Autumn Term 2023

Week ending 15th December

What a fantastic week! We hope you enjoyed the winter performance and agree that the children were incredible. I’m sure you are just as proud of them as we are. Performing on stage is a daunting experience and the children were so excited to show you their hard work. 
This week we have also managed to squeeze in some amazing and independent writing about the winter story of ‘Ten Little Lights’. Their writing has progressed so much this term and I was blown away by their work on Friday. In maths, we have revisited some of the trickier aspects of addition and solve missing number problems. The children finished their history topic learning about time capsules. They had some fantastic suggestions of what they would put in one that the thought would be different in the future. They included toys, technology, magazines, newspapers and money. The children also finished their puppets this week and evaluated them too.
We are looking forward to lots of fun over the last few days before the break, especially with reward day on Tuesday.

Week ending 8th December

This week the children have been very busy practising for our Winter Performance. They have been singing and dancing and are sounding and looking fantastic, we look forward to you coming to watch. 
In English this week, the children have been learning about poetry. They have focused on winter themed poems and have begun to write their own shape poems based around snow and snowflakes using some fabulous verbs and adjectives. In maths, the children have focused on statistics. They have created their own snowmen and then gathered information for tally charts and pictograms. They were fantastic at discussing this information to find most and least popular. The children finished their materials unit in Science by investigations if materials were tough and comparing their results against their predictions. 
We finished this week having fun outside with a Santa dash on Friday.

Week ending 1st December

Christmas arrived this week and the children wished the lights on in the assembly on Friday morning before hanging their decorations on the tree. 
In English, we read the story ‘Clean Up!’ and learnt a little about the importance of looking after the world around us by throwing our rubbish away and recycling. The children also learnt about the prefix un and turned words into their opposites to describe the mess on the beach in the story, such as as untidy and unclean. In Maths, we finished our learning based around shapes by going rather pattern mad! The children made lots of patterns and were great at spotting the errors I made in mine. In Scjence, we continued our learning based on materials by investigating how waterproof different materials were. The children have also continued making their puppets in DT, they are very excited to see their finished product.

Week ending 24th November

I have been incredibly impressed with the children this week. We have had assessment week and they have all worked so hard. 
We have started to practise the songs for our winter performance, complete with actions, and are getting better at remembering all the words ready for you to come and watch. 
In Science, the children investigated the absorbency of materials. In DT, the children started to sew their puppets together. This was rather tricky but they were very persistent and are looking forward to the next part. The children also continued with their gymnastics in PE.

Week ending 17th November

Another fabulous week of learning completed by Sunstone this week. 
The children started the week learning how to wash a tortoise to help them write instructions. The tortoise was thoroughly scrubbed and the instructions the children have written were absolutely fantastic. In Maths, the children have learnt abou 3D shapes. They have named them, sorted them and are beginning to accurately count the edges, faces and vertices. In Science, the children learnt about the properties of materials. In DT, the children have designed their puppets, ready for sewing next week.
Please remember to send in your homework books tomorrow and your reading books ready for new ones.

Week ending 10th November 

The children had another fantastic week. We are so proud of how keen they are to learn. This week, we read ‘How to Wash a Woolly Mammoth’ in English and have learnt about verbs and instructions. In Maths, we continued learning about subtraction and learnt how to do this on a number line being careful with our counting backwards. In RE, the children learnt about some of the symbols of Christianity. The children started their DT unit this week too by practising the skill of joining materials. They were incredibly careful with safety pins and also used staplers and glue. The children continued their PÉ unit of gymnastics by learning about different balances. They were brilliant at this.
On Friday, we spent time learning about Remembrance Day. We had a minutes silence to remember and think about people who help us and learnt about the importance of poppies.

Week ending 3rd November

We have had a very busy first week back after half term and the children have been fantastic! In English, we practised to skills to help improve our writing such as finger spaces, capital letters and full stops. The children also learnt about verbs and loved acting them out to make sure it was an action. In maths, the children have begun on subtraction and using part-whole models to find 8 number sentences. In Science, we begun our new topic of materials by sorting. In History, the children learnt about timelines and in RE the children learnt about belonging to a community. The children have also spent the week practising the phonic knowledge they have already learnt and ensuring they are blending accurately.

