What are ascenders and descenders?
Year 1 have been using word shapes to help to learn their spellings and also help with their handwriting.
Tall letters such as t, l and h all have ascenders and letters that come under the line such as g, p and y have descenders.
We can use a word shape to show the ascenders and descenders in a word.
Ask your child what spellings are missing from this week’s list and if they can draw a word shape for these words?
Our Handwriting Guide is easy to follow and a great way to support your child.
Road Safety Pantomime ‘The Gift of Life’
Yesterday, all pupils watched this lighthearted show that delivered important road safety messages.
Pupils joined Santa and Rudolf as they travelled back in time to prevent young Neil Downe from being knocked down. Whilst being fun and interactive, the pantomime covered the following road safety themes:
- the Green Cross Code
- seat belts
- be bright, be seen
- safer cycling
Ask your child about the performance and what messages they took away.
We are homework heroes!
Week in week out, we are so impressed by the quality of the homework. This week’s task was to demonstrate our understanding of instructions.
We discussed what made our homework successful, including drawing illustrations, making booklets and taking photos of our recipes in action!
Phoebe included all her spellings in a poem. Brilliant! There were some other very creative examples of spelling practice, too. Jemima decided to draw her spellings to help her remember!
Well done everyone!
Fantastic creative maths
I was really impressed with the Creative Homework this week. There were all sorts of great ways to shows when and how we convert measures, many of which we’re going to keep in class for the children to use during lessons.
Spelling homework this week
We were practising homophones this week and so tried to write homophone groups into one sentence. Here are some good examples of the children’s work.
After Christmas, when children are given a list of words to learn, it is important that the practice they do in their books is regular. Completing a page of ‘practice’ in one night won’t help them to learn these spellings. I’ll be asking the children to date their practice with a signature from an adult to show that they’re practising little and often throughout the week rather than all in one go.
We are rock detectives!
Continuing our What’s The Matter? themed mini topic, today we have been observing rocks! (LO: TBAT compare and group rocks.)
First, we watched a video about the different types of rock around us and noted down some key words to help us later.
Next, we decided how to compare the rocks. We thought of things like colour, texture and weight.
As a class, we talked about how to present our findings. We thought a table would be a good idea, so we walked through a class WAGOLL to help.
Here’s what we came up with:
For a class challenge, we discussed:
Geology rocks!
Allerton Grange Trip
Today, Year 6 visited Allerton Grange School to do some PE. Basketball, football and shot put were the sports we played. We developed lots of skills: dribbling and shooting for basketball; passing, control and communication for football; and accuracy for shot put.
Written by Pippa.
We are special
In Year 1, we have been thinking about how each and every one of us is special. We all like different foods, celebrate different religions, live in different places, have different hobbies and yet, in lots of ways, we are all the same.
The children have thought about identities.
Who are you?
We had such a lovely time creating paintings of ourselves. Take a look at our gallery below.
Along with this, we have also thought about the communities that we live in and learnt about similarities and differences within them.
What is respect?
“What is respect” is a big concept to grasp.
Respect is how you feel about someone or something.
Having respect for someone means you think good things about who a person is or how he/she acts. You can have respect for others, and you can have respect for yourself.
Respect is how you treat someone or something.
Showing respect to someone means you act in a way that shows you care about their feelings and well-being.
Showing respect for others include things like not calling people mean names, treating people with courtesy and showing good manners.
Learning how to show respect is so very important. We have thought about respecting ourselves and others. The children also discussed that we should show respect to our community, animals, people and belongings.
Whilst I have been working in Year 1, I have seen the children showing respect to each other. They are proud of their classroom and the school as a whole.
Well done!
We respect communities and their members.
In yesterday’s Living and Learning session (L&L theme: I respect my community and other communities) we looked at the story of the Hueys and the New Jumper.
First, we discussed what’s good and less good about being a part of a community where everyone is the same.
We talked about our own experiences:
“I felt nervous joining Y3 but everybody made me feel welcome.”
– Ethan
“I didn’t feel nervous because there was no need to.”
– Talha
Next, we watched the short story by Oliver Jeffers.
We explored how the characters in the story would be feeling as Rupert decided to set himself apart from the group with a new jumper.
Finally, we decided that you shouldn’t judge someone on their appearance. It’s more important to get to know the person to make them feel welcome and respected as part of the community.
Community Homework
Last week’s homework was to show that we know what community is. We really enjoyed looking at this work as there were all sorts of different pieces to enjoy.
