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Ducks & Geese (Year 1)
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Teachers: Mrs Partridge, Miss Short, Mrs Rowsell
Teaching Assistants: Miss Jones, Mrs Mulcahy, Mrs Perryman
Spring Term 2
We were very lucky to have some tennis coaches working with us in PE this half term. The children thoroughly enjoyed the games and activities they took part in to develop their ball skills. We had a visit from the Devon Youth Jazz Orchestra, who played in an Assembly which was really inspiring! A school Readathon raised money for the PTFA to buy books for the school library. For World Book Day we focussed on ‘Handa’s Surprise’ – a story set in Africa. As part of our Science and linked to this book we tasted different fruits and learnt about our senses of touch, smell, taste and sight.
A short clip called ‘Zahra’ from The Literacy Shed online provided a wonderful stimulus for story writing for the children. The children were really interested and enthusiastic about their learning. Following this we moved onto a new story called ‘The Runaway Chapatti’ which is a story set in India. It has many similarities with the traditional Tale ‘The Gingerbread Man’. To start this learning we had a lovely time in the Woodland Area making chapatis and rangoli patterns.
In Maths the children have been learning to recognise and name coins and notes. They have learnt about the value of the coins and notes and used coins to make amounts of money to 20p. After this we moved onto addition and subtraction and really securing those number facts.
As Easter drew closer we talked about and acted out the events of Holy Week. The children used their amazing writing skills to write the story of Easter. We looked round the school grounds for signs of Spring and thought and talked about the about the value of Hope and the hope that Easter brings for Christians. We have learnt about the Symbolism of Easter eggs for Christians and other Easter symbols as well as learning about what Christians believe Jesus taught about how people should live their lives. At the end of term we had our Termly Learning Conferences, when the children had the opportunity to share their work with parents and carers and celebrate their achievements.
We had a wonderful, meaningful Easter Service, with acting, singing and dancing! It was a joyous occasion. On the last day we had our ‘Big Spring Sing’ and a surprise performance of ‘Shine’, by the staff - we all enjoyed it! What a wonderful way to end the term as a school singing together in the hall! We are looking forward to the Summer Term.
Spring Term 1
The Spring Term has been very busy! We started with our Learning Journey ‘Stories from Around the World’. We learnt a poem called ‘The Christmas Star’ about when the Wise Men visited the baby Jesus. A visit from a ‘Pop up Planetarium’ was a great way to learn about the stars and planets in space. It was exciting to be in darkness and then to see the ‘stars’ appear above us. We found out about the constellations and their names as well as about the moon, the sun and the seasons. It was a great experience.
We learnt to choose rhyming words to create a rhyming string and rhyming couplets. We collected amazing describing words to describe Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ painting. We read a lovely book about Katy and her adventure at the art gallery. We found some great descriptive language in the book. The children then wrote their own poetic sentences describing the painting – putting ‘beautiful words in the best order’.
In RE we thought about the sort of people we think could change the world then learnt about the people Jesus chose to help him on his mission as part of our learning about ‘What is the Good News Jesus Brings?’
We continued our Stories from Around the World by reading some wonderful poems from a book called ‘Tell Me a Dragon’, looking at the beautiful words the poet had chosen to describe the dragons. After that we moved on to learn a story called ‘George and the Dragon’.
In Maths we began learning about Multiplicative Reasoning. The children are now able to say how many groups there are, how many objects are in each group and how many there are altogether.
2 + 2 + 2 + 2 = 8
There are 4 groups of 2 smarties. There are 8 smarties altogether. We have introduced arrays which are a very useful image for the children as they progress in their understanding of multiplication.
The first half of the Spring Term is over already! The children have worked hard and learnt so much! They have been working on handwriting and the begun joining some digraphs, they have written some great descriptions of dragons, some brilliant stories and begun to learn about multiplication and division. We are looking forward to seeing them continue to make great progress next term.
