Author: Mrs Taylor

Living and Learning: health and prevention

Across school, our current Living and Learning topic is all about health and prevention which forms part of the new statutory Health Education. Here are the objectives for the children to learn by the end of Year 6.

Year 1 and 2 will be focusing their learning on sun safety and sleep but as dental hygiene is also part of this learning, the children will soon be bringing home their own toothbrush and toothpaste.

Here is some information you might want to read with your child to talk about this at home.

 

30 April 2021

This week, the homework is Talk Time and should be completed by Thursday 06 May.

Is it ok to throw fruit on the ground?

This is a moral question, based partly around our science learning, about seeds and the cycle of plant growth, which we’d like you to discuss at home with your child. You might consider:

Is this litter or is it food for wildlife?

Could it harm wildlife?

Would it rot and smell?

During the discussion with your child, it’s important to appreciate that there may be opposing views and that although it’s okay to disagree, we should respect the opposing view.

This moral question forms part of our SMSC (Social, Moral, Spiritual and Cultural) learning.

Top Tips for talktime homework:

  • Turn the telly off!
  • Sit around the dining table!
  • Have a chat and share opinions and ideas!
  • Children should talk with family, friends and each other –maybe even using FaceTime or Skype.

There is no need to record anything from your discussions at home. The children will be able to share their views when we review the homework in class next Thursday.

30 April 2021

Group 1

This week’s spellings are based on words with new Phase 5 phonics sounds (aw, ph and wh).

yawning           shawl               Philip               dolphin            what                when

Group 2

This week’s spellings are based on Phase 4 words.

chair                burnt                tenth                sleep               crash               spoon

The children will be tested on these words next Friday 07 May. Please encourage your child to try practise the words by putting their words in a sentence. Also, look at the spelling activities guide for some ideas to practise these words.

Cricket opportunities

Here’s some information about Dynamos cricket that has started at local cricket clubs.

Dynamos for KS2

What is it all about? Click the link for a short video:  https://www.ecb.co.uk/video/1627073/introducing-dynamos-cricket-this-is-our-game-

Find your local centre and book here:  https://ecb.clubspark.uk/Dynamos/SearchResults?&gclid=Cj0KCQjw38-DBhDpARIsADJ3kjm2dd01lHGEYp5ZR7QdfKTCG1qQiyMOUJOY6v8B1eK8tkaUi-hOMQgaArIKEALw_wcB

Skip into summer

This term, all classes will be taking part in the West Yorkshire Skip into Summer project with Skipping School. We are excited to be part of the 136 schools and almost 33,000 children taking part!

As part of this project, we have skipping ropes available to buy at a subsidised price of £3.

If your child would like to buy a rope, to keep learning their new skills at home, they will be on sale, outside the Year 1 classroom in the middle playground, 3:10-3:30pm on Thursdays and Fridays. Exact change would be helpful.

23 April 2021

This week, we return to two spelling groups. The children have been told their group but please contact us (carolinetaylor@spherefederation.org and jackiefreeman@spherefederation.org) if you would like to check this.

Group 1

This week’s spellings are based on words with new Phase 5 phonics sounds (ir and ue).

thirteen         first               Sue              blue              rescue          statue

Group 2

This week’s spellings are based on tricky words (Phase 4) that we would like the children to become secure with in their writing.

they              you               was              he                she               my

The children will be tested on these words next Friday 30 April. Please encourage your child to try practise the words by putting their words in a sentence. Also, look at the spelling activities guide on the website and in your child’s homework books for some ideas to practise these words.

Tennis opportunities

As tennis restarts, here are details of some local clubs offering camps and lessons.
Alwoodley Tennis Club are hosting tennis camps for both weeks of Easter.
Roundhay Tennis Club have spaces on the 12th, 13th, and 16th April 9am-12pm for ages 3-10. Click here to book.
Adel Tennis Academy have a number of activities taking place including Easter Tennis Camps , in the week commencing 12th April, and junior tennis classes, that children are welcome to join.

Year 1 heroes

What a busy final day of the spring term.

For our ‘Not all heroes wear capes‘ day, we welcomed lots of NHS heroes, firefighters, police men, Leonora Cohen, Greta Thunberg, an astronaut, a footballer, Indira Gandhi (the first female prime minister of India) and Dr Andrew Pollard (the scientist who invented the AstraZeneca vaccine).

The children enjoyed sharing who they had dressed as and why they were a hero. If they gave their consent, a partner also took a photo of them.

This marked the end of our Heroes history topic. The children have shown a great understanding of what makes a hero, different heroes from the past (and present) and how they’ve made a difference to life today.

All the Year 1 staff would like to wish you a happy and healthy Easter break.

Science: plants

We’ve come to the end of the first of our plants topic and all the children planted seeds from the Innocent Big Grow project to grow at home. Keep us posted on how they grow.

We’ve had some vocabulary, and their definitions, to learn for this topic so we had a matching pairs quiz to check our final understanding.

Investigative science is also part of our learning in the shared area. Here the children can observe and sort a range of seeds. How are they different? How are they the same?

Our potato plants are starting to break through the soil. We observed them carefully.

They are growing.

They are starting to sprout.

The stems are getting taller.

Some leaves are starting to grow.

They are breaking through!