KS1 – Newsletter – 20.1.23

It’s been another very cold week this week. Despite this, we still have children taking cardigans and jumpers off, but also bringing in hats, gloves and scarves. Many of these items are not named and it is very difficult for staff to try and get them back to their owners. Please try to name all items of clothing coming into school – this does not have to be a bought label, writing their name on the label of the clothing with pen is just as good!

The Fire rages on across KS1 this week as we continue to focus on The Great Fire of London. We had a fantastic Forest school session to start the week, where we took all the houses the children had made to the fire pit to burn them. We watched how the fire spread from one house to the next and the children shared their fantastic knowledge of what happened and why it happened.

In English, Year One have been finishing the book ‘Vlad and the Great fire of London’. They have been using their rat puppets to support with asking questions and making exclamations. They wrote some of these into speech bubbles. They also thought about what Boxton and Vlad were doing in the book and wrote sentences about this using -ed and -ing suffixes.Year two have begun to write a diary from the perspective of Samuel Pepys. They used all the knowledge they have gained from the book ‘The Great Fire of London: Unclassified’ to write it as accurately as possible. They then edited and published their work.

Year One have been looking at numbers between 10-20 in Maths. They have been thinking about one more and one less and have been inserting missing numbers onto a numberline. They are blowing our socks off with their speed and knowledge at the moment and were even able to identify through estimation, where on a numberline a number would sit. Year two have been looking at fact families and how using the same three numbers, you can write two addition and two subtraction number sentences. Have a go at home. Give your child a number sentence eg 23 + 11 = and see if they can tell you the four number sentences that can be made.

In computing this week we have continued our work on algorithms. One group did the robot activity, giving instructions to the teacher robot for how to clean their teeth. Other groups were out at forest schools giving instructions to their blind folded partner to guide them around and endure that they were safe. They thought about using instructions such as “Take five steps forward. Take two steps to the right….”

We have begun looking at compass points in Geography and using maps to look at the position of different cities in the UK. We practised orally and then gave compass directions to tell of the position. For example If you start in Bristol and go East, you could arrive in London.

Finally our Science topic has been looking at the seasons again. This time we were considering what the weather is like and what things happen in Autumn and Winter. We were then comparing the two months. We realised that there are more differences than similarities between the seasons.

Key Dates:

Next week is week 1.

PE Kits needed for Monday.

23.1.23 – 2.30pm. Maths KS1 Parent workshop

10.1.23 – Dress to express yourself day

10.2.23 – Break up for Half term