As the final blog post of the year, we wanted to take the opportunity to say a huge thank you to all of you for all of your hard work and support with all of the children this year.

We are so incredibly proud of how hard the children have worked, how far they have come since joining Year 1 in September, and we cannot believe how ready they are for the new and very exciting leap into Year 2!

This week we have had a fabulous time making our repurposed items using our old t-shirts. The children were super creative in their designs and the make process was very interesting, the children found cutting the fabric very tricky and lots of children decided that they would need to alter their design to make it a bit simpler. Some children changed their design altogether!

The children had big ideas, and we ended up with some clothes for toys, some outfits to wear at home over the summer, some toys and beds for cats, dogs and hamsters, baby blankets for siblings, sweat bands and headbands, football shirts, stuffed toys and basketballs. The children then evaluated their final product against their design and talked about what went well and what they would improve if they were to make it again – we decided sharper scissors would definitely be beneficial!

We also spent the whole of Thursday undertaking our skills builder project, Community Café. The children were put into teams and were tasked with coming up with a theme for their café and a name based on their theme. They were then asked to make menu’s to show what their customers could purchase, decorate their café by making a banner and pictures/decorations for the walls and tables and set up their tables ready for their customers to come and visit! Part of the team were tasked with preparing the sandwiches, biscuits and drinks, which were all sent to the kitchen ready for the waiters to serve the patiently waiting customers.

Bramble Class came and visited Willow Classes’ cafes, where the children took orders, served their food and ensured that they provided fantastic customer service to their guests. We then switched roles and enjoyed some yummy Jam and Cheese sandwiches, biscuits and orange squash!

We were incredibly proud of how the children worked together, collaborating and communicating effectively to ensure a smooth service. Some of the children we didn’t expect to showed us their organisational skills, leadership skills and communication skills to work fantastically well within their teams.

Friday has been a lovely day where we have had the opportunity to make the most of the time we have had left with our wonderful classes – it has been so lovely to chat with them, find out what they have enjoyed this year and to find out what their plans are over the summer.

We are going to miss the children so much – they are a fantastic group of children with incredible personalities, they are a credit to you all and we have been incredibly lucky to work with them this year.

I personally will be looking forward to bringing my little boy in to meet the children at some point in the new school year once he has made his arrival and I have settled into life with 2 under 2 - I will miss the children so much and can’t wait to see how they all progress in Year 2!

Have a fantastic summer break, get plenty of rest, enjoy the sunshine and we look forward to seeing you all in September!

Best wishes,
The Year 1 Team

If you haven’t already, please bring in an old white or light coloured t-shirt that you don’t wear anymore (yours or an adults at home) by WEDNESDAY at the LATEST as we will be designing and repurposing an old piece of clothing into something brand new in our DT learning on Friday.

Reading

Thank you to everyone who has been logging their reading on our new Boom Reader app! Please ensure that you are reading EVERY DAY with your child and logging it on the Boom Reader app.

Spellings

There are no spellings this week.

Handwriting

Please follow the link below to access LetterJoin, a website which is really useful to support children’s letter formation and cursive handwriting. You can see how we use cursive script by following the tutorials and you can also download handwriting sheets to support your child’s handwriting practice at home.
The login details are as follows:
Username: bpa_3
Password: Year 1

Twig Science Reporter

Please follow the link below for lots of interesting Science articles which can be linked to lots of areas of our science learning. Some of our talk homework may be linked to this website so please keep an eye out for future blogs.

https://www.twigsciencereporter.com/

Transition week has come and gone and it has been so lovely to have our children back today to talk about all the things that they have been doing in their new classes this week!

Millie has enjoyed writing a story about the Yellow Submarine.

Tom has enjoyed doing a treasure hunt where the children had to hunt for facts about John Lennon. Tom could tell us that Lennon was born in Liverpool.

Ruben really enjoyed being outside, blindfolded on the obstacle course where his partner had to guide him across the wooden equipment using only their voice!

Emily also enjoyed a treasure hunt to find out all about Vivaldi, the children found out that his first name was Antonio! Dylan found out that Vivaldi was born in Italy! Hayley found out that Vivaldi’s Dad taught him how to play the violin.

Jack enjoyed learning lots of things about John Lennon. He did not know he was in the Beetles.

Delilah learnt that Vivaldi wrote more than 800 songs.

Toby enjoued English, he wrote a story about a picture. The picture showed a storm, the children used their imagination to write a story about getting shelter from a cave finding treasure whilst others went into the deep dark forest.

Ethan learnt that John Lennon was born on the 9^th of October.

Charlie enjoyed the Science lesson on Thursday afternoon where the children investigated floating and sinking.

One more week until we spread our wings and leave the Year 1 nest, we are looking forward to making lots of memories with the children over the final few days.

