Year 1 Weekly Blog 19.5.23 'somewhere inside all of us is the power to change the world'

‘somewhere inside all of us is the power to change the world'

Matida, Roald Dahl

What a fabulous week we have had, a little bit of sunshine has made us feel happier. We have enjoyed learning about Queen Victoria and how she influenced the trend for white wedding dresses and tiered cakes. We compared her wedding dress to the wedding dresses that other royal brides wore. We drew her wedding dress and cake and then designed our own. What great designers we are. We have continued sharing our history homework and we have learnt so many interesting facts! for examle King Charles 111 is the oldest King aged 73 to be crowned and King Edward V1 the youngest at the age of 9

Maths: We have started writing ‘expressions’ (e.g. 5 + 2) and ‘equations’ (e.g. 5 + 2 = 7), We are looking at the plus and equals symbol, we have practised the stem sentences …. plus…. is equal to and … is equal to ….. plus …… and writing four equations to match the pictures e.g there are three blue birds and two yellow birds:

• 3+2=5

• 2+3=5,

• 5=2+3,

• 5=3+2

  We learnt that an addend is a number which is added to another and sum is the result of adding two or more numbers together. So the addends above are 3 and 2 and the sum is 5.

  Today we rotated different activities to give us the opportunity to practise the skills taught in maths.

English: We finished writing our retell of the Caveman Next Door and have started to innovate our stories changing the main characters and the places they visit. We are so impressed with the children’s independent writing, we are becoming accurate spellers applying the skills learnt in RWI and working hard on our handwriting and enjoying the challenge of cursive writing.

Next week we will be focusing on strategies to prepare us for our Phonics screening, this will commence the week we come back after our half term holiday. I will be making up packs next week for your half term holiday homework. Please read as much as you can and use the resources that are on the help your child at home section. There are some great games on the Phonics play and Phonics bloom websites.

Help your child – Year 1

 PE: We have loved our PE lessons this week, on Monday we played throlf, which is like golf but you roll or throw underarm or overarm to the target, some children managed a hole in one! Today we had a relay race.

On Thursday the whole school attended Mass, to celebrate the Ascension of Jesus into heaven. We walked and sat with our Year 5 buddies, we have developed some lovely relationships and the children are always excited to see each other.

Look at our brilliant performance of the song up and down, we have been learning this song in our music sessions.

Computing: on Purple Mash we learnt how to create a simple algorithm by using the direction keys to move the characters in the right direction and we learnt how to debug their algorithm, if we had made a mistake, we enjoyed these challenges. If your child would like to have another go, I have set it as a 2do. See if they can remember how to find and complete the challenges. Open the 2do, click on the purple menu button top left of screen, click new, click on challenges we only went up to challenge 4 but they can complete all of the challenges if they want to have a go, they get more difficult each level. Next lesson we will complete longer algorithms and creating our own challenges for each other.

Show and Tell

Please can we not bring toys in for show and tell, I do not want them to break or go missing, It has been lovely to hear about all our achievements outside of school. We didn’t get chance to finish our show and tell today so if you have something to share you can bring it in on Monday.

Let’s Celebrate:

Congratualtions to our awardees: a Sadie spider for her determination in Maths and a Lizzie Ladybird for brilliant sentences.

As everyone has had Henry we voted in class if we wanted to continue to send Henry home or to stop. As there are not enough weeks in the year for everyone to take Henry home twice. We discussed that although we will feel disappointed we should be pleased for our friends and if you take Henry home not to show off and to also to be kind and considerate. 26 voted to said continue and 4 said to stop so Henry is going home with this person for always working hard a for being a great role model in our class :).

Reading Challenge: Well done to these children who received their certificates, there are so many that are very close, keep up the hard work :).

Reminders:

• Preparing for the weather: As the weather is improving children are allowed to bring in a sunhat, which can be worn at break times and any sun cream that is brought in must be applied by the child themselves, roll on sun creams are easier to apply. We also ask that no sunglasses are to be brought into the school. Thank you.

•  Please can you try and bring in healthy snacks for your children to eat at break times, we always have fruit in school that the children can have.

• Please can you double check that all items of clothing are labelled.

•  Please bring in spare clothes for your child.

• Please check the home learning section for the homework,

• Please make sure you don’t bring any nuts in for snack or in packed lunches, thank you.

• Please can you ensure that your children do not bring any valuables into school as they can easily go missing.

Have a lovely weekend

Miss Drummond, Miss Johnson and Mrs Carragher

Year 1 Weekly Blog 12.5.23

We have had another fantastic week of fact finding and celebrations.  We have re-enacted the coronations of both Queen Elizabeth and King Charles, we discussed the similarities and differences between these two wonderful events.  We found out that in Saturdays coronation Camilla was crowned as Queen but with Queen Elizabeths coronation Prince Philip wasn’t crowned as King.  This is because traditionally Kings always reign, and Phillip could not out rank the Queen.

 We have learnt more about King Charles and made a timeline to show his life. We are looking forward to learning about Queen Victoria next week and how she changed traditions and inspired new trends such as a white wedding dress and tiered cakes.

Royal Family Challenge

Thank you for all your fact finding at home, the children have enjoyed sharing their research with the class and we have been impressed with their creativity with brilliant videos from BBC Jude, Barnaby, Danny and Jude and so much more! Unfortunately we didn’t get to share everyone’s wonderful work so we will continue on Monday. Well done everyone!

Maths: This week we have continued looking at the numbers 6-10 and made our own human number line, which was great fun. We have described where the numbers sit on the number line, e.g 3 is AFTER 2 but BEFORE 4, 3 is BETWEEN 2 and 4. Please can you make your own number line at home and practice the stem sentences to describe where each number sits.

‘Without mathematics, there`s nothing you can do. Everything around you is mathematics. Everything around you is number’

Shakuntala Devi

English: We are busy writing up the caveman next door using our story maps and actions to help us remember our sentences. We have all enjoyed this book written by Tom Tinn-Disbury about Ogg the caveman and how his friend Penny helps him live in the modern age.

