Year 1 - Poisonous warts and Power Maths

Welcome back everyone! We can’t quite believe how we are nearly at the end of September already as the first few weeks in Year 1 have literally flown by. It was lovely to welcome the children back after the long summer break and listen to all of their exciting holiday news and summertime adventures. The children have confidently adapted to the new routines in Year 1 and it has been lovely to see the children bounce into school every morning eager to start the day and engage in their learning with open minds and a willingness to learn new things.

We are incorporating lots of opportunities for writing everyday and it is fantastic to see the children progress so well within such a short amount of time. Through our focus stories ‘Max’ by Bob Graham and ‘The Gruffalo’ by Julia Donaldson we have been writing character descriptions using adjectives, writing lists, labelling and we have even made our very own Gruffalo model out of clay! The children were encouraged to add the purple prickles, turned out toes, knobbly knees and even the poisonous wart at the end of his nose to the models. Each one turned out beautifully and incredibly unique.

The children’s numeracy skills learnt in Reception have been reinforced through our daily ‘Power Maths’ lessons. We have been counting forwards and backwards orally and using a numberline, ordering numbers, practising our number formation, revisiting vocabulary such as greater than, fewer than and using a ten frame to solve addition problems. On top of all of this we have been learning about our local community, and discussing what it means to ‘belong’. We have been thinking about how kind words can mean so much to people and the children are enjoying ‘filling each other’s buckets with little secret notes of kindness.

Finally, we would also like to thank all of the parents who came to ‘Meet The Teachers’ last Tuesday. It was a really positive evening for everyone and it was amazing to finally have you all back in the school grounds and in the classrooms and once again have the social interaction between teachers and parents that has been so restricted over the last few months. It has been a fantastic start to the new academic year for us all and we look forward to seeing your children progress over the next term, both socially and academically.