The Year 1 email address in a direct way of contacting the Year 1 Teachers: year1@buckdenacademy.org.

Best wishes and enjoy the lovely weather!
The Year 1 Team

With it being transition week next week, this week we would like you to talk to your grown ups at home about what you enjoy most about learning, something that you would like to share with your new teacher (a talent, something you enjoy, something that has happened to you), and something that you are looking forward to about moving up to Year 2. You could draw or write your ideas down or just be ready to share it with your new teacher on Monday!

Please bring in an old white or light coloured t-shirt that you don’t wear anymore (yours or an adults at home) by NEXT FRIDAY as we will be designing and repurposing an old piece of clothing into something brand new in our DT learning the following week.

Reading

Thank you to everyone who has been logging their reading on our new Boom Reader app! Please ensure that you are reading EVERY DAY with your child and logging it on the Boom Reader app.

Spellings

There are no spellings this week.

Handwriting

Please follow the link below to access LetterJoin, a website which is really useful to support children’s letter formation and cursive handwriting. You can see how we use cursive script by following the tutorials and you can also download handwriting sheets to support your child’s handwriting practice at home.
The login details are as follows:
Username: bpa_3
Password: Year 1

Twig Science Reporter

Please follow the link below for lots of interesting Science articles which can be linked to lots of areas of our science learning. Some of our talk homework may be linked to this website so please keep an eye out for future blogs.

https://www.twigsciencereporter.com/

Another week has flown by as we head towards the end of the Summer term!

We really enjoyed writing your children’s reports and we hope that you enjoyed reading about your children and how they have got on this year, we are incredibly proud of all of them.

This week the children have wowed us with their Maths learning as they have completed a reasoning paper to show us their understanding of the maths curriculum. We have also started learning how to tell the time to the nearest hour – we have learned that a clock face is just like a number line and when the small hand is pointing directly to the number, it must be o’clock! We will continue learning about this after Transition week.

The children have been getting themselves ready for Year 2 in our English learning this week through completing a piece of independent creative writing to share with their new teachers next week, as well as written their new teachers a letter to talk about themselves, what they are looking forward to and what they enjoy learning about.

The children had their final Sports Day practises ready for the big day today and they all enjoyed participating for their Houses – we are incredibly proud of them all for how they joined in and for how they cheered on their team mates as well as their friends in different houses!

We hope that the children have a fantastic four days with their new class teachers, and we look forward to hearing all about their new and exciting adventures when we get them back on Friday!

The Year 1 email address in a direct way of contacting the Year 1 Teachers: year1@buckdenacademy.org.

Best wishes and enjoy the lovely weather!
The Year 1 Team

Talk to your adult about the different things we have been learning about during Science week!

It would be fantastic if you could bring in an old white or light coloured t-shirt that you don’t wear anymore (yours or an adults at home), as we will be designing and repurposing an old piece of clothing into something brand new in our DT learning this half term!

Reading

Thank you to everyone who has been logging their reading on our new Boom Reader app! Please ensure that you are reading EVERY DAY with your child and logging it on the Boom Reader app.

Spellings

The children will be tested on the ‘ue/ew’ sounds next week. Please continue to practise these over the weekend.

Handwriting

Please follow the link below to access LetterJoin, a website which is really useful to support children’s letter formation and cursive handwriting. You can see how we use cursive script by following the tutorials and you can also download handwriting sheets to support your child’s handwriting practice at home.
The login details are as follows:
Username: bpa_3
Password: Year 1

Twig Science Reporter

Please follow the link below for lots of interesting Science articles which can be linked to lots of areas of our science learning. Some of our talk homework may be linked to this website so please keep an eye out for future blogs.

https://www.twigsciencereporter.com/

What a fantastic week we have had across the school to celebrate everything Science!

This week has been a bit different from normal – we started the week with a whole school assembly where we were told that we would be conducting an investigation into how planes fly and which type of planes would be the best to fly.

Year 1 conducted a comparative test through asking the question: Does the size of a planes wings affect how far it flies? We made three planes, one plane had big wings, one had medium sized wings and one plane had small wings.

The children predicted which plane they thought would fly the furthest and gave reasons for their predictions, before we then tested our planes by launching them all. We recorded our results and came to conclusions, thinking about the Science behind why each plane flew how it did. Some of the children gave some really fantastic explanations for why the plane with the big wings didn’t fly as far as we thought it would, and why the little wings didn’t fly very far either!

On Tuesday Mrs Carters son Oliver came into school and taught us all about Dinosaurs. The children loved learning which families the dinosaurs belonged to, learnt about their features and then had the challenge of sorting and classifying a range of dinosaurs into groups based on what they looked like and their features.

