Yr1 Weekly Update – 03/31/17
People create homes to suit their needs
Sports Day
We had great fun during sports day and were exhausted but excited at the same time. Thank you to all the parents that came to support their children.
Unit
Children wrapped up the end of the unit this week and have been reflecting on what new learning they had done, what they felt challenged by and what they would have liked to done more of. Children also worked on identifying ways they had been open minded, shown appreciation and applied some new learning or skills. With their teachers support they went on to identify ways they could show more appreciation, be more open minded and work harder and applying their learning. We will be starting the next term with the new unit ‘Sharing the Planet’.
Suggested activities: Look at how rubbish is disposed of wherever you go to identify ways rubbish is disposed of. Talk about concepts of waste and what is means to waste things, such as food, water, materials. Look at how much waste you make in a day and identify where most of that waste is coming from.
Questions: What is waste? Where does waste come from? What do we do with waste? What goes into the rubbish? Why is it rubbish? How is rubbish disposed of?
Phonics and Literacy
When we return from the holidays we will be moving children on to new units of exploration of sounds. This will involve looking at combination of endings to read, write and understand them. Ones we will start with are ‘ing’ and ‘ed’. During Literacy we have been finishing of our informational texts and these have either been sent home or are in the school library as display. Children will be using the knowledge and skills the have acquired in this unit to gather and record information in the next unit and explore more elements of informational texts.
Suggested activities: Spend the time in the holidays having your child read for a purpose. Such as reading signs, bus numbers, restaurant menus and instructions. Talk to them about what information the writing is giving you and the way it is written ( Label, caption, sentence, name etc)
Questions: What information does it give you? How is it written? why do you think they choose that way to write it? Can you think of other writing that is similar?
Maths
As we continue to investigate measurement children are beginning to use different descriptive vocabulary to show their understanding of what they are measuring and what that measurement is. By using specific vocabulary such as tall and short (height) and long and short (length) children are understanding what it is they are measuring. They are beginning to explore ways they use non-standard measurement to record length or height and that these measures need to to be counted, such as ‘the table is 5 cubes high’.
Suggested activities: Encourage your child to describe everyday objects in a measurement form, such as this feels heavy, this is tall, that is long, this can fit so much. Have your child make comparisons of size with a focus on the correct descriptive vocabulary. Longer/shorter, bigger/smaller, heavier/lighter, taller/shorter, more/less.
Questions: Can you describe the height of the chair? Can you describe the weight of the chair? Can you describe the size of the chair? Which is the longest/shortest? Can you compare the lengths?
