Spring

Porridge... Yum!

We have followed instructions to make porridge this week.  We loved adding jam or honey as a sweet topping.  After making our porridge, we recorded the steps and created a set of instructions for Goldilocks to follow.

Newburn Walk

This week we have been on an adventure with Mr Vyle. We took a walk around Newburn to see which human and physical features have been in our local area for a long time.  We also looked closely at changes of land use. We know that Newburn does not look the same as it used to 100 years ago due to the loss of businesses like the steelworks, the loss of a train station and a station hotel and the building of new homes in the area. We had a lovely morning being great geographers and historians.

We are scientists!

Do you know that materials are chosen for particular purposes because of their properties? We know this!

We carried out an experiment this week to see which materials are absorbent.  We had lots of fun predicting which materials would be absorbent before using scientific equipment like pipettes to carry out the experiment successfully with our group.

PE

This week, we had a great time practising activities which will help us to learn about the game of tennis. We worked with our partner on many different ball skills including rolling accurately to our partner’s hands, bouncing a ball before our partner's feet, moving our feet to catch a ball inside a cone while keeping our eyes on the ball at all times. What a lot to think about at the same time!

World Book Day

Thursday 3rd March

Did you know that World Book Day was the celebrating its 25th anniversary this year? 

We had a great day in school reading lots of our favourite stories and dressing as some of the characters from our favourite books.

Design & Technology

Structures - Bridges

What fun we had learning about structures during our Design and Technology week!

We learned that structures must be strong and stable to remain standing for long periods of time and that structures sometimes have to hold a great deal of weight to be fit for their purpose. Bridges are strong and stable structures which must hold the weight of people and usually vehicles which use them to cross over water or busy roads and motorways.  We were set the task of building our own bridges with materials available in school.  In order to carry our the task successfully, we had to research different types of bridges, learn about different techniques which help engineers to strengthen chosen materials, design a model of a bridge with a partner and evaluate our structures once they had been built to see if they were strong enough to hold the weight of our toy vehicles. 

You can see the stages of our bridge building below.

Stage 1 - Research

We know that there are different types of bridges like beam bridges, truss bridges, arch bridges and suspension bridges.  We know that triangles are very strong shapes which can be seen in many structures.  We learned that many bridges are made from strong materials like wood, iron and steel.  As we do not have access to these kinds of materials in school, we had great fun learning different techniques to strengthen materials like paper and card.  We practiced folding, layering, joining pieces of paper together and rolling card into strong shapes to make these materials stronger.

Stage 2 - Design

We worked collaboratively with our partners to design a bridge that we could make from materials available in school.  We planned to use a variety of materials and equipment like card, paper, tape, lolly sticks, paperclips and blue tack.  We also planned which techniques we would use to strengthen our models. 

Stage 3 - Make

This stage was the most fun!

We made our bridge models from our designs, using the strengthening techniques we had learned and the available materials in school.  Along the way, we had to alter some of our designs to ensure that our models were stable and strong.  We worked brilliantly with our partners. 

Stage 4 - Evaluate

How successful were our bridges?  Were they stable enough to stand alone? Were they strong enough to hold the weight of two or three toy cars without collapsing? 

We are so proud of our models and they are now displayed in our KS1 corridor for everyone to see.

This week is Children’s Mental Health Week

(7-13 February 2022)

This year's theme is Growing Together.

Children (and adults) are asked to consider how they have grown and how they can help others to grow.  

We took part in a workshop with the Worry Wizard from Big Foot Productions. She taught us about the importance of looking after ourselves and asking for help if we are worried about anything. We talked about the significant people in our lives that help us to grow as an individual.  We created hot air balloons with our special people inside.  They will be displayed in school for everyone to see. 

Numbers and more numbers!

We are loving working with larger numbers this term.  We are enjoying learning to count forwards and backwards within 50, learning what each digit in a two-digit number represents and using a variety of classroom equipment to show our understanding with our partners.  We now have a favourite game which we love to play in a circle which helps us to count to 50 accurately.  Ask your child how we play this game and may be you can have a go at home. 

Fictional Letter Writing

We have really enjoyed reading 'Harry's Home' by Catherine Anholt.  We were very interested in the content of the letters which Harry and Grandad exchanged in the story.  We thought about possible questions they could ask each other and information that they could share in their letters.  We imagined we were Harry and produced a fictional letter in the first person to Grandad, using features of letters with increasing confidence. We are very proud of our work.

The more that you read, the more things you will know. 

The more that you learn, the more places you will go.

We are really enjoying our reading groups.  We are so proud of ourselves and the progress that we are making.  We are becoming confident when reading aloud and we are learning to use our best storyteller voices to interest our listeners.

'Tis the Season

This week, Year 1 started their weekly lessons with Newcastle Music Service based on the season of spring. We learned a new song to the tune of 'Frere Jacques' and once we were confident singing the words and performing the actions, we sang as two groups in a round.  We also recalled the names of many percussion instruments and we began learning a second new song which we hope to play instruments to in the coming weeks. 

Ask your child if they can sing these lyrics to you with actions.

Planting flower, planting flowers.

In the ground, in the ground.

Sprinkle on the water, sprinkle on the water.

Watch them grow, watch them grow.

Landscapes

For Art week, we studied some of the work of the famous Austrian artist Gustav Klimt.  We know that he produced many landscape scenes like 'The Birch Wood', 'Fir Forest' and 'Beech in the Forest' to name only a few.  To begin our journey, we studied Klimt's 'Tree of Life'.  We used magnifying glasses to take a closer look at many different aspects of the artwork.  We talked about the colours, shapes and lines which we could see and we shared which parts of the painting we liked the most and why.  We then learned about different drawing techniques like hatching, cross-hatching, stippling, smudging before venturing outdoors to do some of our own observational drawings of our school landscape. Finally, we produced some artwork in our sketchbooks which we could all be proud of. We can't wait for our next art project.