Year 1/2

Celebrating Learning

What we have been up to: 

Over the last two weeks of term 4, our year 1/2 students have continued exploring flight and design through our integrated unit: “Up, Up and Away!”. We were really lucky to have had a visit from Oliver Lock’s dad, Gerald, who talked us through an Architect’s design process (which was very familiar to the year 1/2s!). He also shared some exciting stories about learning how to fly as a young person. Our year 1/2 students absolutely loved hearing from Gerald and reflected on what they had learnt through discussions and writing:

“I learnt that Olis’ dad’s dad won a trophy for aerobatics. It was pretty cool.” - Charlie L

“I loved how my dad learnt how to fly planes when he was 4 years old.”- Oliver L

“I liked when Oli’s dad talked about the building designs. Especially when he showed us where the toilets and playground would go (on the childcare centre plans)” -Memphis C

“I liked how he told us that we could use natural light like a sky light when designing a building instead of using electricity.” - Frank B 

In the first few days of week 4, your child took home a letter explaining our take home project for T4. This project asks that students create a “flying machine” at home using recycled materials. Students will follow the design process to create their flying machine. Please read over the letter carefully with your children. We are very excited to see what they come up with!

Maths:

We have continued to explore factions over the past few weeks, looking at fractions of a group of objects, fractions of a shape and now fractions lines/ fraction walls. We started exploring time (analogue and digital). Students have made their own analogue clock and have started to practise reading and comparing digital and analogue clock faces and how they display time differently.

English:

Using our knowledge of the design process, students have started writing procedural texts. We followed the writer’s process to create our draft titled “how to make a paper helicopter”. Students have combined their knowledge of fractions with their knowledge about writing procedural texts and have written a procedural text about making chocolate crackles (after making and eating them of course!).

This term, year 1/2 classes are continuing learning the Little Learners Love Literacy Stage 7.4 sounds. To reinforce their learning, students could be practising their spelling at home. 

7.4 sounds that we have focussed on for weeks 3-4 are /oo/ sounds: u_e (rude), ue (true), ew (blew) and ui (fruit).

What’s to come in the next two weeks:

Alongside students’ flying machine creation (happening at home) students will be exploring different materials that they might use to make their machine and how we can join these materials together to help our machines fly!

Students will begin to explore persuasive writing in the form of letters in the next few weeks. We will be talking a lot about the purpose of writing and how our audience might influence the way that we write. We are continuing to practise the writer’s process of planning, drafting, revising and editing.

In our phonics sessions in week 5 and 6, we will be reviewing suffixes ing, er and s. We will also be exploring the sound and spelling patterns for mb (lamb), wr (write), gn (gnome) and kn (know).

In Maths, we will continue to develop our understanding of time through reading, writing and interpreting clock faces. We will also be reviewing place value focussing on two- and three-digit numbers.

As we are now in term 4 and the sun is getting stronger, please remember to pack a hat for your child every day!