PE: We loved our joint PE lesson with Year 2, they were great role models and helped us develop our underarm and overarm throwing skills. PE will be back to normal next week and will continue to be on Mondays and Fridays.

Library

This afternoon we loved our visit to the library we enjoyed choosing our own books to take home. We will be going again after half term so bring in your library cards if you would like your child to take a book home. If you do not have a library card and would like one, please let me know. There is a party for Elmer at the library on Saturday 27th May 10am-11am.

Let’s Celebrate:

Well done to our awardees: Two Bobby Bee certificates for their enthusiasm in RWI.

 Henry is going home with this person for a super week in school, well done:)

Reading Challenge: Well done to these children who recieved their certificates, there are so many that are very close, keep up the hard work :).

Reminders:

• We are walking to Church on Thursday to attend Mass, please ensure your child has a suitable coat as the weather has been unpredictable recently.

•  Please can you try and bring in healthy snacks for your children to eat at break times, we always have fruit in school that the children can have.

• Please can you double check that all items of clothing are labelled.

•  Please bring in spare clothes for your child.

• Please check the home learning section for the homework,

• Please make sure you don’t bring any nuts in for snack or in packed lunches, thank you.

• Please can you ensure that your children do not bring any valuables into school as they can easily go missing.

Have a lovely weekend

Miss Drummond, Miss Johnson and Mrs Carragher

Year 1 Weekly Blog 5.5.23

We have loved celebrating the coronation in school today, we enjoyed all the different activities in class. At lunchtime we managed to get outside and have a picnic with the whole school and sit with our Year 5 buddies. It was lovely to see everyone dressed up in red, white and blue and as members of the royal family.

Yesterday we started our History topic on the royal family, we discussed what do I know about the royal family? What would I like to find out about the royal family? What is happening at the weekend and who are the members of the royal family? We learnt about the different members of the royal family and made their family tree as a class, then in groups. We were really impressed that the children worked together as a team and could make the family tree.

We are so excited for next week We are going to re-enact the coronation of King Charles and compare this to Queen Elizabeths coronation. We are also going to find out more about the royal family together.

Royal Family Challenge

I have set for your homework a challenge to carry out research and find an interesting fact about the royal family that you can share with the class. You can be as creative as you like and think about how you might display, present or share this interesting fact in class. You might want to build a model that explains your fact, you could draw a picture and write your fact like a fact file, you might even want to make a video like a news report!

Please bring you interesting fact into school by Thursday 11th May (or if it’s ready before that’s fine too!).

Maths: This week we have continued looking at the numbers 6-10 and that they can be composed of 5 and a bit representing them in different ways using a range of resources. We have used the STEM sentences 5 needs____to make___ ___ is made of 5 and___. We have also drawn our own cherry part-part whole diagrams to represent these numbers!

Mrs Hotchkiss came in to teach us a few lessons too, we looked at greater than >, equal to = and less than < please can you ask your child at home what the symbols mean, maybe they can write their own. I think you will be very impressed with how quick the children are with their answers !

English: we have started to orally retell The Cave Man Next Door and create our own story maps ready for us to start writing it up next week.

Computing: we had to order pictures for making rice krispie cakes and jelly, it was very tricky but we did it. We are getting quicker at logging on and off Purple Mash. Please keep practising.

PE: due to the bank holiday we will have PE on Tuesday so we don’t miss out, please come in your PE kit on Tuesday.

RE: We continued our discussion about how Jesus appeared to his disciples in the upper room we imagined that we were the disciples and thought of questions we would ask Jesus. More excellent independent writing, I have enjoyed seeing all the childrens confidence grow and I love how they challenge themselves and how they are are using their phonics knowledge to write without any adult support! We are incredibly proud of Year 1.

Library

On Friday afternoon we will be visiting the library, I have the library cards ready for those who brought the form back and if you would like your child to bring a book home, please bring in your library card.

Let’s Celebrate:

Well done to our awardees: for being a great role model in Year 1 and for super focus in RWI and excellent sentences in English.

Henry is going home with this person for her excellent Maths work, you didn’t give up when you found it difficult and you became more confident by the end of the week, well done:)

Reading Challenge:

Due to a busy day and week we will award the reading challenge winners next week in our assembly.

Reminders:

• Don’t forget to wear your PE kit on Tuesday next week.

• Please can you try and bring in healthy snacks for your children to eat at break times, we always have fruit in school that the children can have.

• Please can you double check that all items of clothing are labelled.

•  Please bring in spare clothes for your child.

• Please check the home learning section for the homework,

• Please make sure you don’t bring any nuts in for snack or in packed lunches, thank you.

• Please can you ensure that your children do not bring any valuables into school as they can easily go missing.

Have a lovely weekend

Miss Drummond, Miss Johnson and Mrs Carragher

Year 1 Weekly Blog 28.4.23

Last week I set the children the challange of trying to pick healthy options for their snack, well done it has been great to see the children eating lots of fruit and vegetables this week.

On Tuesday we retold and sequenced what had happened in the classroom last week. Then this week the time machine came back! But there were no dinosaur footprints, we investigated to work out when the time machine had travelled from and who or what had come out of it. We hot seated the main characters and thought of some fantastic questions and answers. Today we had to think of advice to give to Ogg and in our sentences we had to use and/but/or. We only had a few minutes before lunch so we practised our sentences on whiteboards. I could not believe how amazing they were, they all wrote them independently. I am excited to see their final sentences on Tuesday written up neatly and remembering to use capital letters, fingers spaces and full stops.

Maths: This week Mrs Hotchkiss came to see how hard we have been working in Maths she is really pleased with us. We have been focusing on how the numbers 11-15 can be composed of 10 and a bit, we have used our rekenreks and cherry diagrams to represent these numbers. We have been practising the STEM sentences 10 needs____to make___ ___ is made of 10 and___. See if you can remember the STEM sentences for the different numbers.

Computing: we have been learning about algorithms ( a precise set of instructions used to solve a problem of achieve an objective). To do this we have had to follow instructions to colour pictures in make Lego models and on the iPads paint a bird. At first we all found it very difficult but by the end of the week we were experts. I have set for homework a house for you to colour following the algorithm:

(1) Paint the chimney using cookie dough.

