Year 1 - Bumper Blog!

Hello everyone,

We have been very busy as per usual in year 1 and the learning we are seeing has been phenomenal lately! So thank you for all your efforts at home too. The picture above is one of focus, perseverance and determination.

Sight experiment this week which involved covering one eye and using coins...

I have lots of information to pass along to you in this blog and instead of doing it in 3 blogs, I'm going to try and get it all in to one! So it may be a bit long... but hopefully all the info you need will be in one place. 

Firstly, there will be a few things sent home this week or already sent home; the first is a Christmas Card making activity. This was sent home a couple of days ago and consists of a white piece of card with some instructions on it. I've popped a picture down below so you know what it is to look for. The deadline for these is 19th October - end of this half term - please bring them back in to school once completed. You may remember these from last year. Once they have been sent away and made you have the option to order the card with your child's design on it for family and friends. 

Secondly, coming home this week will be one of the home learning tasks! This is related to our Big Write that we will be composing next week. This will be centered around our work of the Galapagos Islands and Charles Darwin. The home learning activity is really to talk about and plan a very rough outline of what you will write about next week. We will be writing from the perspective of Charles Darwin heading to the Galapagos Islands for the first time. There are some pictures on the back to help you. Adults, please feel free to write things if it helps, although it is not an expectation that children bring this back in to school. However, it will be helpful for children to have more of a discussion using interesting vocabulary. We have introduced children to adjectives so this will hopefully be a term they are familiar with.

The second piece of home learning you could choose to do if you would like to between now and 1st November is a poster competition run by Dorset County Hospital... here is the jist from the hospital;

"So the first question that you probably have is what is required for the competition? 

The theme is to encourage the use of recycling and how the varying ages interpret this from what they have seen at home, at school, in a supermarket, in surrounding areas and through public information services.  

The prize is for the winner of each Key Stage to have their picture created into a poster for use around Dorset County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust to help promote and encourage recycling of waste, with plans to promote locally. Pictures by the children are to be colourful, but in any form. Encourage the children to use an image or theme that will fill the sheet of paper. Pictures on A4 sized white paper blank unlined, unsquared"

Again, please bring any entries for this competition in to school ready to be collected on 1st November.

Children running their own phonics lessons in their own learning time this week.

You may have also noticed our new class charter taking shape over the last couple of weeks... This is an integral part of the classroom and highlights to children their rights and responsibilities in school. Thank you to Mrs. Webb for this!

Next! As we will be off on our half term week at the end of next week, we will be collecting in all the Read, Write Inc reading books that we have been sending home for you to read with your children. This is so we can have a full set for some new groupings when we return after half term. Could we ask that all of these books are kept in book bags ready for us to collect.

And lastly... a quick note about spellings in year 1. The plan is for a weekly spelling sheet to come home with all children after half term. These will be to practise at home ready for a spelling session in school. We will be encouraging children to select the level of their spelling test with the simple rule of 'If you can read it, you can learn to spell it'. More will follow on this but I thought a little heads up would be useful.

All done. 

*Phew*

Forest school Autumn pictures this week.

If you have any questions about anything please come and speak to us. Thank you.

Year 1 team