Have a wonderful half term Turtle class! Remember to stay safe and have lots of fun! We will see you in a week's time! :)

Maths

In maths, we did lots of counting in 10s. Keep practising this counting at home and remember to count forwards and backwards! We used tens pieces of Numicon to show our counting in tens as you can see below. 

Geography

This week, we thought about ports, seasides, cities and National parks. The children looked at photos of these places from across the United Kingdom and we practised identifying them! Here are some of the places we looked at! How lucky are we to live in such an incredible place?!

Writing

This week, the children wrote their final piece at the end of their writing learning journey - a letter from Sophie to a friend. The children did so well. They used lots of wonderful vocabulary, they thought carefully about their punctuation and some children experimented with exclamation marks that we’d seen in our reading. They used time words, the conjunction ‘and’ and even some contractions! You should all be very proud of yourselves Turtles 🌟👍🏻

R.E

This week, we started our new R.E topic by looking at candles burning and discussing how this light made us feel. Here are the children’s initial thoughts in a class mind map.

English

On Friday, the children learnt about contractions. They learnt about what they are and how they are made. To practise making a contraction, the children worked in groups to cut down two words and add the apostrophe where the missing letter/s once was/were. They then added these words to the sentences they were given, thinking carefully about the meaning of the contraction.

Geography

This week in Geography, the children learnt to recognise the flowers and flags of the 4 counties of the UK. We played ‘4 corners’ in the hall to help us consolidate our learning and we all had lots of fun! 

English

In writing this week, we were sentence building! Using two different coloured clauses and an ‘and’ conjunction card, the children worked in small groups to build compound sentences. They worked together well and carefully matched the cards to ensure that the sentence made sense. They then wrote their own compound sentences. Well done Turtles! 

Art

In art this week, we put together our final pieces using the painting, printing and rubbings we had produced over the previous weeks. The children cut different sized circles out of their pages and then glued them onto black sugar paper to create a solar system inspired by Kandinsky’s painting ‘Circles’. They did such a great job!

Music

In our final music lesson of this half term, the children made their own icy cold sounding piece of music, using a variety of metal sounding instruments. We composed a score using symbols and all the children learnt when when to play their instrument and when to stop, following the score. 

Maths

We counted in 2’s and matched numbers to images of pairs of boots in order to count how many boots there were in each picture. We also counted how many shoes were in our class room, Mr Dickinson walked in so we had to add his to our total, 64 shoes is a lot of shoes!

English

Continuing with our book ‘The Tiger who came to tea’ by Judith Kerr, we looked at using adjectives to describe all the food the tiger ate. 

Science

It was investigation time this week in science. The three littlest pigs had written a letter to Turtles class asking them to investigate which material was the most absorbent. When the big bad wolf had landed in the pot after climbing down the chimney, he had made lots of water spill on the floor. The eldest pig didn’t like his house being messy so wanted to know how to best clear up the water. 

Maths

It was fractions this week. We learnt about halves and quarters and recognise them when objects are cut or divided up. Mrs BV kept wanting the bigger part, especially when cake was involved, but Turtles class kept telling her each part had to be equal. 

English

We started our nee Learning Journey this week by reading ‘The Tiger that came to tea’ by Judith Kerr. The children took on the roles or Sophie and her Mum and a journalist, who interviewed them about their fascinating visitor. 

Maths

We have been learning all about time this week in Maths. Looking at analogue and digital clocks and reading the times of o’clock and half past. We also counted how many jumps we could do in 1 minute (All the children beat Mrs Bickley-Vaile) and how many laps of the playground we could do in 3 minutes. 

English

In English this week we listened carefully to our story ‘Peace at Last’ and collected all the sounds we could hear to create a word bank of noisy words. We then thought about all the places Daddy Bear tried to sleep and used adjectives to describe them. All of this work lead to the children writing their own fantastic noisy poems. 

Art

This week in art, we were using oil pastels to make rubbings using different surfaces from around the classroom - sadly the rain prevented us from going outside but the children found some interesting textures from around the classroom.

Computing

This week in computing, we were learning how to change the font, size and colour of the title of a ‘missing’ poster. The children did a great job whilst working in pairs. They also practised underlining, making the text bold and using italics too. 

Maths

This week in maths, we have been thinking about the teen numbers! We have been using concrete resources, arrow cards, tens frames, bar models and part-whole models to represent these numbers and then at the end of the week we solved some number and word problems. 

English

This week, we started a new learning journey for our writing using the book, ‘Peace at Last’. On this learning journey, we have so far; made predictions using a ‘Tiny text’ of clues from the book; read the book and had lots of fun reading the repeated phrases together and then yesterday, we acted the story out as a class - making sure we re-enacted the noises keeping Mr Bear awake all night!
 

Next week, we will look more closely at the text. We will be exploring adjectives to describe the nouns we see in the pictures, we will create a word bank by picking out the ‘noisy’ words from the story and then we will add some of our own. We will also revise prepositions by thinking about where Mr Bear goes to try to get to sleep!
 

At the end of the week, we will plan and write our own noisy poem which we hope to entertain the Dolphin class with!

Art

This term, our art will be taking on a space theme using the artist Wassily Kandinsky as inspiration. So far this term, we have re-created art by Kandinsky using different coloured paper circles. We have also used red and yellow paint, sponges and paint brushes to create different textures of warm colours ready to cut planets from later in the learning journey. The children mixed some fabulous shades of orange!

Geography

This half term in Geography, Turtle class are learning all about the UK and will aim to be able to answer the question, ‘Where would you most like to live in the UK?’. Last week, we started looking at maps of the United Kingdom and thinking about which countries make up the UK. We have also thought about different cities across the UK and used compass points to direct our partner from one place to the other. This week, refreshed our thinking about physical and human geography by sorting different places in the United Kingdom under these two headings. We the thought about the different mountains in the UK, where on a map they appear and how the Atlas makes it easier to spot them. 

Computing

This half term, we are working on our use of a computer keyboard using the computer programme Word. The children have enjoyed finding the letters they need to write the words, they have practised using the space bar for finger spaces and then this week, they were using the tool bar to make the words bold, underlined and italic. They have been working very hard!

Writing

Our first writing learning journey has been based around the fabulous book, ‘The Man on the Moon’ by Simon Bartram. The children have been learning the story, practising using time words, the past tense, adjectives and prepositions and have just started writing their own version of, ‘A day in the life of Bob the man on the moon’!

Maths

In maths this spring half term so far, we have been thinking about addition and subtraction. The children have been amazing at using part-whole models, tens frames and number sentences to show and explain their understanding. The turtles have also shown that they are great at working systematically  when investigating different possibilities! Keep up the great work year 1! 😀