On Wednesday, we enjoyed researching about Water Conservation in our reading comprehension lesson, where the children read lots of information about how we can help our planet by saving water in different ways. The children enjoyed reading aloud, making notes on how they can help our environment and then created a Poster explaining what we can do to be super conservationists!

On Thursday we completed some observational drawings of our favourite animals, learning about George Stubbs, who drew detailed anatomical drawings of different animals and their body parts. The children paid attention to the details in their pictures and produced some fantastic artwork.

On Friday, the children researched their favourite animals and did some creative writing to tell us all about them. Giving them an exciting stimulus to write about really helped the children engage and produce some brilliant pieces of writing, which we are so proud of!

The Year 1 email address in a direct way of contacting the Year 1 Teachers: year1@buckdenacademy.org.

Best wishes and enjoy the lovely weather!
The Year 1 Team

In preparation for Science week, talk to your adults at home about how we can reduce our energy consumption in the house. What can we do to save energy? How can we try and reduce how much energy we use? We look forward to hearing your ideas!

It would be fantastic if you could bring in an old white or light coloured t-shirt that you don’t wear anymore (yours or an adults at home), as we will be designing and repurposing an old piece of clothing into something brand new in our DT learning this half term!

Reading

Thank you to everyone who has been logging their reading on our new Boom Reader app! Please ensure that you are reading EVERY DAY with your child and logging it on the Boom Reader app.

Spellings

The children will be tested on the ‘or/aw’ sounds next week. Please continue to practise these over the weekend.

Handwriting

Please follow the link below to access LetterJoin, a website which is really useful to support children’s letter formation and cursive handwriting. You can see how we use cursive script by following the tutorials and you can also download handwriting sheets to support your child’s handwriting practice at home.
The login details are as follows:
Username: bpa_3
Password: Year 1

Twig Science Reporter

Please follow the link below for lots of interesting Science articles which can be linked to lots of areas of our science learning. Some of our talk homework after Easter may be linked to this website so please keep an eye out for future blogs.

https://www.twigsciencereporter.com/

Wow, we have had an incredible week in Year 1. We would like to start by telling you how proud we are of each and every child in Willow and Bramble Class for how they conducted themselves this week and participated in their Year 1 Phonics Screening Check assessment. We were blown away by how confidently and happily each child came into their check and we are so proud of how well they have ALL done – we couldn’t have asked for a smoother run through and the children all came out smiling. Well done to each and every one of you!

This week has been a little different, as we have had a Foundation Subject focussed week, in which we have done lots of Art, Music, DT, Geography as well as Computing and Science, alongside completing our phonics checks.

The children loved creating their own landscape paintings based on the Artists Van Gogh, Claude Monet and Paul Cezanne, we used a range of tools including oil pastels, pencils and coloured pencils in their sketch books to draw and colour a range of different landscapes including countrysides and farmland. The children showed us a range of mark making techniques and loved exploring the different outcomes from their experimenting.

The children also enjoyed listening to a range of different styles of music, whilst imagining what kind of marks they would make on paper to represent the rhythm, pulse, beat and different instruments that they could hear. Next week the children will be creating their own graphic score to represent a piece of music before creating their own music to go alongside a score.

We have enjoyed learning about the different types of land use in Buckden, the children could identify that the land in our locality is used for housing, education, industry and for farmland. We also identified that the land is quite flat around Buckden which makes it useful to build on!

On Friday we learned about the importance of following instructions precisely, by giving each other instructions in pairs to build identical towers of cubes and draw identical pictures without looking! We learned the term ‘algorithm’ and will be looking at this in more depth next week on the Computers which we are very excited about!

The Year 1 email address in a direct way of contacting the Year 1 Teachers: year1@buckdenacademy.org.

Best wishes and enjoy the lovely weather!
The Year 1 Team

Talk to your adults about respsonsible consumption. What does it mean to consume something? Do we use everything that we buy? Do we throw much away? How could we repurpose the things that we have?

It would be fantastic if you could bring in an old white or light coloured t-shirt that you don’t wear anymore (yours or an adults at home), as we will be designing and repurposing an old piece of clothing into something brand new in our DT learning this half term!

Reading

Thank you to everyone who has been logging their reading on our new Boom Reader app! Please ensure that you are reading EVERY DAY with your child and logging it on the Boom Reader app.

Spellings

The children will be tested on the ‘er’ sound family on Tuesday next week. Please continue to practise these over the weekend.

Handwriting

Please follow the link below to access LetterJoin, a website which is really useful to support children’s letter formation and cursive handwriting. You can see how we use cursive script by following the tutorials and you can also download handwriting sheets to support your child’s handwriting practice at home.
The login details are as follows:
Username: bpa_3
Password: Year 1

Twig Science Reporter

Please follow the link below for lots of interesting Science articles which can be linked to lots of areas of our science learning. Some of our talk homework after Easter may be linked to this website so please keep an eye out for future blogs.

https://www.twigsciencereporter.com/

This week in Year 1 we have been going over our Arithmetic in Maths, using different methods for addition and subtraction.

