24 Mar 2017

Yr1 Weekly Update – 03/24/17

 People create homes to suit their needs.
 

 

Unit

We have been working towards our three way conferences this week making displays for our shared area and classrooms. We have been focusing on talking about our learning by explaining what it is we are learning about, how we have been learning and what skills/thinking helped us do this. As we come towards the end of the unit we will be carrying out our summative assessment to show how children’s thinking and learning has changed throughout the unit.

Suggested activities: Share something with your child you are really proud of them achieving at school. Talk and plan ways to help them with some learning your child is finding challenging at school.

Questions: What is it you enjoy learning at school? What can you do now that you couldn’t do before you started KJS? What is it you want to be able to learn how to do while in year one? What are you most proud of achieving at school?

 

Phonics and Literacy

As children are becoming more independent readers and writers we are using the opportunity to do ‘in the moment teaching’ whilst using phonics. This means as new opportunities to teach a combinations of sounds arise with a child or a group of children we will stop and teach them. For example if a child is trying to spell the word ‘light’ we will take a few minutes to look at the spelling pattern of ‘igh’ and how to apply it. The benefit of this is that it is meaningful in the child’s context and they will often teach their peers this new learning when they use it again. During Literacy we have been learning strategies to check we understand what we read in informational texts. We have adopted a 3 step routine; read-think-explain. If child can’t explain what they just read then they use picture cues and reread the text and to check how they can get meaning from it. This strategy is especially important in informational reading as it is often the ideas and the words that are new to them.

Suggested activities: Practise the read, think, explain strategy with your child as they read informational texts. Cover pictures or words in informational texts and ask your child to either read and explain what it means or look only at the pictures and explain what it means. Then let them look at both and ask them which way was easier for them to understand what the text meant.

Questions: When you read informational texts what do we need to do? What strategies help us understand what we read? How can you check for meaning as you read? How can the picture help you understand?

 

Maths

We have started measurement this week and explored what we know about capacity, length, height and weight. We are beginning to explore the ways we can describe height by looking at them, such as ‘this is a tall building’, comparing them ‘this building is taller than that’ and using non standard measurement to describe it’s height, ‘this cup is three cubes high’.

Suggested activities: Do measurement at home by comparing the height or length of items. Make comparisons between items and describe them as taller than or shorter than, such as ‘ this cup is taller than the my finger’. Use everyday items to measure household items with e.g. measure the height of the chair using books.

Questions: Who is taller/shorter? Can you describe the height of the chair? How can you measure the height of yourself? What would be the best tool to measure with?