Yr1 Curriculum Update -29/11/19

Working together to achieve success for every child

Welcome to Year One

Transdisciplinary learning-it’s all connected

We have been revisiting the Zones of Regulation this week, making sure that the children understand what happens to their body when they are not in the green zone and using their toolkit to get them back into the green zone. We have also been doing some guided meditation to help ourselves feel calm and safe, both in and out of school.

There has been lots of excellent home learning taking place over the last couple of weeks surrounding systems and measuring. Well done for your creativity and enthusiasm.

We are continuing to explore systems in year 1. The children are going further in their inquiry into systems by looking at their school environment and deciding what systems need to be in place to make their environment work better for them. They are taking action by developing their own class systems for changing their home reading books based on what they have found out about the school library system. The children had agency over how they organise their home reader books, what level they want to read, how frequently they change the books, this works in unison to not only help the children understand how a system works but also develop pleasure for reading. The children will be designing and implementing their systems and then using iPads to record videos of their systems in action to use as a reflection tool.

The children returned to school after the break to find the role play in the shared area had been transformed into a supermarket and a restaurant. They have been learning through play how to write menus, how to use the money system to buy food and pay the bill, and acting out the different parts and people that make up the restaurant and shop systems.

Language

We have started our phonics groups this week. The children will be attending focused phonics sessions twice a week to enable more effective and efficient teaching to support them in their reading and writing of letters and sounds.

In writing, the children have been adding words or sentences to their picture books, including environmental sounds such as ‘buzz’, ‘clap’, ‘smash’, ‘bang’, ‘weeeee’, ‘ooooh’ which they have been sounding out using their phonetic knowledge.

 

Mathematics

The mathematics strand that we are focusing on throughout this unit is measurement. The children are currently developing their understanding that measurement helps us find things out we need to use in daily life and how measurement is used to compare objects. We are taking every opportunity to encourage the children’s use of mathematical language around measurement and letting them inquire in order to put their new vocabulary into context to help their understanding of the mathematical language.

In 1C, the children used measuring skills to create playdough, following the recipe and accurately adding each ingredient, this also linked to our language learning on instructional language.

In 1M, 1K and 1C the children used the picturebook ‘Big’ as inspiration to see how big they are in comparison to other objects, such as popcorn, paper clips, socks, and lego blocks and used these non-standard units to measure how tall they are.

The children have also been using language of measurement when comparing length, mass and capacity.This was done through creating, comparing and then using non-standard units to measure playdough caterpillars.

How you can help at home

Numbers are all around us. When you see numbers, can you discuss with your child what is the number being used for? Is it money, time, location, height, mass, for naming (e.g. bus 11 or floor 33) Allow your child to handle money for example, in shops, restaurants, paying on the bus or topping up Octopus card.

When we are supporting children’s developing knowledge and understanding of shape, space and measures, we can introduce specific vocabulary and use questions that extend learning and enabling statements that will support children’s thinking.

Try the following:

• What can you say about the weight of this car?
• I wonder if anything weighs more than the red car.
• Which bag feels the heaviest?
• Can you explain how you know they weigh the same amount?
• If you lay on the floor, your model looks different.
• How many shells do you think it takes to balance the box?
• How strange that you can make a cylinder shape by rolling that flat piece of paper.

 

Library login

You have been sent your splat! Login details by your class teacher, use these to log in to the school library site where the children have access to ebooks and storycentre.

 

Dates to note:

Friday 15th December:           Last Day of Term (half day)