In PE we have been praticising for Sports Day in a few weeks. We did the Egg and Spoon race, and the Sack Race. It was great fun and quite funny!

We also enjoyed doing Art this week, and looking at the landscapes of Vincent van Gogh, drawing his ‘Starry, Starry Night’. There are lots of budding artists in Year 1.

Year 1 have also been playing football nicely during our lunchtimes. We have been impressed with their behaviour and sportsmanship.

The children did brilliant independent write’s, using a picture of a boy in a jungle. There were some amazing adventure stories and lots of creativity.

In Science, we classified animals into Carnivore, Herbivore and Omnivore’s. Bramble class scared Mr Payne with their terrifying Carnivore impressions.

Today is Mr Payne’s last day with us as he has now qualified as a Teacher! We would like to thank him for all of his hard work and enthusiasm over the past two and a half months at Buckden, and for teaching the children in both Willow and Bramble class. He will soon have his very own class at a new school in September and we wish him all the best in his new and very exciting career!

The children will be undertaking their phonics screening check at the beginning of next week, please read with your children over the weekend and if you get the chance, have a go at playing some of the games on the websites below, where the children can practise sounding and blending in order to read a range of words.

We will be doing our best to ensure that every child is happy and comfortable when completing their phonics check, we can assure you that the children have had lots of practise doing these checks (one every other week since Easter) and are fabulous at undertaking them so please do not panic or worry as they are more than ready.

You will receive your childs result in their school report at the end of June.

https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/

https://www.phonicsbloom.com/uk/game/list/phonics-games-phase-5

The Year 1 email address in a direct way of contacting the Year 1 Teachers: year1@buckdenacademy.org.

Best wishes and have a lovely weekend.
The Year 1 Team

This week we have been learning about what plants need to survive. Talk to your adults about the FIVE things that plants need in order to grow.

If you would like to challenge yourself, please practise counting forwards AND backwards in steps of 2, 5 and 10!

Reading

Thank you to everyone who has been logging their reading on our new Boom Reader app! Please ensure that you are reading EVERY DAY with your child and logging it on the Boom Reader app.

Spellings

The children will be tested on the ‘ir’ sound family on Monday next week. Please continue to practise these over the weekend.

Handwriting

Please follow the link below to access LetterJoin, a website which is really useful to support children’s letter formation and cursive handwriting. You can see how we use cursive script by following the tutorials and you can also download handwriting sheets to support your child’s handwriting practice at home.
The login details are as follows:
Username: bpa_3
Password: Year 1

Twig Science Reporter

Please follow the link below for lots of interesting Science articles which can be linked to lots of areas of our science learning. Some of our talk homework after Easter may be linked to this website so please keep an eye out for future blogs.

https://www.twigsciencereporter.com/

This week in Year 1 the children have been showing off their creative writing skills in our English learning, we gave them a picture of Wonderland and they used their imagination to describe everything that they could see in the picture, including using adjectives! Some children even challenged themselves to write their own wonderland adventure stories and we are so proud of their hard work and super neat handwriting!

In Maths we have been looking at position and direction, including learning our left and right, language such as above and below, forwards and backwards. The children have learned in lots of practical ways and have shown a good understanding of positional vocabulary.

We have really enjoyed our Art again this week where we recreated Paul Cezanne’s Apples and Oranges using watercolour paints, where we really focused on mixing colours to create different tones.

Thank you so much for all of your hard work this half term, the children have made huge progress and we are so proud!

Please continue to read over the half term as this will continue to aid their phonics practice - here are a couple of phonics websites to help your children practise and prepare for their phonics ahead of their screening after the break.

https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/

https://www.phonicsbloom.com/uk/game/list/phonics-games-phase-5

The Year 1 email address in a direct way of contacting the Year 1 Teachers: year1@buckdenacademy.org.

Best wishes and have a wonderful half term break J
The Year 1 Team

This week we have been learning about halving and quartering quantities. Talk to your adults at home about how many parts we need to split different amounts into when we are halving, and how many parts we need when we are quartering. Can you find some toys or things at home to half and quarter?

If you would like to challenge yourself, please practise counting forwards AND backwards in steps of 2, 5 and 10!

Reading

Thank you to everyone who has been logging their reading on our new Boom Reader app! Please ensure that you are reading EVERY DAY with your child and logging it on the Boom Reader app.

Spellings

The children will be tested on the ‘ee’ sound family on Monday next week. Please continue to practise these over the weekend.