(2) Paint the roof using jellybeans.

(3) Paint the door using chocolate.

(4) Paint the walls using sprinkles.

(5) Leave the windows unpainted.

PE: on Tuesday Mr Swindlehurst is going to come and teach us a lesson, so please come to school in your PE kit.

RE: We discussed that Jesus appeared to his disciples in the upper room and imagined we were Peter and wrote what happened, we drew happy and shocked faces.

Let’s Celebrate:

Well done to our awardees: a Sadie Spider for excellent determination in maths, working well with your partner to find different ways to make the same number and a Lizzie Ladybird for super sentences in English your handwriting keeps getting better and better!

Henry is going home with this person for his excellent Maths work well done :)

Reading Challenge:

Well done to these children, they will be announced in our assembly next Friday, keep it up it would be wonderful if everyone could get their bronze certificate.

Reminders:

• Don’t forget to wear your PE kit on Tuesday next week.

• Please can you try and bring in healthy snacks for your children to eat at break times, we always have fruit in school that the children can have.

•  Please bring in spare clothes for your child.

• Please check the home learning section for the homework,

• Please make sure you don’t bring any nuts in for snack or in packed lunches, thank you.

• Please can you ensure that your children do not bring any valuables into school as they can easily go missing.

  
  
  Have a lovely weekend

Miss Drummond, Miss Johnson and Mrs Carragher

Year 1 Weekly Blog 21.4.23

This week we discovered a time machine in the classroom with some footprints, we discussed what had happened! We thought it could be the evil pea again or maybe a dinosaur. We decided to use the iPad to record to see if we could capture our guest. We found out we had a dinosaur in our classroom! We pretented to be the dinosaur and imagined coming out of the time machine and how we would move around the classroom. Then wrote sentences about what had happened and how we could get the dinosaur back in the time machine so he could go back home.

Maths: We have been focusing on shapes, we had different challenges to complete at the end of the week to give us the opportunity to discuss these shapes and even make their own in a range of ways.

Computing: we have been looking at grouping and sorting shapes and making our own pictograms. Please can you continue to practise logging on and off Purple Mash, the children’s log in cards are in the reading books or if can’t find yours please let me know and I can give you a new card.

Today Steve from CORAM life education came to speak to us about how we can keep our bodies healthy, We met Harold and helped him pack a healthy lunch. We have been set a challenge to bring in healthy food for our snacks. Your child has also brought a leaflet home with more information.

Let’s Celebrate:

Yesterday we were very lucky that Diane from RWI could come in and give us extra training, she worked with these children and they were super stars. They had a RWI session with lots of adults watching! They have all been awarded Cooper Crab certificates for being focused during the full session they were brilliant listeners and learners and Tommy Turtles for being brave and not being distracted by all the adults in the room, well done :).

Henry is going home with this person for a super week well done :)

Reading Challenge:

Well done to these children, they were announced in our assembly today, keep it up it would be wonderful if everyone could get their bronze certificate.

Reminders:

• Please can you try and bring in healthy snacks for your children to eat at break times, we always have fruit in school that the children can have.

•  Please bring in spare clothes for your child.

• Please check the home learning section for the homework,

• Please make sure you don’t bring any nuts in for snack or in packed lunches, thank you.

• Please can you ensure that your children do not bring any valuables into school as they can easily go missing.

  
  
  Have a weekend

Miss Drummond, Miss Johnson and Mrs Carragher

Year 1 Weekly Blog 6.4.23

As a school community we have gathered together each morning, to watch as each year group has re-enacted parts of Jesus’ Easter journey. Each day as part of our RE, we have taken the time to discuss, reflect, ask questions and role play. Then watched the next class to share their interpretation with us. Here is our own retelling of Palm Sunday.

English: We have written innovation drafts of our Peter Rabbit stories, after Easter we are excited to write our stories again in our best handwriting and then self-assess and mark our own work.

Maths: We have continued looking at wholes and parts using cherry diagrams, we have also been introduced to bar charts! To help we used multilink and had to work out the parts by seeing how many multilink fit in the bar chart. We are getting quicker at working out the parts. Please continue to practice at home by asking your child how many more they need up to 5 e.g the whole is 5, I have two what is the other part? then once confident go up to 10.

Science: We were excited to take our cress home and shocked that our apple seed has grown a shoot, we germinated it weeks ago then planted it 2 weeks ago. Our sprouting peas have grown too!

Lenten Promise:

Wow what a successful art exhibition we had yesterday, thank you so much for coming it was lovely to see the excitement on the children’s faces and for them to share their amazing art work with you. I can’t believe how many people we were able to fit into the classroom! We raised over £65 for CAFOD!

We have had a lovely end to our half term, I promised the children if they worked hard this week, we could have a golden day! It was well deserved, we continued with our Easter arts and crafts.

Let’s Celebrate:

Well done to our awardees: A Sadie Spider for your determination with your handwriting and reading and a Lizzie Ladybird for being a reflective learner, listening and focusing during input and applying this especially in your English work.

Henry is going home with this person for super listening especially in English, I am so proud of your focus this week and I know you are too, well done!

Reading Challenge:

Well done to these children, they were announced in our assembly today, keep it up it would be wonderful if everyone could get their bronze certificate.

Easter Egg Competition

There were lots of brilliant entries well done :), there was even a Miss Drummond egg, I feel very honoured thank you :). The class council voted for their winners it was a very difficult choice. Well done to our Year 1 and our Key stage 1 winners.

Reminders:

•  Please bring in spare clothes for your child.

• Please check the home learning section for the homework,

• Please make sure you don’t bring any nuts in for snack or in packed lunches, thank you.

• Please can you ensure that your children do not bring any valuables into school as they can easily go missing.

  
  
  Have a lovely rest and Easter break :)

Miss Drummond, Miss Johnson and Mrs Carragher

Year 1 Weekly Blog 31.3.23

This morning, we had the pleasure of watching the Year 2 worship of Palm Sunday. It was such a lovely start to our school Holy Week, we are looking forward to the rest next week and discussing and reflecting on them as part of our RE.

