Year 1: Blog items
Date: 11th Jun 2021 @ 8:34pm
As part of our WOW for our new journey in reading into writing we read a new story, ‘How to wash a Woolly Mammoth.’ As our next journey is all about instructions, we read this book to tell us how to wash a woolly mammoth, something not many of us had done before! We then had a task to complete. Lots of dirty animals had been left in our outdoor area! Our task was to work with a partner to verbally give instructions on how to wash one of these animals. We recapped on our past learning about the importance of giving specific instructions, before choosing which tools we thought would be best for the job. We were then ready to get started and give our first instructions!
Date: 20th May 2021 @ 6:35pm
After exploring all existing products and making prototypes of each mechanism, it was time to create our own design! We linked our designs to the story 'Giraffes can't Dance,' and we chose a scene from this book that we would like to bring to life.
We then brought our designs to life by creating our moving picture of a scene from ‘Giraffes can’t Dance!’ We looked back at the designs we had created to check the key elements, including the characters, background and the type of mechanism we wanted to use. We recapped on our key vocabulary, lever, slider, pivot, push, pull, direction, up, down, left and right, and described our desired movement and mechanism to our partner. We reviewed how to make each type of mechanism and the key parts to remember with each one, before beginning to make our moving picture. We all successfully made a moving picture with a combinatnation of levers, sliders and wheels!
Date: 20th May 2021 @ 6:31pm
We began the morning by exploring existing products and introducing our new vocabulary. We read each key word and discussed what they mean. We identified which of our key words – lever, slider, pivot, push, pull, direction, up, down, left and right – fit with each example of the mechanism. We then found examples of levers, sliders and wheels in books. We discussed the way the moving part moves, how does it work and what effect is has.
Our first mechanism to make was a slider! We read the Gingerbread man story and talked about which part we might like to turn into a moving picture! Lots of us said a good part of the story to make would be when the characters chase the Gingerbread man and this is the picture we made! To make a part move in our picture we needed to make a sliding mechanism.
Our second mechanism was a lever! For this mechanism we linked our learning to the story Jack and the Beanstalk. We read and discussed the story and we were then ready to turn part of the story into a moving picture using a lever mechanism.
Our third and final new mechanism technique was a wheel. We read the story Little Red Riding Hood, and discussed that we are going to again turn part of the story into a moving picture using a wheel mechanism!
Date: 14th May 2021 @ 8:35pm
This week we spent some time outside and used our senses to take in the world around us! We talked about things we can do to support our mental health and how we can support each other. We listened to the birds, looked for patterns in the clouds and looked at all the different colour we could see. We also listened to a story.
During snack time we then recapped on the 5 important things we can keep doing to help us boost our mental health: Connecting with others, staying active, keeping learning, taking notice and giving of our time.
Date: 12th May 2021 @ 8:00pm
At 9.50 this morning we listened to Anthony Horrowitz broadcast for the ‘Take 10’ event. We listened to him explain why he enjoys reading, where his favourite place to read is and what his favourite type of books are. At 10 o’clock it was then our turn to read! We each selected a book or comic we wanted to read and had ten minutes of independent reading. After this we then briefly discussed our favourite books and what we like about them. All the children enjoyed having the time to read and talk about books they enjoy!
Date: 12th May 2021 @ 7:52pm
This week in our Reading into Writing sessions we have been using 'and' and because to extend our sentences. We began the week by finding and building sentences containing 'and' and worked on writing the remainder of a given sentence. For example, 'I went to the shop and...'
"bought some sweets!"
"saw my friends!"
"my mum bought some milk."
We then linked our learning to the story 'Aliens Love Underpants.' We described different aliens from the story, using and to extend our sentences and connect two ideas.
We have also then began to talk about using commas! Miss Kay showed us a sentence she had written about the aliens, but it had too many 'ands!' We learnt how to use commas in a list, and we will continue our work with this.
Date: 9th May 2021 @ 6:18pm
This afternoon we firstly completed an old and new toy sort, thinking about materials used, whether the toy was electric or not and the different kind of colours used. We then looked at our toy timeline. We looked at our example time line from Victorian toys to grandparents toys, to parents toys and finally to our toys! We tried hard to use our number knowledge to follow the years on the timeline and place each toy into the correct time period!