Handwriting

Please follow the link below to access LetterJoin, a website which is really useful to support children’s letter formation and cursive handwriting. You can see how we use cursive script by following the tutorials and you can also download handwriting sheets to support your child’s handwriting practice at home.
The login details are as follows:
Username: bpa_3
Password: Year 1

Twig Science Reporter

Please follow the link below for lots of interesting Science articles which can be linked to lots of areas of our science learning. Some of our talk homework after Easter may be linked to this website so please keep an eye out for future blogs.

https://www.twigsciencereporter.com/

This week in Year 1 the children have absolutely loved our DT project, where we put our cutting skills into practise by chopping different fruits up before threading them onto a skewer and eating our delicious fruit kebabs!

In Maths we have been learning how to quarter shapes, objects and quantities, the children have enjoyed using resources and themselves to quarter amounts – they loved getting outside on Thursday for our ‘Outdoor Learning Day’ where they were transformed into human cubes and quartered by Miss Kelly and Mrs Jaynes!

We have had an Arty week, where the children have explored Paul Cezanne through observational drawing, we were really impressed with the children’s care and attention to detail when drawing their own recreation of Cezanne’s ‘Apples and Oranges’, and they also loved trialling and testing their ideas when making Arcimboldo’s Fruit Faces!

Here are a couple of phonics websites to help your children practise and prepare for their phonics ahead of their screening after half term.

https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/

https://www.phonicsbloom.com/uk/game/list/phonics-games-phase-5

The Year 1 email address in a direct way of contacting the Year 1 Teachers: year1@buckdenacademy.org.

Best wishes and have a lovely weekend.
The Year 1 Team

This week we have been using Google Chrome to research different types of food packaging. The children have shown us that they can find the internet, use their typing skills to search on Google and can find examples of food packaging that they like. Continue to have a go at using your research skills at home.

If you would like to challenge yourself, please practise counting forwards AND backwards in steps of 2, 5 and 10!

Reading

Thank you to everyone who has been logging their reading on our new Boom Reader app! Please ensure that you are reading EVERY DAY with your child and logging it on the Boom Reader app.

Spellings

The children will be tested on the ‘er’ sound family on Tuesday next week. Please continue to practise these over the weekend.

Handwriting

Please follow the link below to access LetterJoin, a website which is really useful to support children’s letter formation and cursive handwriting. You can see how we use cursive script by following the tutorials and you can also download handwriting sheets to support your child’s handwriting practice at home.
The login details are as follows:
Username: bpa_3
Password: Year 1

Twig Science Reporter

Please follow the link below for lots of interesting Science articles which can be linked to lots of areas of our science learning. Some of our talk homework after Easter may be linked to this website so please keep an eye out for future blogs.

https://www.twigsciencereporter.com/

This week in Year 1

In Maths we have been learning how to find half of an object, shape and quantity. The children can talk about how a half is when something is split into two equal parts, and could fold shapes in half to show their understanding.

In PE this week we have been practising our running, throwing at a target and throwing and catching with a partner. The children showed some really promising skills ready for our Sports Day in June!

On Friday we really enjoyed using the internet to research different types of food packaging. Next week, we will be designing our own food packaging on Purple Mash using what we have found out from our research this week.

https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/

https://www.phonicsbloom.com/uk/game/list/phonics-games-phase-5

The Year 1 email address in a direct way of contacting the Year 1 Teachers: year1@buckdenacademy.org.

Best wishes and have a lovely weekend.
The Year 1 Team

This week we have started our DT project in which we will be designing and making our own fruit kebabs. Talk to your grown-ups at home about which fruit you would like to use for your own kebab – think about the fruits that you will be able to thread onto your skewer!

If you would like to challenge yourself, please practise counting forwards AND backwards in steps of 2, 5 and 10!

Reading

Thank you to everyone who has been logging their reading on our new Boom Reader app! Please ensure that you are reading EVERY DAY with your child and logging it on the Boom Reader app.

Spellings

The children will be tested on the ‘er’ sound family on Tuesday next week. Please continue to practise these over the weekend.

Handwriting

Please follow the link below to access LetterJoin, a website which is really useful to support children’s letter formation and cursive handwriting. You can see how we use cursive script by following the tutorials and you can also download handwriting sheets to support your child’s handwriting practice at home.
The login details are as follows:
Username: bpa_3
Password: Year 1

Twig Science Reporter

Please follow the link below for lots of interesting Science articles which can be linked to lots of areas of our science learning. Some of our talk homework after Easter may be linked to this website so please keep an eye out for future blogs.

https://www.twigsciencereporter.com/

This week in Year 1 we have enjoyed doing our coronation dance and practicing our singing of the Coronation song. We performed this on Friday afternoon in front of the whole school.

We have also enjoyed doing phonics, and seeing just how much we have improved over the last few months. The children should all be so proud of themselves.