English: We have started to innovate our Peter Rabbit stories, we have thought of a different character and a different fruit/vegetable. I have been very impressed with their writing and I am excited to read everyones stories and for the children to mark and self-assess their own work.

Maths: We have continued working on our part-part-whole cherry diagrams to find all the possible combinations of 5 and working out 1 more and 1 less of a number. Ask your child at home lots of questions to secure this knowledge. We have loved playing lots of games to help us improve our fluency, such as if I have 3 counters in my open hand how many are in my closed hand. I am going to clap 5 times (clap twice, how many more time do I need to clap) ask you child at home how to play. We really had to think hard about 1 more and 1 less as the questions have been worded in a different way. Have a go at the ones I have set for the homework. We also used the rekenreks to tell stories: first there were 6 birds 1 bird flew away, then there were 5 birds.

History: On Tuesday we found a letter in our classroom and a book, it was from an astronaut, who set us a challenge to work together to build a tower with only tape and paper! It was great fun.The book was about Neil Armstrong, we have loved finding out about him this week and I have enjoyed the children bringing in books to share with the class, we love learning about different people.

We designed our own coin and stamp to commemorate the moon landing, ordered and retold the trip to the moon, made a group Neil Armstrong timeline and discussed reasons for and against going to the moon. We thought it might be nice to see but it could also be dangerous and we might get stuck there!

Music: We composed our own music using a repeated pattern and played it to our name song.

RWI: this week my group loved reading about the whales we decided we should make some posters to help save them, we researched whales and what we could do to help them. We discovered that we need recycle our plastic properly so it doesn’t end up in the ocean.

The other groups loved retelling their stories and acting it out, we love drama!

Lenten Promise:

We enjoyed our arts and craft day, invitations have gone home and our exhibition will be on Wednesday 5th April starting at 3- 3:40, we are very excited for you to come and see our beautiful creations. There will be a donation box in the classroom, to help us raise money for CAFOD.

Let’s Celebrate:

We have two Kiki Chameleons for a very creative week and super sentences in English keep it up :)

Henry is going home with this person for an amazing week in school well done!

Reading Challenge:

I have been blown away with all of the children’s enthusiasm with their reading, it is lovely to see their excitement and they regularly update me with where they are up to on their chart. Try and just sign once per day so we can keep it going, thank you :). We will announce the certificate awardees next week in our Thursday assembly.

Easter Egg Competition

The school council have decided that they would like to have an Easter Egg Competition, to raise money for CAFOD. Decorate a boiled egg in any way you would like, it is £1 to enter the competiton, eggs need to be in by Wednesday 5th April.

Reminders:

• Please bring your lenten boxes back by Wednesday 5th April.

• We break up at 2pm on Thursday 6th April.

•  Please bring in spare clothes for your child.

• Please check the home learning section for the homework,

• Please make sure you don’t bring any nuts in for snack or in packed lunches, thank you.

• Please can you ensure that your children do not bring any valuables into school as they can easily go missing.

  
  
  Have a lovely weekend

Miss Drummond, Miss Johnson and Mrs Carragher

Year 1 Weekly Blog 24.3.23

‘Even the smallest one can change the world’

Beatrix Potter

It was a great start to the week with our assembly, the children worked incredibly hard and I am very proud of them. They we amazing, thank you for all the lovely comments we really appreciated them. Here is our brilliant Hail Mary video.

It was great to chat to the rest of our parents at parents evening and share how much progress everyone is making, how hard they are working and how proud we are of them.

English: we started our own story maps for our own tale of Peter Rabbit the Radish Robber! Mrs Gregan joined us for two of our English lessons this week and was very impressed with our sentence retell and our actions to help us remember our sentences.

Maths: I set the children the challenge of playing the game odd one out. They had to subitise 3 sets and say which was the odd one out and why, e.g. the 5 numicon, five dots on the dice and 2 counters, the counters are the odd ones out because the others show 5. Then they created their own for their partners. We created our own bus stories with the rekenreks, there are 5 people on the bus one person gets on the bus how many are there now.

Science: we have loved our science this week, we went on a signs of spring hunt and did a tree bark rubbing, drew flowers outside and in our books and labelled them. Then we planted cress seeds and pea shoots and used magnifying glasses to help us draw an observational picture of a daffodil with oil pastels. One of our apple seeds germinated. We know it takes years for a tree to grow but we want to investigate and see what will happen to our seed while we are in Year 1.

RE: We heard the story of Jesus and his followers going into Jerusalem and thought about how we would welcome a special visitor to our school. We hot seated Jesus and asked some fantastic questions ‘why did you choose to ride a donkey?’ Xander, ‘because my Mum rode a donkey to the stable’ Isla, ‘Is it fun being Jesus?’ Heidi ‘yes beacuse people like me and I help people’ Daniel.

We all attended mass this week with our Year 5 partners and Year 2 as part of our Lenten journey. It was wonderful to see the older children look after Year 1 they all sat and listened beautifully.

Library: I will give the forms out next week (sorry I forgot to hand them out) if you would like your child to have a library card, fill in the form and return to school. I will take them to the library, then when we go after Easter they will be ready and children with libaray cards can pick a book to take home.

Let’s Celebrate:

Well done to our certificate holders this week:

All of year 1 for: an amazing assembly, we were focused during practise. Creative with our Mum portraits, poems and songs and curious to learn how to sign the Hail Mary. We were brave performing to an audience.  We all worked well together and were supportive of each other. We were determined to remember our lines and when to come on and off the stage. We were all enthusiastic with our performance and reflected to help make improvements.

I am so proud of you all :).

Cooper Crab: for being very focused this week on the carpet and writing brilliant sentneces in English.

Kiki Chameleon: for your detailed flower drawings and labelling all the parts of the flower in science.

Henry is going home with this person for her hard work in RWI well done.

Well done to our PE superstars, for their excellent Space routine.

Reading Challenge:

I have been blown away with all of the children’s enthusiasm with their reading, it is lovely to see their excitement and they regularly update me with where they are up to on their chart.

I can’t believe we have even more bronze certificate awardees this week well done! This weeks and last weeks awardees were announced during assembly, they were all very proud to share their acheivement with the whole school.

