Let's get wriggling!

In Numeracy this week we have been learning the order of the months of the year and their associated seasons.

In Literacy we have been conveying information in a simple format by writing labels, lists and captions to go with a Christmas display.

This week we have started our rehearsals for our Christmas performance; A Wriggly Nativity. Monday - 1.45pm, Tuesday - 9.30am and Wednesday - 9.30am at the church.


On Wednesday we are going to the church so please can all permission slips be in as soon as possible. If you are CRB checked we would welcome volunteers to help us walk to the church on Wednesday morning. Please talk to your class teacher.

The Christmas lunch is on Wednesday.

Food for the Christmas party in bought in advance so please can any donations be brought in as soon as possible. The party is in the afternoon on Thursday. Children can wear their party clothes all day.

1MB update

Preparations for Christmas and our Christmas performance are in full swing and the children have been busy learning songs for our upcoming Nativity. Please remember to bring your costumes in by Monday 5^th of December. Please ensure all items are labelled with your child’s name and are in a named bag.

Please remember that all consent forms for the Year 1 Panto project trip to the Theatre Royal need to be in by Friday 9^th of December.

We are all very excited about tomorrow’s Christmas Fair. Don’t forget that in return for an adult tombola present tomorrow will be a mufti day.

Finally, we will be saying goodbye to our wonderful Norland Nannies, Caroline and Charlie, next Friday. They have been fantastic and we have all loved having them in Year 1. We wish them all the best for their future. Thank you!

Christmas Performance 2011

For the Christmas performance this year 1MB will be dressed as donkeys.

Please can you provide your child with –

A long sleeved black, brown or grey top

Black, brown or grey tights, leggings or jogging bottoms.

Please can you make sure these are named and brought to school in a named carrier bag by Monday 5^th December.

Many thanks Mrs Mottram and Miss Barratt

In Numeracy this week we have been practising counting in tens. We have been counting up and down a hundred square and are becoming confident counting forwards and backwards in tens. It would be great if you could continue to practise this skill at home as it will be useful for lots of the learning we do in Year 1.

In Literacy we have been looking at stories with repeating patterns. We have enjoyed reading The Gingerbread Man, So Much, The Enormous Watermelon and Handa's Hen.

In art we have been looking at winter trees. We went for a walk around the school to see how the trees look without their leaves and took photos of them. We are going to use the photos to create our own paintings of trees in the coming days.

Thank you to all the families who have been bringing in their spare buttons to help us make our Christmas cards however we still need more! If you have any lying around at home then please bring them in.

Finally, as there will be lots of assessment activities taking place next week please note that the children will only have one guided reading session each.

Have a lovely weekend!

Welcome to Term 2

This week we have started our new topic Florence Nightingale. We have already learnt so many facts about her. We made our role play corner to look like her hospital and have even got her pet owl.

In Numeracy we have been comparing length using the terms 'longer' and 'shorter.' We have estimated, recorded and measured lengths. We have measured using items such as cubes, straws, paintbrushes and rulers. On Friday we wanted to draw around an adult to find out how tall they were in straws.

In Literacy we have been learning about 'recounts.' We understand that this means to retell something we have done. We know to put events in the right order and have tried hard to use words like first, next, then, later on and finally.

In Music we have been making long and short sounds using our voices and sang a song about bonfire night by adding actions for the different fireworks.

In Science today we started thinking about light and dark. When we arrived at school the room was all blacked out. We looked around the room for different light sources to turn off and noted how we see differently as they are turned off. One light source were the candles inside the lanterns we made on Green Day. They looked so pretty in the dark. Once the room was quite dark we noticed that it was much harder to see in the dark. We talked about how we use other senses in the dark and what night time is like for each of us.

We have made a great display of firework pictures using chalk on black paper.

Have a great weekend of fireworks. STAY SAFE!

Green Day

We made pretty lanterns from old glass jars and a game for the class using the lids.

Flower Power

Today was so much fun as we got to bring our teddies into school and some of us had dressed them up using the 'flower power' theme. Cool man! We shared snack time with them and got to show them off in a whole school assembly. Iris won the best dressed teddy in 1MB. Well done Iris!

Literacy this week has also had a teddy theme as our work has been based on the story 'Where's my teddy?' We have retold the story in our own words, written descriptive sentences and created our own stories about the bears getting lost.

In Numeracy we have been learning the signs < and >for greater than and less than. We know the crocodile likes to eat the larger number! We have used the signs < and >to compare objects and numicon shapes.

In Science today we were thinking about how all humans grow and change as they get older. We looked at a selection of objects that a grown up would use to look after a baby or toddler and thought about when we might have grown out of needing them. We thought about the way in which we still might change as we grow up. The best bit was when Mrs O'Gara brought her baby in so we could ask questions and really see how we have become more independent as we have grown.