Date: 9th May 2021 @ 6:11pm
Today was our History Day! We began the day by talking about our favourite toys, and creating a mind map of all the toys we could think of. We thought of lots and lots! We then thought a bit more about what our favourite toys are and why they are our favourite, discussing with our talk partner what we like about them. After that, we talked about what our favourite games are to play, and who do we play them with.
After writing about our favourite toys we then began to think a bit more about what toys were like in the past and how we can find evidence to help us understand more about these toys. We thought we could ask older people we know, we could research on the Internet, we could visit museums or we could read non-fiction books.
It was then time to get ready for our visitors! We had some time to think of different questions we could ask our visitors to collect information about their favourite toys.
Date: 7th May 2021 @ 7:29pm
Today in Science we created a microhabitat in the form of a bug hotel! We have linked our Reading into Writing sessions this week with our previous learning in Science and have been using our senses to complete sentence writing about hot and cold habitats. We have looked at the features of polar habitats, under the sea habitats and desert habitats. We then also looked at where various deserts are located on a World map. Before we went outside to forage for materials to make our bug hotel, we discussed what features bug hotels need to make an appropriate habitat for mini beasts. We said they need to be compact, contain different materials and have different layers. After foraging for materials we used our plastic bottles to create our very own micro bug hotels for our gardens.
Date: 29th Apr 2021 @ 7:50pm
Today was our DT day! We began the morning by recapping on what are the Olympic games, when the next Olympics are and where they are being held. We then looked at a variety of different party foods, and thought of lots of different adjectives to describe them.
Date: 28th Apr 2021 @ 11:25am
In computing this week we used the Beebots! For the past few weeks we have looked at algorithms, creating step by step instructions and saying why it is important to be precise when writing an algorithm. We have tried hard to learn our left and right from different points and which way is clockwise or anticlockwise. This week we put all our prior learning into practise to program Beebots. We used the terms algorithm, sequence, debugging and programming to explain what instructions we were giving to our Beebots, to get them to move from one point to another. We had to remember to clear each previous instruction before giving our Beebot a new instruction, or our Beebots went off in the wrong direction! We worked in small groups to program the Beebots and then on the IPads using the Beebot app.
Date: 14th Apr 2021 @ 7:33pm
Today as part of our first day back activities we began to learn about animal habits. We firstly recapped on classifying animals and began to discuss where we thought they might live. We recalled and listened to the song
Date: 1st Apr 2021 @ 7:07pm
Today in Geography we used atlases to firstly locate the 7 continents of the world, and then the 5 oceans. We enjoyed using the atlases and we are becoming very good at locating the continents on the world map! We also enjoyed listening to our continents song before labelling the oceans on our individual maps, and taking part in a short oceans quiz!
“Oceans are salt water.”
“The Pacific Ocean is the biggest ocean in the world!”
“Lots of animals live in the ocean.”
“Pacific means peaceful.”
Date: 1st Apr 2021 @ 6:56pm
This week in Maths we completed an addition hunt! We were tasked with finding and answering 10 differentiated addition sums. The sums were spread around each Year 1 classroom and our outdoors area and some were tricky to find! We had to find all 10 sums with a certain colour dot on the outside. We then had to answer them correctly using resources or mental methods. Each class had a ‘base’ set up so that we could return there and use Numicon, cubes, number lines or hundred squares to work out each sum. We all had a great afternoon, filled with lots of addition! We then returned to our classroom and checked our answers.
Date: 25th Mar 2021 @ 7:00pm
Today we enjoyed Art Day! Firstly, we listened to the story ‘The Dot.’ This was a new story to us all, and one we very much enjoyed! We talked about the message in the story and linked it to our growth mindset, something that has been very important for us since we returned to school. We then talked about the importance of showing pride in our work and how Vashti’s feelings change and why. To create our dot we used a combination of materials. We cut, tore, twisted, scrunched and folded these materials before sorting, arranging and finally gluing! We created our dot by 'not making a dot!' We used the negative space on the paper to create the dot. It was a lot of fun!
Date: 24th Mar 2021 @ 7:12pm
Today in Science we looked in depth at the different parts of plants and what purpose these different parts have. We already knew the names of lots of different parts of plants, but we needed to recap on what all the parts are for! We learnt that the flower attracts insects and birds, the seeds grow into new plants when they fall into the soil, the stem holds the plant up, the roots take in water and nutrients and the leaves catch sunlight to make energy. We then made our plant picture! We followed the instructions to create our amazing plant pictures, talking about the different parts and the purpose of each part as we worked.
