Year One

This week in Year 1, students have been enthusiastically engaging in a range of rich literacy and numeracy learning experiences.

Reading:

In Reading, students explored the much-loved story The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson. They developed their comprehension skills by making predictions using picture and text clues and practised summarising key events in the story. Students also participated in character studies, identifying the traits and actions of the main character (the Mouse) and secondary characters such as the Fox, Owl and Snake. A strong focus was placed on reading fluently using punctuation, with students using expressive voices and physical actions to recognise full stops, commas, question marks and exclamation marks. 

Students also built their vocabulary by learning new Tier 2 words including poisonous and astounding. Throughout the week, children practised independent reading, partner reading and small group word work to strengthen their decoding and comprehension skills.

Phonics:

During Phonics, students focused on the short vowel sound /i/ and explored word families including–it, –in, –ig and –ip. They practised segmenting and blending onset and rime to build and read new words such as sit, pin, pig and tip. Students also learned and applied high-frequency words including was, went, they and then. A highlight of the week was creating a class –ip story book, where students illustrated and read funny sentences they helped construct.

Writing:

In Writing, students explored personal expression through poetry and free writing. They created acrostic poems using their names, identifying words that describe themselves, and began developing “writing seeds” in their writer’s notebooks by drawing and writing about things that are important to them. 

Using the mentor text The Important Book by Margaret Wise Brown, students drafted and published their own “Important Thing” poems. Across all writing tasks, there was a continued focus on using capital letters and correct ending punctuation.

Mathematics:

In Math's, students deepened their understanding of place value. They explored how 10 ones make 1 ten and represented numbers using tens frames, place value charts, MAB blocks and drawings. Students practised building and breaking apart two-digit numbers and used “Think Boards” to represent numbers in multiple ways, including numeral form, word form and expanded form. Fun warm-up games such as “Guess My Number” supported students in using mathematical language like greater than and less than.

It has been wonderful to see students showing increasing confidence in reading, writing and number understanding while working collaboratively and sharing their thinking with others.

Kind Regards

Year One Teacher Team