Yr1 Weekly Update – 03/17/17
People create homes to suit their needs
Unit
As we are coming towards the end of our unit, children are beginning to consolidate their knowledge and understanding by investigating homes that interest them. This has ranged from children exploring types of animal homes, homes within different environments, and materials involved in the building of homes. Children are presenting their research in different ways such as writing, drawing, talking or making models. This has been an important part of children’s learning journey allowing them to develop ways of presenting their knowledge and thinking.
Suggested activities: Ask your child to teach you about a home type. Have them use multiple ways to share their learning with you, such as draw or write about it or make one. Ask your child to research a topic of interest and have them present their findings to a family member.
Questions: What are the ways we can share information? How can you show me what you are thinking? Could you draw me a picture that explains it? How can you write your ideas?
Phonics and Literacy
As we continue to develop our phonetic knowledge the focus is applying sound combinations in our writing and reading. As children read and write they are being encouraged to ‘chunk’ sounds together such as instead of ‘i-n-g’ to say ‘ing’ and complex blends such as ‘sion’. This helps speed up the reading and writing process. During Literacy children have been applying their knowledge of informational texts to their own informational writing. They have been using conventions of texts such as informational sentences, labels, captions and contents page to create their own informational text.
Suggested activities: Read stories with your child to encourage their love of stories. Innovate on their guided reading texts to make the reading process more fun, such as ‘there was a wiggly worm’ instead of ‘there was a big worm’. Have children spot which word doesn’t match. They can do the same and you spot the word that doesn’t match.
Questions: What words can we change in this story? How can we read your book in a silly way? Can you see any repeating words? Can you read the sentence backwards?
Maths
This week was Maths Week and children had a great time exploring concepts of number and shape. Each day children engaged in maths activities, listened to maths stories and even managed some maths songs and fitness. Wednesday was our 100-days activities, and years one and two visited each others’ classrooms finding out all the ways to make a 100. I believe the 100 glasses were a firm favourite!
Suggested activities: Next week we will be looking at measurement. Do some baking with your child to explore some of the different forms of measurement vocabulary we use. Vocabulary such as pinch, teaspoon, tablespoon, full cup and half cup help them visualise the quantities involved.
Questions: How much is a pich? Is a full cup more than half a cup? Which is bigger a tablespoon or a teaspoon? Which ingredients did we add more/less of? Which is heavier?