We are so lucky that two teachers from Bath Spa have joined us this week. Miss Mumme and Mr Ibbet are here for two days a week initially. They have their main six week block with us after Christmas. We look forward to all the exciting activities we will be doing with them.

We also welcome James to our class. He was even brave enough to stand up in front of the whole school to say hello to everyone. What a great smile you have James.

We have a busy week next week so please check the news letter for details. The first event is on Monday when the school calender photos are being taken. Each child needs to wear a t-shirt in their house colour and something black on their bottom half. Our class theme is cycling so any props would be most welcome as well. The overall theme is the Olympics.

PLEASE continue to bring in small glass jars for Green Day on Thursday. We only have 15 at the moment. Baby food jars are the best! Thank you.

Harvest Festival

A big thank you to everyone who kindly donated some produce for Julian House as part of our Harvest Festival Celebration. The whole school ended today with an assembly where 1MB sang Cauliflowers Fluffy with the rest of Key Stage 1. They were brilliant!

In Numeracy this week we have continued with Number formation work and have been writing 'teen' numbers, matched numbers to repeating patterns and used the language and symbols of addition. We have been taking care to say 'teen' rather than 'ty' at then end of the numbers. E.g. 13, 14, 15 etc.

In Literacy we have been learning the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears and can now retell the story in detail using actions. We can use the correct language for story telling such as 'one day' and 'once upon a time'. We also talked about using linking word in our own writing such as 'soon, next and eventually'. Today we wrote about the three bears in the story and what they were like.

This week we also took part in Bike it. It was loads of fun! We had to cycle or scoot around cones. An instructor explained what to do and the some Year 5s and 6s came to help too.

As part of Green Day on the last morning of term, please can the children bring in as many small glass jars with lids as you can spare as part of a class recycling activity. Baby food jars and jam jars would be great. Thank you.

Indian Summer Time

What a glorious week it has been and we all have our fingers crossed that the weather stays like this for the weekend.

In Numeracy this week we have been naming the teen numbers, matching numbers to repeating patterns and using the language of addition. We have continued to count on and back to 30.

In Literacy we have been continuing with poetry. We have matched words to images using a word bank. 'The pineapple smells sweet, the orange feels smooth.' Everyone was great at performing the poem 'Popcorn'. We wrote our own structured poems about food.

Part of our Letters and Sounds has been to read words containing adjacent consonants: crisp, frost, thank, slept, blend and glint.

Science was fun today as we worked in house groups to begin to make a class height chart. We measured each other using a length of tape and next week we'll compare height with eye colour.

We have had a very musical week too! Our song of the week was 'I've got a grumpy face'. We also sang songs and performed with instruments that were linked to different sounds. We made lots of different sounds with our hands.

Enjoy the sunshine :-)

We're working hard!

We've had another great week in 1MB.

In RE we read the story of creation. We talked about how Adam and Eve were given responsibility for naming the animals and how they might have felt.

In Numeracy we have been counting accurately, creating repeating patterns and relating addition to combining 2 or more numicon shapes.

In Literacy we have been using our senses to think of interesting describing words. We wrote simple sentences and tried hard to use full stops and capital letters. We have enjoyed listening to poems and looking for words that describe how we use our senses.

In Science we were thinking about 'ourselves' again and explored this using bikes and trikes . We observed how the body is used to move the bike. We also thought about living and non-living things. We enjoyed going for a walk around the school grounds to look for examples of these.

We won the playground award again this week in a tie with 2K. Yey! We must be really good at lining up quietly and smartly when the whistle goes!

Welcome to 1MB

Wow! What an exciting 1st two weeks we have had! Everyone has settled into life in Year 1 brilliantly.

Our topic this term is Ourselves.

Thank you for all the photos of the children as babies you sent in and thank you for all the named P.E kits.

In Numeracy we have been focusing on counting on and back in 1s to 30. We have made repeating patterns with 3 or more colours and have used the Numicon shapes to help us.

In Literacy this week we have been creating stories with three parts; a beginning, middle and end. We went for a walk in our house groups and took photos of someone 'being lost'. We the used the photos to help us retell a more interesting version of the story. We worked in groups and pairs and had to show that we could talk clearly and listen to each other.

In Letters and Sounds we had fun with sentence substitution. www.phonicsplay.co.uk (Phase 3)

In Science we started learning about Ourselves and our bodies. We drew around Ben.F and then labelled the different parts of the body. Some of us are a bit confused between our elbows and our shoulders!

We hope you have a great weekend.