and then we checked whether materials were waterproof or absorbent. The children tackled the experiments with great enthusiasm and enjoyed using pipettes for the first time to help them with their investigation.

WC Monday 8^th January

In Maths, we have been using number lines to help us with our addition and subtraction – counting our jumps forwards and backwards. Playing track games like snakes and ladders at home will really help them with this skill.

We started reading our new book Billy and the Beast and practised composing questions about the story – Will the Beast eat Billy? Why does the cat look so grumpy? We also started using some suffixes in our writing: -ed to change from present to past tense and -less and -ful to change the meanings of words – we described the characters as being either helpful or helpless, useful or useless and fearful or fearless.

In Monday’s PE, the children had their first weekly dance lesson from Miss Cheryl. They are learning to jive and she was very impressed with their moves.

In our second ICT lesson using the laptops, we were all able to log in to Purple Mash and edit the avatar we created last week. We then used the paint tools to draw and colour pictures which we then saved into our own virtual folders. The children are already becoming confident at navigating around the programme.

We covered our classroom in post-it notes for Science this week - using different colours to identify the different materials objects were made from - the children were able to discuss the properties of some of the materials and record their findings.

WC Wednesday 3rd January

It was lovely to see everyone back after our Christmas break.

Even though it has just been a 3-day week, we have managed to accomplish an awful lot.

In Maths, we have been writing fact families using both addition and subtraction sentences. We have also been completing work on subtraction using crossing out.

When we came into the classroom on Wednesday, there were signs that we had received an uninvited visitor – green fur and reported sightings of a monster around Year 1. The children then designed their own wanted posters asking for information on the monster.  On Thursday, we looked at the cover of our new book “Billy and the Beast” and wrote about what we could see in the illustration and what this told us the story might be about.

In PE, the children went outside to play tri-golf. They were really excited to be trying it for the first time. If you haven’t done so already, can you make sure the children bring jogging bottoms/leggings and jumpers for PE on Wednesdays.

On Thursday, we began using the school laptops for the very first time. The children were very excited, and I was really impressed with their ICT skills. They all managed to move the cursor around the screen using the mouse pad, to type their username and password to log on to the Purple Mash programme that we use. They even managed to create an avatar for themselves – choosing skin colour; eye, nose and mouth shape; hair; clothes and accessories. We talked about why we should keep our passwords private and why it is safer to use an avatar than a real photo when we are using the Internet.

Friday was our special Rock Kidz day. The children all looked fantastic in their rock star outfits and they thoroughly enjoyed dancing and singing along throughout the day. It was a great way to spread some positive messages about self-confidence and self-belief.