Whiteley Year one

 Friday 23rd January Art In Art we learnt about the artist Jan Griffier who painted pictures of the Great Fire of London.  We responded to his work in our sketchbooks. English and History This week in English we have written simple recounts of the events of the Great fire of London and made our own non-fiction fact books about the Great Fire. We were really proud of the way the children wrote simple sentences with straightforward subject/verb agreement. You might like to play the game below to explore what happened during the Great Fire of London. Fire of London game Dance This half term we are working on Dance in our indoor P.E. sessions. This week we created a dance using pathways based on the weather.  We worked hard to move to the rhythm of the music and worked well with our partners. Science This week in Science we identified the materials used to build the school and gave reasons based on their properties for why they were chosen. Phonics In Phonics this week we...

 Friday 16th January This half term in Year 1, we are focussing on the Whiteley Learning Value of independence. To encourage the children to think about and apply independence to their learning each class has an "Independence Iguana" . Children might be given this toy to take home if they have demonstrated independence at school e.g. through having a go at spelling words on their own or independently looking at the lunch register to make their lunch choice or cutting up their own dinner.  There are many ways in which we encourage the children to be independent at school. This week at school, we continued our learning about the Great Fire of London. In English we learnt to identify nouns and verbs and we wrote simple sentences with subject verb agreement e.g. "The fire is burning the houses." Computing This week, we started to visit the computer suite in Key Stage 2. Each week half of the class will do an activity in the suite.  This week we have been learning how to...

 Friday 9th January Welcome back to school.  We hope that you enjoyed the Christmas break together.  Please can you ensure that your child brings named gloves and a hat to school every day as they spend a lot of time learning and playing outside. This week as part of our History learning, we have been finding out about The Great Fire of London.  We placed the fire on our class timeline and discussed pictures and paintings of the Fire.  We composed questions and talked about where, when and why the fire started . Reading This week we will be asking you to do the "second" read of your child's phonic reading book at home.  They will do the "first" read as a group in school.  We will then do the "third" read with your child at school next week so that we can focus on developing your child's understanding of the text including their use of inference, explanation and prediction.   It is therefore really important for your child to read their alloca...

  Friday 12th December This week in Science, we have been learning about materials, their properties and why they are chosen for purposes. Lots of the children have found it quite challenging to identify which materials objects are made from and to explain why that material was chosen using property words.  It would be great if you could reinforce the language below at home.     plastic, metal, wood, paper, fabric, rock flexible/stiff, hard/soft, rough/smooth, absorbent/waterproof, magnetic/non-magnetic, see-through. Art In Art, we are learning the technique of weaving and looking at the work of the textile artist Lanny Mackenzie.  We will be creating our own piece of weaving over the next week based on our sketches of a Christmas object e.g. Santa. Phonics This week we have been consolidating our knowledge of all the sounds and tricky words we have learnt in Year R and this term. Please find a "read and roll" game enclosed in your child's bag this week to pract...

 Friday 5th December   Special Request We will be starting our weaving unit of Art next week .  If you have any ribbons (paper or fabric), fabric or Christmas paper that you would be able to donate, we would be very grateful. Christmas Cards In Year One we encourage the children to make one Christmas card for the class rather than give out lots of individual cards. This means that we can really value your child's card and message and share it with the class and it is more sustainable for our environment too. Thank you! Art This week we have continued to be inspired by the work of the artist Barbara Rae. We have created our own paintings in the style of the artist.  We created a background for our painting using a wash of dark and light colours and sketched an Arctic animal to go on the foreground. English In English we wrote descriptions of Arctic settings using adjectives. We tried hard to extend our sentences with "and". Maths In Maths this week we have been workin...

  Friday 28th November Special Request We will be starting our weaving unit of Art in a few weeks time.  If you have any ribbons (paper or fabric), fabric or Christmas paper that you would be able to donate, we would be very grateful. Art This week we have been inspired by the work of the artist Barbara Rae who visited the Arctic and created paintings of her journey. We practised mixing light and darker hues of colours by adding white and black.   English We have read the story of "Iris and Isaac" by Catherine Rayner. We discussed the adjectives used to describe the different Arctic settings.  Next week we will be using adjectives to describe our own Arctic settings. Geography In Geography this week we investigated hot and cold places in our school using thermometers.   Next week this will lead on to investigating hot and cold places on Planet Earth. Maths In Maths this week we have been representing numbers to 20 and beyond on a 20 frame and identifying th...