Our topic for Spring Term 1 is:
'Paddingtons adventures'
In Literacy we will be continuing with our story writing skills however we will be taking a step away from the 'imitation' and 'innovation' stage of Talk 4 Writing and moving more towards 'invention.' The children will be using a picture stimulus to invent their own story which can be as weird and wacky as they like! We will also be focusing on writing to entertain by creating our own post cards and letters to send to Aunt Lucy in Peru. Finally we will explore informative texts by writing instructions for Paddington Bear's own marmalade sandwiches.
In Maths our learning will progress onto Multiplication and Division. We will be exploring doubling and halving and making sure we can complete this using fast recall. We will then begin to look at a range of strategies which help us multiply and divide.
Our topic this term is heavily driven by Geography and will follow on nicely from our Great Fire of London history themed topic last term. During our Geography lessons we will be locating London on a map/globe and exploring the human and physical features which attract many tourists. We will then complete a small study on Peru so that we are able to compare Paddington's home with Aunt Lucy's.
In Art we will be exploring an artist called 'Stephen Wiltshire' who creates city scapes through drawing. We will begin to explore basic sketching techniques to explore pattern and texture before creating our own lancscape of London. In Music we will be exploring tuned and untuned musical instruments in order to recreate the Paddington Bear theme tune.
In PSCHE we will be exploring emotions to help us understand why we feel certain ways and how we can communicate these feelings with others. We will touch upon different strategies which will help manage some of the emotions we may experience. In RE we will be thinking about what makes an inspiring person and what qualities a leader must have. We will look at different religious leaders before thinking about who inspires us and whether or not we inspire other people.
Spring Term 1 appears to be as busy as ever with lots of new learning for the children. Please find our topic web and medium term plan below.
Friday 7th February 2020
A busy week in Spain class as usual with lots of new learning taking place.
In Maths we have explored division through grouping which the children have taken to really well. They have even managed to apply their skills and knowledge to dividing by 3 and 4 rather than just focusing on dividing by 2s, 5s and 10s.
In English we explored instruction texts. The children had so much fun learning about imperative verbs and how these sound rather bossy. We all bossed each other around with commands. We also unpicked the features of an instruction text and explored why we need each feature. We looked at time adverbials and how they tell us the order of steps. We had fun carrying out instructions that weren't in order to understand why this is important. Lucy had to get dressed following a set of instructions which were not sequenced and she ended up with her tights over her skirt and her vest over her cardigan! We linked our instruction texts to Paddington Bear by ensuring we could follow instructions to make him a perfect marmalade (in our case jam or chocolate spread) sandwich and then used our knowledge to write detailed instructions from scratch.
In our Geography lessons we moved away from London and began looking at Peru which the children were fascinated by. We looked at how many miles away the country is and how long it would take us to travel their on different modes of transport. In Science we started exploring the months of the year and the seasons which correlate to each month. It was tricky but we learnt a song to help us out.
This week has also been our mental health week. A huge thank you to those who brought in something to represent a time they've been brave. We had lots of discussions around this and even had lots of interesting questions. A highlight of my week was definitely Miss Gunnells morning dance routines - I think its safe to say she might need to work on a few of her dance moves!
Have a lovely weekend!
Friday 17th January 2020
Where did the last two weeks go? We can hardly believe that another week has flown by!
Spain class have worked exceptionally hard with an assessed piece of writing this week. The outcomes highlighted how children across the year 1 cohort are struggling with structuring sentences correctly. Next week we are going to introduce a skill called 'rainbow grammar' which we hope will support the children with this. Over the next week I will be putting a document on my webpage which will help you support writing at home as I appreciate lots of you are asking how you can support them further.
In Maths the children have taken so well to the concept of multiplication. We have begun looking at how to count in multiples of 2 using concrete, pictorial and abstract methods. All of the children proved they could use these methods independently and we our starters will be assessing whether the children can apply these to multiples of 5s and 10s. We have also begun looking at repeated addition, although they initially found this tricky the children are beginning to recognise the relationship between the two.
Every afternoon has been busy this week! We have some budding artists on our hands. We split our page into three sections to learn how to draw to scale. We have some amazing drawings of Big Ben so keep your eyes peeled as lots of these are up on display! In Geography we went on a tour around London and looked at many famous landmarks. The children were fascinated by many of the buildings and learning why they are so popular with tourists. In RE we have begun our learning on inspirational leaders by unpicking the qualities they must have. The children thought about who was inspirational to them with most of them choosing their parents because they recognised how hard you work to provide for them. In PE we ended the week with our England dance which the children are absolutely loving! It is safe to say they are better dancers than me!!
Have a lovely weekend!
Friday 10th January 2020
Happy new year to you all. I hope you had a wonderful Christmas. The children settled back in to school routines well and have worked hard with new topics.
In English we have been exploring narratives and trying to write stories using a picture stimulus. The children had some wonderful ideas but struggled to piece these together in a structured story. Next week we will be taking a step back and looking at sentence structure and how we can sequence these together to make a story.
In Maths we have started to look at doubling as part of our multiplication topic. The children really impressed all Year 1 teachers with their knowledge of doubles and how they could quickly recall these up to 10.
In our foundation subjects we have had lots of fun learning about London. In Geography we looked at where London is and tried locating this on a map. In Art we looked at some famous landmarks and added detail using shading techniques. I have never seen children so excited over the fact we have pencils of different thickness.