Autumn Term 2
Some highlights of our first Half Term in Year one have been our Harvest Assembly when we shared some of our learning with the whole school and sang to them and a trip to the allotments with Mrs Leach where we picked lots of fruits and vegetables. These are some quotes from the children: ‘I picked some potatoes out of the ground.’ ‘We saw some peas in pods and if you put them in the window sill and dry them out and plant them more beans grow up and if you keep doing that more and more beans will come.’ ‘They have to pick out the weeds. They hoe them out.’ The children picked rhubarb, blackberries, carrots, runner beans, orange raspberries, tomatoes and pumpkins. They also enjoyed seeing the chickens.
We have enjoyed creating pastel pictures of fruits and vegetables and learning harvest songs. In RE we have been learning about the Christian Creation Story and in PE we created a Creation Dance to ‘Morning’ from Peer Gynt by Grieg. Each class performed their piece to the other.
Autumn 2
After Half Term we began our Topic ‘How do toys change over time?’ with a Teddy Bears Picnic. We wrote invitations for our bears. When we brought them to school we introduced them to our friends, sang with them, danced with them, drew them and wrote about them! We then enjoyed a picnic with them. Miss Short’s Grandma came in to see us and told us all about growing up on a farm. She had a toy pram and pushed her cat around in it! She explained how they used everyday objects to play with and create their own imaginative play with. We learnt to play Jacks and Our PSHE focus has been on Celebrating Differences and we have been learning about Why Christmas is Important to Christians. We worked really hard on our Nativity Play ‘The Sleepy Shepherd and sang beautifully! The end of the term was very busy with our Christmas Lunch, a Christmas Party and Christmas Service in Church. We had a wonderful Christmas Sing in the hall in Assembly on the last day of term and some of the children enjoyed watching The Nutcracker Ballet as a lovely way to end our term and Topic about Toys!
We are looking forward to more exciting learning in the Spring!
Autumn 2018
We have started our first full week in Year 1! Settling into Year One includes getting to know our new teachers, TAs and other adults that help us at school, learning the routines in Year One, learning about the ‘Trackers’ (the learning we do independently though the week) and the children have already enjoyed playtimes on the school field and the play equipment in the beautiful sunshine.
We have Geese Class with Miss Short and Ducks class with Mrs Partridge (Monday, Tuesday and Friday) and Mrs Rowsell(Wednesday, Thursday and Friday).
Our wonderful TAs, Miss Jones, Mrs Perryman (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday) and Mrs M (Thursday and Friday) work across the year group.
We have just started our topic ‘What does a farmer do?’ We have thought of lots of questions that we would like to find the answers to. Some of the learning experiences we are looking forward to are - a visit to a farm, a visit from some ducks and geese and a trip to the allotments!
On Tuesday 25th September we had a wonderful visit to West Town Farm. The Geese spent the morning there and the Ducks’ visit was in the afternoon. The sun shone and it was a glorious day!
On arrival the children had the chance to explore the garden including the tractor, chickens and giant wooden chair. After this there was a visit to a Barley field to ‘harvest’ some grain which Kevin, our visit leader, ground to make some flour. We then made our way to the pumpkin field where the children found squashes of different sizes, weight and colour!
A visit to the orchard to pick some apples was followed by washing and chopping the apples which were then used to make apples juice for us all to drink. It was delicious!
When the Ducks arrived for the afternoon they saw two naughty calves that had escaped from their enclosure safely herded back to their mums!
The children have enjoyed writing and drawing about what they learnt on their visit and next week we will be writing thank you letters to Kevin.
Our new learning in Literacy will be about non-fiction texts and later we will be writing Harvest Prayers.
In Maths we will beginning our learning about ‘additive reasoning’.
On Thursday 27th September we had a lovely service at St Michael's church. The children sang beautifully and enjoyed listening to and watching the Year 6 children lead parts of the service.
It has been a busy week!