Week ending 20th October

Wow! What an amazing half term. You should be so proud of your children. They have all settled well into Year 1 life and have worked incredibly hard.
This week we have created our own Space Adventure story. We have zoomed into space on hovering bananas and in intergalactic trains and encountered terrible toast monsters and black holes. The children have also performed their own stories to each other. In maths the children have listened to word problems and worked out the answer. I was so impressed with hos amazing they were at this. The children continued with under the sea themed music, learning about texture, structure and pitch. They used a variety of instruments with great thought and care to create some very effective music. Today we designed our own space craft with a password to make it work and then loved creating them - lots of sparkles were involved!

Week ending 13th October 

The children have had another amazing week. I am so impressed with how hard they have worked this week. In English they have written their own version of ‘Stanley’s Stick’ about their own stick and the adventures they take it on. Our sticks have been galloping horses, flying unicorns, fast helicopters and long fishing rods. In Maths the children have been practising their number bonds with numbers up to 10 and have been learning to work systematically. This week the children also designed a new playground and loved chalking these onto the ground. We have also started our music topic and the children’s musical imagination and interpretation has blown me away, they were incredible! They listened to music and created their own to depict fish underwater, including loud sharks and quiet shoals of fish to demonstrate dynamics. In PE, the children have used hockey sicks with fantastic control too.

Week ending 6th October

The children have had another busy week and have worked incredibly hard. Our story this week has been ‘Stanley’s Stick’. The children predicted what they thought the story would be about and then enjoyed listening to it. Their predictions were brilliant and some were quite accurate. They have sequenced the story and have begun to use their imagination and descriptive language to discuss what the stick could be. In maths they have begun to learn about addition and writing number sentences. This has been quite tricky to record accurately so we will carry on practising next week. In science, the children drew pictograms. In geography, they discussed and analysed the outside spaces at school. In art, they have done some fabulous observational drawings of things we found in nature and in computing they have drawn self portraits using sketchpad. 
We are so impressed with how much they are reading, keep going and change your books whenever you need.
 

Week ending 29th September

This week we have been busy exploring a whole host of maps. We have read ‘Martha Maps It Out’ and looked in detail at all the maps that Martha draws and labels. The children have created their own versions of the classroom, themselves and the playground. They have learnt about adjectives and nouns to make their labels more detailed. In maths, the children have been using the symbols <, > and = to compare groups of objects and numbers. This has been quite tricky but they have been very determined to keep trying. The children have also created their own shape pictures by experimenting with different media in art and have continued to practise logging on to our computers to also create shape pictures.

Week ending 22nd September

This week the children have described the setting and the characters in Little Red Riding Hood. They have created their own very scary character to replace the wolf in the story and have drawn and written their own versions. There has been some very imaginative and entertaining ideas for what may happen to Granny and Little Red Riding Hood! In maths, the chi,Daren have begun to practise their skill of one more and less and have shown off their knowledge of this brilliantly. We have also created messy maps of the classroom using resources, listened to watery music to inspire our drawing and begun to learn how to logon to the school laptops and access websites. 
Please make sure you send a coat in next week as the weather is more autumnal. 
Please also send your reading books back whenever they need a new one as well as every Friday so they can change their reading for pleasure book. 
The children have worked incredibly hard again this week and we hope you have a good weekend.

Week ending 15th September

The children have been superstars this week. We are so proud of well they are settling into year 1 life. We have been learning about the traditional tale of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ this week, the children know it really well and have acted it out, ordered it brilliantly and shown off their writing skills by labelling pictures. In maths, the children have revised their knowledge of numbers to 10 and begun to learn to read the numbers as words too. The children have also been colour mixing with paints, learning new pencil techniques for drawing and have begun their geography topic by exploring maps and aerial photographs of our local area.

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