Base 1 News

There has been much excitement in Base 1 over the last couple of weeks. Naughty Bus has continued to get up to mischief in our classroom and has helped us to imagine all sorts of interesting adventures.

In literacy we have been writing sequels to the Naughty Bus story, we drew a story map using the book and then identified 3 adventures that we thought we could change. In groups the children used our classroom environment to create new settings for Naughty Bus to cause havoc. They were then given an iPad to take a picture of each of these in the style of the original book. The children even learnt how to print their pictures and had to go on a mission to the printer in the hall to collect them! The stories the children wrote were so imaginative and such a pleasure to read. We have also been reading and writing poems about the bus. Reception have been coming up with their own new verses (with actions!) for the wheels on the bus, whilst year 1 have been writing a Naughty bus list poem, using lots of different adjectives along the way. In the pictures you will see year 1 creating their adjective 'chocolate bar' and then 'stealing' interesting adjectives from their friends! We are looking forward to performing the poems next week.

In maths year 1 have been learning about multiplication. We have done a lot of counting in 2s, 5s and 10s in preparation for this and the children have learnt some different pictorial strategies to help them solve multiplication problems. All of the children this week have been working on doubles, we know that double means finding the same again, reception have been finding double using numicon and counting on to find the total whilst year 1 have been recording the number sentences using addition and multiplication. Impressive!

For our D&T project this term we designed London Buses, inspired by Naughty Bus. The buses had to have working wheels so we leant about how wheels and axels work and that the piece of wood that goes through the wheels is called a dowel. The children worked in small groups to build their buses and had to work our how to attach their wheels so that their buses would move. I am pleased to tell you that everyone was successful!! After making their buses, each group shared their bus with the rest of the class talking about things that went well and what they were pleased with and what they would do if they were to do it again to make it even better. Some of the buses are now even being used in our bus station role play!

As you will see from the photos, we have also been working on our computing skills. The children have learnt how to open and use a word document, as well as type up some writing and save it. Year 1 worked in pairs to type up their Naughty Bus poems, they even managed to find the pesky exclamation mark hiding on the same key as number 1!

A note about spellings for Y1: our phonics lessons have been a little different this week as my group and Mrs Cador's group have been together and we have done a lot of work on word reading. Because of this, there are no new spelling words to learn this week, instead please could you revisit any spellings that were tricky from the last half term. The children have been given this message so should be able to tell you!! Everything will be back to normal next week.

Thank you so much to everyone who was able to come to the picnic lunch today, the children loved the chance to share lunch with you at school. Enjoy the sunshine this weekend!
Miss Pitchford