Lenten Promise:

As a class we voted to have a craft day at school this will be on Friday 31st March, we will be making a range of crafts and Easter cards for the residents at Stella Matutina and the parishioners. To help raise money for CAFOD we are going to sell tickets for you to come and see our exhitbition of crafts in school. Invitations with the date of the exhibtion will be going out next week.

Easter Egg Competition

The school council have decided that they would like to have an Easter Egg Competition, to raise money for CAFOD. Decorate a boiled egg in any way you would like, it is £1 to enter the competiton, eggs need to be in by Wednesday 5th April.

Reminders:

•  Please bring in spare clothes for your child.

• Please check the home learning section for the homework,

• Please make sure you don’t bring any nuts in for snack or in packed lunches, thank you.

• Please can you ensure that your children do not bring any valuables into school as they can easily go missing.

  
  
  Have a lovely weekend

Miss Drummond, Miss Johnson and Mrs Carragher

Year 1 Weekly Blog 17.3.23

‘There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they will take you’

Beatrix Potter

It has been lovely to come back to school this week and find out everything the children have been up to whilst I have been away. I really missed them and it was nice to hear about how excited they were when they knew I was coming back. A big thank you to Miss Lavelle, Miss Johnson, Mrs Carragher, Mrs Davis and Miss Forster who have been very busy helping the children with their work.

We have had such a busy week again with lots going on. It was great to chat to some of our parents at parents evening and share how much progress everyone is making and how hard they are working and how proud we are of them.

This week we have been practising our assembly, I have been very impressed with them, they have remembered their lines, songs and worked hard. We are very excited to share our hard work with you on Tuesday.

English: we have continued our wonderful work on Beatrix Potter, we read Peter Rabbit and hot seated him, the children loved thinking of questions to ask him.

Maths: We have continued looking at wholes and parts in maths and represented them by using a part-part-whole cherry diagram. We manipulated 6 multilink from whole to parts, to find all the different ways we could make 6 with two parts. We even drew our own cherry diagrams!

Music: We used the xylophones to play the name song, we had so much fun, we love our music lessons.

We loved our trip to the library, we met Stefan and he read Pirate Pete’s Talk like a Pirate, Miss Forster, Mrs Davis, Mrs Carragher and I had our own lines! Unfortunately the children decided we had to walk the plank, they thought this was hilarious. They had some brilliant pirate voices so we decided they could stay on the ship :). Although a few children wanted to walk the plank so they did at home time. We also had time to listen to the Snail and the Whale. The children were a credit to the school and so well behaved we have been invited back to the library. I am sending home a slip for you to fill in and attaching a copy on the blog for you to complete so your child can have their own library card. So next time we go they can choose a book to take home. If you already have a library card you can bring it in to school.

I have attached two versions, a PDF and word document, you can only open the word document on a computer or laptop.

D&T: the children loved their design and technology lesson today, Miss Neves has sent home an envelope for the children to do at home, cut out the person and attach the arms with the split pins enjoy.

Let’s Celebrate:

Well done to our certificate holders this week:

Lizzie Ladybird for working hard in Maths and listening well on the carpet.

Sadie Spider for being focused during our practise and using lovely expression when speaking.

Well done to these two children, Henry went home with this person last week for a super week in school, he is thinking about how he can make good choices and this is being demonstrated in class.

Henry is going home with this person this week, for a brilliant week! I have been really impressed with your independent work and your organisation during our assembly practise you know your lines and when you need to be on the stage and have been supportive to your friends.

Reading Challenge:

I have been blown away with all of the children’s enthusiasm with their reading, it is lovely to see their excitement and they regularly update me with where they are up to on their chart.

I can’t believe we already have bronze certificate awardees well done .

Lenten Promise:

As a class we voted to have a craft day at school this will be on Friday 31st March, we will be making a range of crafts and Easter cards for the residents at Stella Matutina and the parishioners. To help raise money for CAFOD we are going to sell tickets for you to come and see our exhitbition in school. I will let you know the date of the exhibtion ASAP.

Cake Sale:

On Monday Year 6 are having a cake sale for their Lenten promise to help raise money for CAFOD, All cakes will be sold for 50p. If your child would like to buy a cake please bring money in. Thank you.

Easter Egg Competition

The school council have decided that they would like to have an Easter Egg Competition, to raise money for CAFOD. Decorate a boiled egg in any way you would like, it is £1 to enter the competiton, eggs need to be in by Wednesday 5th April.

Reminders:

• Don’t forget it’s the second parents evening on Wednesday 22nd March.

•  Please bring in spare clothes for your child.

• Please check the home learning section for the homework,

• Please make sure you don’t bring any nuts in for snack or in packed lunches, thank you.

• Please can you ensure that your children do not bring any valuables into school as they can easily go missing.

  
  
  Have a lovely weekend

Miss Drummond, Miss Johnson and Mrs Carragher

Year 1 Weekly Blog 10.3.23

What another busy week! The children have worked very hard and have adapted well to the changes this week. I am looking forward to coming back next week, I have missed them :).

In science we were looking for signs of Spring, however we have had very strange weather this week as it normally snows in Winter not Spring! Look at Mrs Gregan’s newsletter to see the video of the children playing in the snow today during break, they had so much fun. We learnt about deciduous and evergreen trees and discovered our class tree is a deciduous tree because it loses it leaves in Autumn and Winter. We drew and labelled our own trees in our books.

Newsletter Blog

English: We researched Beatrix Potter in groups, using the iPads and we had to read some information about her. We then used this information to make a fact file about her. We are starting to read her the tale of Peter Rabbit books and are excited to retell and rewrite them.

Maths: We have continued looking at wholes and parts in maths and represented them by using a part-part-whole cherry diagram. We have manipulated different objects from whole to parts, to help the children recognise that the whole and the two parts are the same quantity.

The children loved the origami workshop on Wednesday.

Trip to the Library:

On Thursday 16th March, we are going to visit St Annes library, we are very excited. We will be walking there so please ensure your children comes into school with a suitable coat.

