In Year One,we have focused our English lessons around a story – The Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch.
Every day, Mr Grinling the lighthouse keeper cleans and polishes his light to make sure it shines brightly at night. At lunchtime he tucks into a delicious and well-deserved lunch, prepared by his wife. But Mr Grinling isn’t the only one who enjoys the tasty food. Will Mrs Grinling think of a way to stop the greedy seagulls from stealing the lighthouse keeper’s lunch?
We’ve looked closely at three different ways of telling this story. These variations of the same tale sparked some great discussion.
The children then worked on the items they would put into Mr Grinling’s basket. Before doing any writing, we orally rehearsed what we were going to write. This is an age related expectation for the end of Year One: I can say what I’m going to write and then compose a sentence orally before writing it.
The children were encouraged to say a sentence, count the words, say it again and finally write it.
We had some great sentences during our lesson with the correct use of capital letters and full stops. Some children experimented by using the word ‘and‘ to join their ideas and make their sentence longer.
- “I will put in some apples.”
- “I will put in some chocolate cake.”
- “I will put in some salad and some grapes.”
Another age related expectation for Year One is to: use a capital letter for ‘I’.
Ask your child about this story and see if they can retell it. Following that, encourage your child to orally rehearse a sentence about the characters in the book and then have a go at writing it.