Year 1 reading meeting
Thank you to all the parents and carers who came to the Year 1 reading meeting tonight. The presentation can be downloaded here. The other resources will be sent home in your child’s book bag.
Active Maths
We like to learn outdoors in Key Stage 1. Today, 2KL were continuing our indoor learning about tens and ones with an outdoor lesson on the playground 100 square.
Help at home! Talk about how many tens and ones are in numbers. For example, find out how many tens and ones make up your age, house number, the date or shoe size.
2 tens and 8 ones
We’ve been orienteering!
This morning we spent an hour learning how to orienteer around our school grounds. It was lots of fun! We practised some map reading skills and showed resilience when it got tricky. We kept going and didn’t give up!
Autumn treasure
Autumn has definitely arrived. Lots of children have been out exploring this weekend are were keen to show us the Autumn treasure that they had collected. This generated a lot of discussion about the windy weather and conkers falling off trees.
We looked at some conkers that children had brought into Nursery and talked about the different shapes and sizes. Some of the conkers that Mrs Long had found were still in their cases. We looked closely at the shells and felt their prickles carefully. Children were excited to see a crack down one of the shells; we carefully opened it and found not just one, but two shiny conkers inside!
The Autumn woodland small world area was popular today and the tractors were very busy collecting hay bales in the fields. Some children tried to stack the hay bales in the trailer. It was quite tricky and took a lot of perseverance to stack them in a tall tower. It was even harder to stop them from falling off as the tractor moved across the bumpy field to the farm!
The Sunshine room was buzzing with excitement this morning. Children loved ordering and making pizzas in our new role play area. They played together, taking turns to take orders and to make and cook the pizzas. Some pizzas cost “5 dollars” and some were “2 pounds”. Children counted out the coins carefully as they paid.
Exploring Autumn
Last week, the children began to collect conkers and we have been using them in the classroom to support our learning.
This inspired us to go on an Autumn walk around school looking for signs of Autumn. The children noticed the leaves on the trees were beginning to change colour and some have already started to fall from the trees. We have apple, pear and horse chestnut trees in our foundation garden where we have observed the apples, pears and conkers growing and falling from the trees. We also found blackberries growing on a bush. We talked about the weather and how it is starting to change for Autumn.
- “It’s really windy and cold.”
- “When it’s winter, flowers die because it’s really cold and there’s no sun. Then when it’s summer they come back to life.”
The children learnt a song about Autumn (sung to the tune of ‘London Bridge is Falling Down’)
Autumn leaves are falling down, falling down, falling down. Autumn leaves are falling down, see them falling.
Yellow, orange, red and brown, red and brown, red and brown. Yellow, orange, red and brown, see them falling.
Home – link:
Please fill a bag with Autumn treasures that you and your child can collect together. This could be from your local park or woods and can include colourful leaves, conkers, pine cones or anything else relating to Autumn. Please bring your Autumn treasure into school to share with us.
2KL Join in
Thank you to all the parents and carers who came to 2KL’s join-in this afternoon. The class were learning about making sensible predictions in science, linked to the 5 senses.
The lavender was a really strong smell.
The dried fruit (dates) looked like a slug!
I guessed what all the instruments were.
Marvellous maths!
Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve been working on our knowledge of place value, rounding and exchanging up to 1000.
Ask your child to explain to you how to add or subtract 10, 100 or 1000. Request a tricky one which involves exchanging. We’ve been rehearsing our explanations.
Living and Learning – I can take a safe risk
For our Living and Learning sessions this week, we’ve discussed the importance of stepping out of our comfort zone and putting our hands up to answer questions – even if we might be wrong.
Our classrooms are a safe place to make mistakes so that we can learn from where we might be going wrong. Our brains work harder and grow stronger when we try to find the correct answer and learn from the mistakes we make.
This is just one example of taking a safe risk at school.
Outside of school, other safe risks might be crossing a road, stroking an animal or learning a new skill. It’s all about the pros and cons and accepting the outcomes.
Daily mile!
Each day, between lessons, we take a brain break to do our daily mile. The children really look forward to stretching their legs! The change in activity really supports the children’s ability to concentrate in the following lesson. We love it! Fingers crossed for more dry weather!
Maps and Maths
Map Skills
Not only are we learning to recognise OS map symbols, but children practised an extra maths skill by measuring the distance between two places on a map.
We studied a map of our local area and identified places of interest: our school, the nearest petrol station, picnic areas and parks. The children found particular place names quite amusing, such as Bog Lane and Flying Horse Farm!
To support our learning of our local area, we used a fantastic website called Digimaps for School.