Let’s Celebrate:

Well done to Patrick for being focused in Phonics and Blythe for her enthusiasm with her reading. Keep up the hard work.

Assembly:

Unfortunately due myself being ill this week, we have postponed our assembly to Tuesday 21st March. There will be two showings of the assembly: 9.10am and 9.35am. This gives myself and the children chance to enjoy putting it together and takes the pressure off. We will be practising next week and are excited to be performing to everyone again :). Thank you for your understanding.

Reminders:

• Please book your parents evening slots, if you haven’t already (online) Wednesday 15th March and Wednesday 22rd March, from 2.00pm-5.30pm - book here

•  Please bring in spare clothes for your child.

• Please check the home learning section for the homework,

• Please make sure you don’t bring any nuts in for snack or in packed lunches, thank you.

• Please can you ensure that your children do not bring any valuables into school as they can easily go missing.

  
  
  Have a lovely weekend

Miss Drummond, Miss Johnson and Mrs Carragher

Year 1 Weekly Blog 3.3.23

It was lovely to see so many grown ups on Wednesday for our book look, the children loved looking through their books and felt proud to share their hard work with you.

On Monday we discovered a red door in our classroom, we made predictions about what we thought might be behind the door. Over the week we found out it was the red door from the book: The Journey by Aaron Becker. The whole school has had this book to use in English this week.

We looked at the first page and discussed what we coud see and how we thought the little girl (we named her Rose) was feeling.We created our own worlds behind our own red doors and wrote what our world was called, who we would bring and what we would take with us. I was very impressed with the children’s indepedent writing. We then worked in groups we each had a different picture, wrote what we could see and thought of our own sentence for the picture to create our own story.

We loved sharing our stories with the Year 5 children yesterday afternoon, everyones outfits were amazing! We also enjoyed some world book day activities too!

We had some very tricky challenges in Maths, we all had a piece of paper and we had to cut it in 4 parts with 1 part being bigger than the other 3. We had a few misconceptions as some of us were counting as we cut but forgot about the other part in our hand so we ended up with 5 or more parts, but with lots of practise we got there.

We have also been looking at a whole group using egg boxes and other objects, we had to say if it was whole or not whole. We were all very good at this even when I filled the containers with different objects and used different colours, we could see it was whole because there were no spaces. ‘This is a whole group of…. because I have all of them none of them are missing’

In RHE we discussed some good secrets and bad secrets and helped Susie, we decided on things that we could keep to ourselves such as a surprise birthday card and things we should tell an adult such as another child taking our snack and saying that we shouldn’t tell anyone. We were all

Let’s Celebrate:

Well done to our awardees for being very creative thinking of lots of different actions for our poem and song, and for your enthusiasm with your reading, you have read lots this week and have ben excitied to change your books.

Henry is going home with this person for a brilliant week at school.

Well done to our PE superstars for excellent teamwork :).

Assembly:

On Tuesday 14th March it is our class assembly at 9:10, we will be practsing next week and are excited to be performing to everyone again :).

Reminders:

• Please book your parents evening slots, there is more information on Mrs Gregan’s newsletter.

•  Please bring in spare clothes for your child, especially now the weather is wet. So they can get changed if they fall over and have wet clothes.

• Please check the home learning section for the homework,

• Please make sure you don’t bring any nuts in for snack or in packed lunches, thank you.

• Please can you ensure that your children do not bring any valuables into school as they can easily go missing.

  
  
  Have a lovely weekend

Miss Drummond, Miss Johnson and Mrs Carragher

Year 1 Weekly Blog 24.2.23

First of all I would like to say a huge thank for those who came to our Phonics stay and play, the children loved showing you around the classroom and they enjoyed playing all the different phonics activites with you. I understand it can be difficult to leave work during the day so if you would like more information or have any questions please send me an email.

I have uploaded the PowerPoint and all the activities in the help your child at home area. Click underneath to go straight there.

Help your child – Year 1

In Maths we have been looking at different ways to make 6 and wholes and parts, the children had playdough and had to listen to my specific instructions:

• cut your playdough so you have two parts that are different sizes.

• cut your playdough so you have two parts that are about the same size.

• how can you cut your playdough to give you the biggest possible part? what do you notice? we found out we had one large part and one small part.

• if we put our playdough together will it be whole? We combined the parts to make a whole.

• I then asked a challenge question can you cut your playdough so one part is bigger than the whole? We realised that this was impossible!

On Wednesday Father Peter came to school for our Ash Wednesday Mass, we also exchanged out Lenten boxes with Year 5. The boxes looked amazing it was lovely how you had thought about your partners likes and created a box specially for them.

In Science we have started looking at seeds and plants, we found out about the different fruit and vegetables that can be grown in our gardens. We tasted apples and pears, cut an apple in half and drew it. Our observational drawings were brilliant, we talked about all the details and the colours we needed to use.We were inspired and wanted to know if we could grow an apple tree from the apple seeds, so we researched it. We found out you can but it takes years! You have to first germinate the seeds by putting them in a tub with damp paper towels then leave them in the fridge for three weeks. So we thought we would conduct an experiment to see what would happen to our seeds.

We went on a flower hunt outside and all took our own photos on the iPad of the flowers we found, there were crocuses, daffodils, daisies and snowdrops.

Let’s Celebrate:

Well done to our awardees for great improvement with her reading and super listening this week and for working hard in RWI you always join in and stay focused.

Henry is going home with this person for her brilliant artwork and fantastic sentences :).

Well done to our PE superstars for excellent teamwork :).

It was lovely to go the Lytham Heritage Centre to view our amazing artwork and see two of our children recieve their highly commended awards. Well done :)

Important Dates:

Year 1 Coffee Afternoon and Book Look

On Wednesday 1st March at 2:20-3:20 you are invited to come into school to have a look at your children’s books, they will pick their books and work that they are proud of and want to share with you.

Assembly:

On Tuesday 14th March it is our class assembly at 9:10, we will be practsing next week and are excited to be performing to everyone again :).

Reminders:

• Please book your parents evening slots, there is more information on Mrs Gregan’s newsletter.

•  Please bring in spare clothes for your child, especially now the weather is wet. So they can get changed if they fall over and have wet clothes.

