KS1 – Newsletter – 18.9.26

We are really pleased at the end of this week to welcome Mr Morgan back. He is still on the road to recovery, but has spent Friday in Class 3 and will be back in class fully from Monday.

In English, we have read a whole variety of ‘Funny Bones’ books and thought about the characters and what they do in each of the stories. We have been practising our handwriting, focusing on letter formation for Year One and sizing of letters especially with ascenders and descenders for Year Two. The children all used resources to write some sentences including a characters from the books, what they were doing and where they were doing it.

Year One have continued with their counting skills and the different ways that we can represent a number in maths. We have been looking at how to count accurately and how to make links between representations of the same number. Year Two have continued with their work on Place Value and have been making numbers using Base Ten and counters on part whole and bar models. They have also partitioned the numbers and written them in expanded form.

We had a fantastic topic day exploring lots of different activities.

The Funny Bones theme continued into forest schools where the children were making up their own funny bones Cookridge characters and stories. They decided what they setting would be and made dens for the skeletons thinking about what they could do there. They also used salt dough to make some bones which we will be using in upcoming sessions.

In science, the children completed lots of activities to help them work scientifically. They began a project of looking at fruit and vegetables and they will continue to observe them over time to see what happens to them. They used magnifying objects to look closely at things around the classroom and pretend bugs. They classified pictures of animals, to decide whether they were pet or wild animals. They also had a challenge with a marble run, to create a run before being given a marble. They then tested it with a marble and realised many were too flat for the marble to run and had to work out how to improve them.

In geography, we were discussing where we live in the world, Earth – Europe – UK – England – Yorkshire – Leeds – Cookridge. We looked at a globe and maps to see where we live. We discussed how to give directions and how to use compass points in directions. The children then practised using these in different activities. They completed a sheet with 4 quadrants, drawing things they could see in the North and South of the classroom. They followed instructions on a map to find what pictures they landed on. We learned some mnemonics to help us remember the order North, East, South, West and then designed posters to help us remember them. We followed challenge cards moving around the classroom following the directions and built towns and observed where different buildings were in relationship to other things.

We were finding out what we already know about Christians and Muslims in RE. We then talked about some of the basic things that we will learn about this year. It was explained to the children that they do not have to believe any of the things that they are learning about, but it is important for them to get an understanding of things their friends and neighbours may believe, or how they celebrate festivals. We aim to make our school an empathetic, tolerant school for all children to share ideas and ask questions.

In PE, we have been focusing on some of the fundamentals we need. We looked at what we needed to do to run fast and jump safely. We played a number of games to practise our running skills and listening out for opportunities for jumping.

We were talking about healthy foods in PSHE, thinking about which foods are really good for us. We discussed our favourite fruits and vegetables and how often we can eat them. We thought about the different categories of foods and which ones we should only eat occasionally.