Summer 2 2023

Welcome to our final half term of Year 1. Our topic this half term is Wonderful Wetherby! Take a look at our class newsletter to find out more about our learning.

RE

This half term our topic is Miracles We have listened to the story of Jesus’ first miracle; The Transformation of Water into Wine. We heard the story from the Bible, John 2. We discussed how Jesus performed this miracle at the request of his mother at the wedding at Cana. In groups, we used our reading skills to read the sentences to retell the story and sequence it.

The children have been acting out and sequencing the story of the Calming of the Storm. They are really fascinated by Jesus’ miracles and are beginning to make links between them and the power of God. The children are able to clearly retell the main events of the story and we are working on the connection between Jesus’ miracles.

As part of our learning about other faiths, we went on a local walk to St James’ C of E Church in Wetherby. We learned all about the features of the church, how people worship in a Church of England church and we thought about how the C of E denomination is similar to the Catholic faith.

English

Our focus book this half term is the “The Runaway Train”. We have spent time focusing on character and setting descriptions along with asking the runaway train some questions. The children have worked incredibly hard to write creatively, ensuring that their writing flows and makes sense.

Stories, stories, stories!

We started off by re-telling “The Runaway Train” and we then moved on to innovating the story. We wrote about “The Little Yellow Train” who was called Whistles, he ran away through Wetherby so our stories reflected our local knowledge. Once we were confidently using the story language and our creative juices were flowing, we wrote our own stories about a runaway piece of transport! The children were so inspired and they kept writing and writing and writing! We had a runaway digger, a runaway hot air balloon, a runaway Lamborghini, a runaway hot air balloon to name a few! We are so proud of Year 1 – lots of budding authors and illustrators!

Summer Reading Challenge 2023 

As part of our vision to encourage children to read widely and for pleasure, we invited Angie from Wetherby Library to deliver an assembly all about the Summer Reading Challenge 2023. We are one of only two schools the Wetherby and Boston district that have close links with Wetherby Library and Angie is always happy to come and visit us! As well as taking part in lots of fun activities, Angie told us that the challenge launches on Saturday 8^th July and runs until September. We learned that to complete the challenge, we have to read 6 books or more over the Summer and there are medals, prizes and stickers to help us keep motivated. The Summer Reading Challenge this year has an active theme so Angie brought lots of books that were about sport and athletes to show us. The children loved the assembly and are inspired to take part in the challenge! You can sign up at Wetherby library or visit www.summerreadingchallenge.org.uk for more information. 

Phonics Screening

The second week of half term the children will all take their phonics screening. The children have all worked incredibly hard across the year on their phonics which has been shown in both their reading and writing progress. All the children should be very proud of all their achievements!

Maths

Halving

This week we have been revisiting halving. To start the week the children engaged in a B2L activity where they had to collect a number and with a partner halve it using the sharing method and record the answer.

We then moved onto practicing the halving method for numbers before moving onto halving shapes. The children have embraced the practical elements of halving and have shown a great understanding of it.

Next, we have moved on to quartering which was a little more tricky but we have had lots of practise in various different ways that have helped us to understand the concept. We have been enjoying lots of Burn2Learns in the sunshine!

Our final focus of the half term has been revisiting multiplication and division. We are finding this concept tricky and we need to keep practising to develop our understanding further. The children have shown lots of resilience trying to make sure we learn these concepts. We hunted around the playground for multiplication sentences and then had to count the arrays, or count in 2s, 5s and 10s to find the answer.

Science

In Science, we have been refocusing on materials. To start the topic we have recapped what we already know about materials in order to then apply this learning. We have been exploring the properties of materials with a particular focus on plastic.

We have been exploring how versatile plastic is. We have been investigating the different properties of plastic and discovered it can have many different and varied properties! Using our scientific enquiry skills, we investigated plastic and found that all of the plastic objects were waterproof!

Still focusing on plastic, we have been learning about how to protect our planet and what we can do to help. Through guided reading, we have learned about how plastic is a very versatile material but also not very good for the planet. We have been creating posters to think about how we can help to look after God’s World.

Art

This half term we are refocusing on the artist Claude Monet and focusing on his paintings. Today we explored his “series” paintings and how he uses colours in different ways to show different times of day, year and weather.

Computing

This half term in Computing we are applying our previous knowledge of Scratch Junior.

Today we focused on staying safe online, particularly when searching for information. To do this we helped Smartie the Penguin decide what to do when he had some difficult scenarios happen online. 

History

This half term we are focusing on how transport has changed over time in Wonderful Wetherby!

Today we recapped our learning on transport from Spring term and explored why transport has changed through a B2L activity. The children had to find the different modes of transport from history and then sequence them from the oldest to the newest based on what they knew about how and why transport has changed over time.

MFL

In MFL, We have been learning the names for foods; le pain, poisson, l’oeuf, fromage and pomme. We practised saying the words and then drew whether we liked the foods or not!

Using our posters from last week, we have been practising saying the words for different types of food to partners and in front of the whole class! We have had a fun and active Burn2Learn session too.

We have been learning classroom commands and responding to them in a practical context.

Levez-vouz = stand up

Asseyez-vous= sit down

Écoutez = listen

Régardéz = look

We have also been revisiting numbers that we learned in the Autumn term and we have been revisiting colours too. We are very secure with red, blue and yellow so we have had a go at more colours too in preparation for year 2!

Music

The children have been enjoying singing as an ensemble and responding to the music. Our song this half term is I am a Robot, linking to our materials topic in Science.

The children have been learning the words to the song, changing their voices to match the pitch and tapping steady beat, but a fast one!

We have been creating and composing our own musical patterns in groups. We used symbols to represent a composition and then used our compositions to help with our performances! Click the link below to check out our song!

PE

Sports for Schools Sponsored Athlete Event: Jenny Wallwork

On Tuesday 20th June, we held a sponsored athlete event where Jenny Wallwork, a World Champion badminton athlete, led a sponsored fitness circuit with all pupils followed by an inspirational assembly. The aim of the event has been to inspire our pupils to be more physically active, but just as importantly, encourage them to discover and pursue new interests and hobbies, and therefore a passion in life. The event connected the pupils to an extraordinary athlete role model and we are also hoping to use this opportunity to raise money to purchase new sporting equipment to improve physical activity in the school while also supporting both athletes and para-athletes, so that they can continue to inspire the next generation. The fitness circuit was physically challenging and the children, even if they felt tired, did not show it. They pushed through and completed all stations! All children were fantastic spectators, cheering on all the other children that were taking part in the circuit and when completing the circuit themselves, they showed real grit, determination and strength – whilst having a fantastic time too! Music was playing, children were cheering each other on – it was a wonderful atmosphere!

During our whole school assembly, Jenny talked to us about her career and about the perseverance and resilience she had to have to be successful. She told the children that despite being a world champion, she had actually lost more games than she had won. What an inspiring afternoon for our children, many of which aspire to be athletes in the future! Take a look at the pictures below. All sponsorship monies are due in next Tuesday 27th June and we thank all children and their families for supporting school with this event. 

Sports Week 2023

We have enjoyed sports week, including learning two new sports – Frisbee and Tri-Golf. Both sports made us think about how to apply all of our learning from our PE sessions this year in a practical context. We have also enjoyed a dance workshop by Miss Armitage (Mrs Armitage’s daughter) which was fun!

PSHE