• Please check the home learning section for the homework,

• Please make sure you don’t bring any nuts in for snack or in packed lunches, thank you.

• Please can you ensure that your children do not bring any valuables into school as they can easily go missing.

  
  
  Have a lovely weekend

Miss Drummond, Miss Johnson and Mrs Carragher

Year 1 Weekly Blog 10.2.23

We love our music lessons with Miss Lavelle, on Monday we had to keep to the beat to the sparkle song, we made our own orchestra and had to take it in turns to play our instruments.

On Tuesday it was Online Safety Day we had a lovely day filled with lots of different activities. We made our own online safety posters, listen to the story of Hanni and the Magic window and created our own windows and learnt this online safety song to help us remember how to stay safe online.

On Wednesday we went to church to see Father Peter and learn about Baptisms and look at the features of a church. We asked him some questions and found out lots of information. We enjoyed our Baptism of baby Elizabeth, we even had parents and God parents to help with the ceremony. We celebrated her being welcomed into God’s family by having a party today, she even had her own cake! It was lovely to see and discuss our own Baptisms, thank you for completing the homework.

We loved looking at our amazing display in the worship area and finding all of our work, we felt proud to see it displayed for the whole school to see.

We orally retold and wrote the story of Where the Wild Things Are in English. We are looking forward to our next topic Peter Rabbit after half term.

 Today we went into Year 5 to meet our Lenten box buddy’s, your child will have a slip of paper with their buddy’s name and their interests to help you with your decorations. I am excited to see your Lenten Boxes, please bring these in during the first week back to school.

Let’s Celebrate:

Well done to our awardees for super sentence writing in English and for using lots of expression when reading in phonics.

Henry is going home with this person for a super week well done :).

Well done to Sasha who has won the highly commended prize for her ‘The Beach’ artwork, I am looking forward to seeing you recieve your prize at the Lytham Heritage Centre.

Phonics Stay and Play

We are delighted to invite grown ups to our Phonics stay and play. These will take place on Tuesday 21st February and Thursday 23rd February at 9:15-10:15.

Please click on the link below to find your date.

Reminders:

•  Please bring in spare clothes for your child, especially now the weather is wet. So they can get changed if they fall over and have wet clothes.

• Please check the home learning section for the homework,

• Please make sure you don’t bring any nuts in for snack or in packed lunches, thank you.

  
  
  Have a lovely half term

Miss Drummond, Miss Johnson and Mrs Carragher

Year 1 Weekly Blog 3.2.23

On Tuesday it was Mental Health Day we had a lovely day filled with lots of different activities.

We discussed the importance of looking after our minds and bodies, by finding out how we can stay healthy and we helped Rodd learn about getting enough sleep if we don’t, we can become forgetful and it can affect our mood.

 First we drew something that made us happy, something we were good at and something we enjoyed. Then we loved our yoga session with Little Yogis. We read Ruby’s worries and created our own, thinking about things that made us feel worried and what we can do to help us feel better.

 We thought of things we were grateful for, said what had gone well for us on Tuesday. Went on a mindfulness walk around the playground with a partner, where we had a chat and discussed our surroundings. We made collage rainbows to remind us to stay calm and take a deep breath, drew our happy place, created and coloured in our own colour monster, made feeling faces with playdough and on the computers, listened to music, danced before lunch. Worked together to pass a spoon with water on to each other and finally at home time listened to ‘be the pond’ the fish are our feelings if we remember to be the pond and not the fish they can swim away. The children were told their secret friend, they made sure they were extra kind and we guessed who they were today.

 The second group finally went on our Geography school trip, we had to look for human and physical features around St Annes, and they were brilliant. We even enjoyed a few games on the beach before coming back to school.

We have been busy in Maths and English continuing our more than, equal to and less than symbols and we started to look at what whole meant ready for next week. We have also started to partition numbers up to 7 practically and writing our answers down in a part part whole model. We made up our own actions to retell ‘Where the Wild things are’ and wrote the begining of the story. We also started to mark and edit our own work! Focusing on full stops, finger spaces and capital letters, we did this in pairs and decided if we had met the objectives and what our next steps would be when we finish our story next week.

We loved sharing our Purple Mash homework in class and have enjoyed our computing lessons, please practise logging on and off independently as much as possible so we can spend more time on our lesson and learn new skills.

Let’s Celebrate:

Well done to our awardees for super sentence writing in English and for remembering their chatty friends in phonics.

Henry is going home with this person for a super week well done :).

Reminders:

•  Please bring in spare clothes for your child, especially now the weather is wet. So they can get changed if they fall over and have wet clothes.

• Please check the home learning section for the homework,

• Please make sure you don’t bring any nuts in for snack or in packed lunches, thank you.

• Don’t forget Mrs Gregan’s online safety competition, look on the homework blog for more information.

  
  
  
  Have a lovely weekend

Miss Drummond, Miss Johnson and Mrs Carragher

Year 1 Weekly Blog 27.1.23

We have started our computing topic this week, please can you practise to log on and off at home and complete the homework I have set on purple mash. This will ensure we can teach the skills and have more time to complete the activities. Look at our amazing ginger bread men pictures we have created.

To help us think of some adjectives for our writing we went outside and pretended we were in the deep dark woods. Every time the tambourine rang we froze then someone would tell me what they could see, hear or feel. This gave us lots of great ideas and was reflected in our writing.

We have continued looking at the less than, equal to and more than symbols in Maths and we are all working hard on this. We have subitised the numbers 5–9 and represented them on a rekenrek and identified different ways of seeing parts within a whole. Using the stem sentence_____ is the whole; _____ is a part and _____ is a part and _____ can split into _____ and _____ ; _____ and _____ combine to make _____ . I was very impressed!

Let’s Celebrate:

Well done to our awardees for super sentence writing in English and self assessing their work and using a purple pencil to fix it.

Henry is going home with this person for a super week well done :).

Reminders:

•  Please bring in spare clothes for your child, especially now the weather is wet. So they can get changed if they fall over and have wet clothes.