In English, we have been continuing with our story The Secret Sky Garden and writing about emotions and even doing some drama. There were some amazing ‘freeze-frame’ performances of our feelings.

In our maths we were continuing our counting in 2s, 5s and 10s, and we learnt about arrays with baking trays. Our columns and rows knowledge is getting really good.

On Tuesday we went to the allotment, and the children had a great time planting seeds and seeing the chickens. Thank you to all of our parent volunteers.

https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/

https://www.phonicsbloom.com/uk/game/list/phonics-games-phase-5

The Year 1 email address in a direct way of contacting the Year 1 Teachers: year1@buckdenacademy.org.

Best wishes and have a lovely weekend.
The Year 1 Team

This week we have started our DT project in which we will be designing and making our own fruit kebabs. Talk to your grown-ups at home about which fruit you would like to use for your own kebab – think about the fruits that you will be able to thread onto your skewer!

If you would like to challenge yourself, please practise counting forwards AND backwards in steps of 2, 5 and 10!

Reading

Thank you to everyone who has been logging their reading on our new Boom Reader app! Please ensure that you are reading EVERY DAY with your child and logging it on the Boom Reader app.

Spellings

The children will be tested on the ‘er’ sound family on Tuesday next week. Please continue to practise these over the weekend.

Handwriting

Please follow the link below to access LetterJoin, a website which is really useful to support children’s letter formation and cursive handwriting. You can see how we use cursive script by following the tutorials and you can also download handwriting sheets to support your child’s handwriting practice at home.
The login details are as follows:
Username: bpa_3
Password: Year 1

Twig Science Reporter

Please follow the link below for lots of interesting Science articles which can be linked to lots of areas of our science learning. Some of our talk homework after Easter may be linked to this website so please keep an eye out for future blogs.

https://www.twigsciencereporter.com/

This week in English we have been looking at the character of Funni in our Power of Reading Text, which we now know is called ‘The Secret Sky Garden’. We have looked at emotions in detail and described how Funni feels about the different settings within the story.

In Maths, we have been learning to count in steps of 2, 5 and 10. We have looked at ‘groups of’ using models and images to support our understanding, for example 4 groups of 2 is 2, 4, 6, 8! The children enjoyed lots of counting games and their next steps are to be confidently counting both forwards and backwards in 2s, 5s and 10s.

In Geography, the children learned about the different types of farms that we have within our locality. We talked about what is produced on these farms and the children then went on to design their own farm, explaining why they had chosen this type of farm.

We are continuing to learn new phonic sounds, but are revising the sounds we have learned on a daily basis – if you would like to practise any phonics at home, please have a look at the websites below, which are great fun for the children and will support them in recalling the sounds we have been learning at school, as well as practise their segmenting and blending skills.

https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/

https://www.phonicsbloom.com/uk/game/list/phonics-games-phase-5

The Year 1 email address in a direct way of contacting the Year 1 Teachers: year1@buckdenacademy.org.

Best wishes and have a lovely weekend.
The Year 1 Team

This week we have started our new Science topic on Plants and Trees. Talk to your adults about the different types of plants and trees that you know. Can you remember what plants need to grow?

Reading

Thank you to everyone who has been logging their reading on our new Boom Reader app! Please ensure that you are reading EVERY DAY with your child and logging it on the Boom Reader app.

Spellings

The children will be tested on their phonic sounds ‘oy’ and ‘oi’ on Monday. Please continue to practise them over the weekend.

enjoy, boys, destroy, joyful, cowboy, noise, oil, avoid, boiling, joined.

Handwriting

Please follow the link below to access LetterJoin, a website which is really useful to support children’s letter formation and cursive handwriting. You can see how we use cursive script by following the tutorials and you can also download handwriting sheets to support your child’s handwriting practice at home.
The login details are as follows:
Username: bpa_3
Password: Year 1

Twig Science Reporter

Please follow the link below for lots of interesting Science articles which can be linked to lots of areas of our science learning. Some of our talk homework after Easter may be linked to this website so please keep an eye out for future blogs.

https://www.twigsciencereporter.com/

This week we are so impressed with the children who have come back from the Easter break with a fantastic attitude towards their learning!
In English we have started a new Power of Reading book (the name is yet to be revealed), and the children have been discussing the problem of littering in our local area and the impact it can have on wildlife. As a class, we wrote a letter to Mrs Anderson who is in charge of our eco-committee, to inform her of the problem and to try and persuade her to help us do something about it!

In Maths, we have been learning about capacity and volume. We have compared a range of different containers and thought about which ones have the biggest capacity, and which ones have the smallest capacity. We introduced the term ‘volume’ and will be looking at this in more depth on Monday!

