KS1 – Newsletter – 21.3.25

It has been really good for us to be able to talk to so many of you during our parent consultations over the last couple of weeks. We hope that you have enjoyed looking through your children’s work and celebrating all that they are achieving.  

We began reading a new book in English called ‘Vlad and the great fire’. We began the week by acting out lots of mini stories with lots of different settings, characters and problems. We have been looking specifically at what is a noun and what is an adjective. We have then linked to two together, finding appropriate adjectives to describe each noun. We also enjoyed creating our own Boxton the rat from the story. Year One’s phonic sound this week has been /ie/ for shield. Year Two have been adding -ier, est and y to words changing them for example from dirty to dirtier, dirtiest and dirty.

In Maths, Year One have begun to work on weight. They have been comparing the weight of objects using the terms heavier and lighter. They have also been looking at the mass of an object and using balances to see how many cubes each item weighs. One group in Year Two have been focusing on times tables. They have been doing multiplications using bar modals and have been drawing arrays and answering word problems. The other group have been working on division, using skills of grouping and also using numberlines to divide.

You may be aware that we are having work done to improve our forest schools area. We are having an outdoor classroom installed and an outside toilet. Therefore, we were unable to use this area this week. However, we used this time to decorate our houses ready for our ‘Great Fire of London’. We also drew the longest pudding lane across the playground in chalk and acted out the story with a specific emphasis of Vlad and Boxton and what happened in their story.

We have continued to think about seasons and how things change during the seasons in our Science lessons. This week, we have focused on how the hours of daylight change during the year. We have learnt that the shortest day of the year is 21^st December and the longest day of the year is 21^st June. We learnt about how many hours of sunlight we can expect during each month.

In Geography, we have been collecting together lots of facts that we know about The UK. We have been writing sentences to explain to the reader how many countries make up the UK, What they are and what their capital cities are. We then wrote some interesting facts, such as Scotland has around 1,000 castles.

We have been back on the ‘ARMakr’ app in computing this week. We practised using the app remembering how to choose a setting and add characters. We then learnt a new skill of creating our own character and how to add that into our scene.

In RE, Year One were learning about Palm Sunday and how Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. They all made palm leaves to wave as they acted out the story. Year Two the children have been comparing Lent and Ramadan. Both of these festivals are currently happening and the children have been observing practises that are similar in both and also noticing the differences.

In PSHE, Year One have continued to learn about money. This week they have been thinking about the choices they have to make when they have money, that they can only buy something if they have enough money and that there are different ways they could choose to spend their money but that they can’t spend more than they have. Year Two have been looking at the eat well guided and thinking about how to make healthy choices in what food they eat. They are aware that they need to choose food from each of the food groups, but that they can eat as much as they like from the fruit and vegetables, but need to be careful about how much to choose from the fats and sugars group.

Diary Dates:

Thursday 3rd April : 2.30 – 3.00 – The Great Fire of London celebration event