• Please check the home learning section for the homework, It is really important that you are reading reguarly at home so your child can make good progress with their reading especially as they will have their Phonics screening in June.

• Please make sure you don’t bring any nuts in for snack or in packed lunches, thank you.

• School Trip, our second half of the children will be going on their Geography school trip on Friday 3rd Feburary. Please wear school uniform and make sure you bring appropriate clothes and shoes for our walk to the beach.

  
  Have a lovely weekend

Miss Drummond, Miss Johnson and Mrs Carragher

Year 1 Weekly Blog 20.1.23

We have had another super science week, this week! We continued discussing different materials and their properties and groups some objects together by their properties. Then the Three Little Pigs left us a letter asking for our help! They needed to go to the shops but it was raining so we decided they needed an umbrella. We had to test different materials to see which would be the most suitable then we designed an umbrella for them. To make it a fair test we used a pipette to drop 6 drops of water on each material to see what would happen. The plastic bag was the most suitable because it is waterproof and strong. We have started our Winter Weather Chart and discussed signs of Winter and observed our class tree we discovered our tree is a deciduous tree because it loses its leaves.

We created our own Monster and made a poster in English writing descriptive sentences. We started to look at the book Where the Wild Things are, before we started reading we looked at one page and thought of different questions we could ask. We learnt a new saying to help us remember to use capital letters, finger spaces, stay on the line and use a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark. Ask your child to show you.

We have continued looking at the less than, equal to and more than symbols in Maths and we are all working hard on this. We discovered that you can make even numbers with two even numbers or two odd numbers, but to make a odd number they could only be made with one even number and one odd number!

In RE we discussed the special occasion of Mary and Joseph taking Jesus to the temple as a baby and we learnt about Simeon and how he knew that this baby was God’s special gift to everyone. We acted out the story. We have also been thinking about how we can show the Light of Jesus’ Love in our class and why Jesus is the Light of the World.

Let’s Celebrate:

Well done to Ruth for being such a good role model in class and Patrick for supporting his partner during RWI by using his story voice and encouraging his partner to do the same.

We all learnt a gymnastics routine, we walked to the mat, did a pencil roll, then a star jump and caterpillar walked back. These PE superstars worked well with their partners and listened to the instructions well done.

Henry is going home with this person for working hard on their reading they have not given up even when they have found it challenging, well done.

Reminders:

•  Please bring in spare clothes for your child, especially now the weather is wet. So they can get changed if they fall over and have wet clothes.

• Please check the home learning section for the homework, It is really important that you are reading reguarly at home so your child can make good progress with their reading especially as they will have their Phonics screening in June.

• Please make sure you don’t bring any nuts in for snack or in packed lunches, thank you.

• School Trip, our second half of the children will be going on their Geography school trip on Friday 3rd Feburary.

  
  Have a lovely weekend

Miss Drummond, Miss Johnson and Mrs Carragher

Year 1 Weekly Blog 13.1.22

We had a super science week, this week! On Tuesday we started by reading and acting out the Three Little Pigs. Then we had the challenge of making our own houses in groups, each table had a different material: straws, paper, hay, lolly sticks and bricks. We predicted that the bricks would be the most suitable for the house because they are ‘strong and can stand up on each other’. We thought that they hay would be the most difficult because it is hard to stand up. After we made our houses the big bad wolf tried to blow them down and we helped too! The bricks were very strong, but they hay group managed to compact their hay and put lots of tape around it, although at the start they found it very difficult to stand up. We thought that if they hay went outside it would blow everywhere.

Then we went on a material hunt to find objects made from: glass, metal, wood and plastic, we discussed their properties and used the labels to help us decide.

In English we have started writing our sentences independently, Miss Drummond was very impressed. We are applying our phonics knowledge and remembering how to spell our tricky words. We answered questions about Owl or Snake and started to make our wanted poster for the Gruffalo.

We have started to look at the more than, equal to and less than symbols practically making two towers and using our lolly sticks to make the symbols. We have continued comparing different amounts and looking at the number 9. Ask your child if they can tell you all the different ways to make 9.

Let’s Celebrate:

Well done to our certificate awardees for foucing on their letter formations and not giving up when they find it difficult and for super writing in English.

We had five PE superstars today, we focused on our bear walk and crab walk, all the children worked really hard with their partners, well done.

Henry is going home with this person for working hard on their reading they have not given up even when they have found it challenging, well done.

Reminders:

•  Please bring in spare clothes for your child, especially now the weather is wet. So they can get changed if they fall over and have wet clothes.

• Please check the home learning section for the homework, It is really important that you are reading reguarly at home so your child can make good progress with their reading especially as they will have their Phonics screening in June.

• Please make sure you don’t bring any nuts in for snack or in packed lunches, thank you.

• Medical cream/lip balm: some children have been sharing lip barm at playtime and lunchtime, so lots of germs are being spread around the class. Please remind your child that their lipbarm is only for them and they are considered medical in school. So they need to hand them in to me and they can applied when needed. They can either stay in school or be handed back at the end of the day.

  Have a lovely weekend

Miss Drummond, Miss Johnson and Mrs Carragher

Year 1 Weekly Blog 6.1.22

What a great start to the week, although we have only been in for three days we have been very busy.

In Maths we have looked at how to make 7 in different ways.

Our English topic is monsters, we read the Gruffalo and retold the story outside. We then had some special visitors in Class and we asked them lots of questions.

We disscussed that there are lots of different families, and talked about our own in RE, we drew our families who live with us and our other families members.

We had a lovely Mass service today. The three Kings arrived to see baby Jesus with their gifts and Logan was one of the kings he was amazing he had the special job of giving his gift to baby Jesus.

Let’s Celebrate:

Henry is going home with this person for super handwriting well done :).

Reminders:

•  Please bring in spare clothes for your child, especially now the weather is wet. So they can get changed if they fall over and have wet clothes.

• Please check the home learning section for the homework, It is really important that you are reading reguarly at home so your child can make good progress with their reading especially as they will have their Phonics screening in June.

• Please make sure you don’t bring any nuts in for snack or in packed lunches, thank you.

Have a lovely weekend

Miss Drummond and Miss Johnson