In History we have started looking at our new Sustainable Development Goal, No Hunger, by looking at farming through the ages. We have begun to look at how farming has changed since the Tudor era, and compared it with the Victorian Period and how farming has developed up until now!

We are continuing to learn new phonic sounds, but are revising the sounds we have learned on a daily basis – if you would like to practise any phonics at home, please have a look at the websites below, which are great fun for the children and will support them in recalling the sounds we have been learning at school, as well as practise their segmenting and blending skills.

https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/

https://www.phonicsbloom.com/uk/game/list/phonics-games-phase-5

The Year 1 email address in a direct way of contacting the Year 1 Teachers: year1@buckdenacademy.org.

Best wishes and have a lovely weekend.
The Year 1 Team

Talk to your grownups at home about ALL of the phase 5 sounds we have learned this year. Think back to September when started with ay, ay, may I play. Can you remember all the sounds and their caption actions?

Reading

Thank you to everyone who has been logging their reading on our new Boom Reader app! Please ensure that you are reading EVERY DAY with your child and logging it on the Boom Reader app.

Spellings

The children will be tested on their phonic sounds ‘ie’ and ‘ea’. Please make sure you practise them over the holidays as they will be tested on the first Monday back after Easter.

Handwriting

Please follow the link below to access LetterJoin, a website which is really useful to support children’s letter formation and cursive handwriting. You can see how we use cursive script by following the tutorials and you can also download handwriting sheets to support your child’s handwriting practice at home.
The login details are as follows:
Username: bpa_3
Password: Year 1

Twig Science Reporter

Please follow the link below for lots of interesting Science articles which can be linked to lots of areas of our science learning. Some of our talk homework after Easter may be linked to this website so please keep an eye out for future blogs.

https://www.twigsciencereporter.com/

Wow, where has this term gone? The children have worked so hard in all areas of our learning and have topped off a fantastic half term with five phenomenal performances of their play ‘A Quest for Arthur’ to the school and to you all!   

In Maths this week the children have worked so hard to show us their knowledge and understanding of our arithmetic learning, including their knowledge of addition and subtraction, missing number problems and some children have shown an understanding of fractions of amounts – when we haven’t even taught them yet!

The arithmetic paper also highlighted some gaps in the children’s learning and we have responded to this by making a maths pack which will be attached to this blog for you to print at home and complete if you wish.   

We have had a wonderful couple of days completing this terms skills builder project, ‘Dream Space’. The children worked in teams to design and create their very own dream space based on a theme of their choice. The theme of the space had to be agreed between the pairs and their dream space had to include interior design and furniture that linked to their theme. The children showed fantastic teamwork skills, used their creativity skills to design and make their own dream spaces and they also had to stay positive whilst overcoming any barriers or issues that they faced on their journey. We are so proud of how they have worked in their teams and they produced some fantastic final products! Well done all of you J.

The children have worked so hard this term and we are now moving quickly into the final term of the year! We are working towards Year 2 and the children’s reading, maths and writing will be reflective of this.

Have a fantastic, relaxing Easter break full of rest, plenty of fun and lots of chocolate! We look forward to seeing you all in the Summer term where the hard work will continue!

The Year 1 email address in a direct way of contacting the Year 1 Teachers: year1@buckdenacademy.org.

Best wishes and have a lovely weekend.
The Year 1 Team

This week we have been learning about measuring length and height. We used cubes as a non-standard way of measuring objects and then moved on to use rulers and centimetres (cm) to measure the length and height of different objects around the classroom. Can you find some objects around your house to measure? Can you find a ruler or a tape measure to measure the length or height of some of your toys? Remember to start at 0 and to measure to the end of the object to find an accurate measurement, to the nearest centimetre.

Reading

Thank you to everyone who has been logging their reading on our new Boom Reader app! Please ensure that you are reading EVERY DAY with your child and logging it on the Boom Reader app.

Please make sure that you send your child into school with their reading folder every day as we will be reading with your children in school at least once a week.

Spellings

The children will be tested on their phonic sounds ‘ay’ and ‘ou’ this week. The ‘ay’ sound is usually found at the end of words and the ‘ou’ sound is usually found in the middle of words. Please remember to put your spelling books in your reading folder so that we can test you on Monday.

pay
clay
stray
Sunday
sway
mouse
shout
cloud
proud
hound

In Maths this week we have been measuring length and height using cubes as a non-standard way of measuring and using a ruler as a standard way of measuring.  The children were accurate in their measuring, remembering to start at 0 and to measure to the nearest centimetre by measuring all the way to the end of the objects.

In English this week we are super proud of the children who have had the chance to show us their fantastic writing skills by writing an independent piece of writing about Claude from our Power of Reading book, Claude in the City. The children earned lots of house points by remembering their capital letters, finger spaces, full stops, writing for sense, using cursive handwriting to present their work neatly and even extending their sentences using because.

