Year 1 have been very creative over the past few weeks. Before half term, we embraced being artists and drew some detailed leaf pictures. We all had three attempts to make our drawings better and became 'critical friends' when we gave our classmates helpful advice on how to improve their work. Last week, we drew our fourth and final leaf, colouring it in by blending colours, being careful to use the exact colours that we could see when we inspected our real leaves through magnifying glasses. We then had a 'gallery walk', where we walked around the class, looking at everyone's art work and giving precise, positive feedback on their work. Mrs Smith and Mrs Witney were so impressed with the work that they have already hung all the pictures up around the class!
In addition to our wonderful art, we have been working very hard at our maths. We have continued to use cherry diagrams and tens frames to help us show the parts of a whole number and we have now progressed to writing these into bar models and number sentences. This has been a tricky concept, but all the children have worked hard and we are using speaking frames to remember how to work out the parts of a number.
Our science unit about plants has been drawing to a close and one of our final lessons was to investigate if taller trees have wider trunks! We worked in groups measuring the different types of trees on the school field. We learned that the word 'circumference' is the length of the edge of a round shape like the trunk of a tree. We measured the trees circumference with tape measures. Then we measured the approximate height of the trees by walking away until we could see the very top of the crown and counting the distance back to the base of the trunk in pigeon steps. Our results were a bit mixed between our groups and measuring was very tricky, some taller trees had the widest trunks but others didn't! However we had great fun and loved learning some new skills!
We know that there was some discussion before half term about Mrs Moore cutting down the forest! Please do not be alarmed - this was just part of our topic work, as we discussed different reasons that people may want to cut down a wooden area! The children became wonderfully engrossed in the subject and we were having classroom debates and voting as to whether Mrs Moore should cut down the forest or leave it alone. After writing letters to Mrs Moore explaining how we felt and why she should or shouldn't consider cutting down the forest, you'll be pleased to know that we persuaded her to keep it and the forest is remaining where it is! Phew!
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