Base 1 News

Base 1 have had a busy week of learning this week and all of the children have been working very hard. Mrs Griffin and I have commented on this several times this week, it is so lovely to see the children trying their very best and see the results in their school work.

In our literacy lessons this week we have read a little more about Detective Dog Nell. We found out that she solves all sorts of mysteries through the week, but on Monday she does something extra special, she goes to school with her owner Peter to listen to the children read. We had all sorts of ideas about how Nell solves her mysteries, so we put ourselves in her shoes and learnt how to write a diary entry. The children did some fabulous writing as Nell, finding shoes in the garden shed, teddy on the stairs and even a toy that was in the toilet! The year 1 children learnt how to use an exclamation mark in their writing and have been working particularly hard on their handwriting, whilst the reception children are learning about how to form a sentence and are getting VERY good at sounding out words they would like to write.

In maths year 1 have been focussing on number bonds to 20 and the subtraction facts that go with these. Number bonds are any 2 numbers that we add together to make a total, we have been using practical resources (numicon and diennes) to do this before learning how to find the numbers mentally by 'counting on'. Some of the children were excellent detectives and were able to spot the pattern between number bonds to 10 and the number bonds to 20! The reception children have also been working on addition by putting two groups of objects together and counting them all to find a total. We had a lot of fun doing this with numicon and some of the children learnt how they could record what they were doing as a number sentence.

We have been excellent scientists in Base 1 this week and learnt all about the different types of animals and what they eat. We have learnt how to sort and classify animals and had lots of scientific vocabulary to learn, including some of these words: mammal, invertebrate, amphibian, omnivore, carnivore and herbivore! We are now putting all of our new knowledge to good use by becoming authors and illustrators of our own non-fiction books about animals.

Our whole school theme this term is 'What would we do without books?' and as part of this we have been talking about recommending books that we have enjoyed. In Base 1 this week we particularly enjoyed reading 'Zog' by Julia Donaldson and we shared this with the rest of the school in our Friday assembly. Nathan, Harry, Maisie, Declan, Nancy and Josh did a great job of telling everyone why they liked the book and sharing their pictures.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend, lots of rest and vitamin C to help us fight off all the nasty bugs that seem to be about at the moment!

Miss Pitchford