On Wednesday morning we went on our trip to Buckden Towers! We went into the Kings Room and the Lady Chapel, where we learned about Henry VIII, Catherine of Aragon and some facts about the Tudors, including how they travelled, what they ate, what clothes they wore and how they lived, including washing and going to the toilet!

We also learned about the buildings themselves at the Towers. We learned that some of the buildings burned down, some of them were knocked down, and some of them fell down! The bricks in the oldest part of the building were made out of clay, and some of the bricks were black because they got burnt when they were being cooked! Instead of wasting the burnt bricks, the people who built the Towers decided to make patterns in the brickwork which we decided looked really pretty. Some of the buildings were rebuilt out of stone, and others were rebuilt out of bricks and cement.

Finally, we went into the Knot garden where we looked at the Knot patterns in the bushes, and a variety of plants and herbs which were used for dying wool to make clothes, as well as for medicinal purposes. The Tudors definitely put the things that they grew to very good use!

Thank you for bringing your children’s costumes into school this week – we did two dress rehearsals to Upper School and Lower School on Thursday and Friday and the children performed brilliantly!

For Wednesday 29^th March’s evening performance (which starts at 6pm), please ensure your child has been dropped at the School Office at 5:30pm so that we can get them changed and ready for the evening performance. An adult will be on the door from 5:20pm-5:40pm to ensure we get all children in and ready on time.

If you have any more shoeboxes, please could you bring them in as we will be using them next Wednesday to make our very own ‘Dream Space’ in a sustainable way!

The Year 1 email address in a direct way of contacting the Year 1 Teachers: year1@buckdenacademy.org.

Best wishes and have a lovely weekend.
The Year 1 Team

This week we have been learning about sustainability and looking after our environment. Talk to your grown ups about the different ways that we can help look after our community – think about how we can make it look nice, and what we can do to protect our local wildlife.

Reading

Thank you to everyone who has been logging their reading on our new Boom Reader app! Please ensure that you are reading EVERY DAY with your child and logging it on the Boom Reader app.

Please make sure that you send your child into school with their reading folder every day as we will be reading with your children in school at least once a week.

Spellings

The children will be tested on their High Frequency words on Monday. Please ensure your child has practised their dictation sentence(s) too.

In Maths this week we have been estimating where numbers up to 50 would be placed on a blank number line. The children enjoyed using what they knew to help them think about whether numbers should be placed in particular places and got more and more confident as we had more practise.

In Art this week the children have completed their own portraits of an adult in school who inspires them. The children have worked really hard to try and get the facial features in proportion and in the correct place. We are very excited to send them off to the Sky Arts Competition next week – if you haven’t handed in your permission slip yet, then please send it into the school office so that we can enter your child’s work.

We are very excited to introduce Mr Payne to the Year 1 Team – Mr Payne is training to be a Teacher and will be spending lots of time in Willow Class teaching the children and supporting their learning. Please say hello if you get the chance!

Next Wednesday morning we are very excited to be going on our trip to Buckden Towers! We have enough adults to support Willow Class as Mr Payne has joined us for the next 8 weeks, however we still need 2 adult volunteers to join Bramble Class – if you are free between 9-12pm on Wednesday morning please send us an email or speak with Miss Murkett to let her know if you would like to come and help. Thank you so much for your support.

Please make sure that your child’s costume has been brought into school by Monday 20^th March at the latest in a named carrier bag. Thank you!

If you have any more shoeboxes, please could you bring them in as we will be using them in the final week of term to make our very own ‘Dream Space’ in a sustainable way!

The Year 1 email address in a direct way of contacting the Year 1 Teachers: year1@buckdenacademy.org.

Best wishes and have a lovely weekend.
The Year 1 Team

This week we have been learning how to partition numbers into groups of tens and ones. Talk to your adults about a range of numbers up to 100. How many groups of ten are there? How many ones? For example, 47 is four tens and 7 ones.  

Reading

Thank you to everyone who has been logging their reading on our new Boom Reader app! Please ensure that you are reading EVERY DAY with your child and logging it on the Boom Reader app.

Please make sure that you send your child into school with their reading folder every day as we will be reading with your children in school at least once a week.

Spellings

The children will be tested on their High Frequency words on Monday. Please ensure your child has practised their dictation sentence(s) too.

In English this week we have been looking again at our Power of Reading book, Claude in the City. We learned that on one of his adventures, Claude found a doctors coat in the hospital and was mistaken for a real life doctor who was needed for an emergency…  We had to decide whether to Claude should lie and pretend to be a doctor to help the person in need or whether he should tell the truth and tell the lady he can’t actually help as he isn’t trained to save lives. The children gave some really thoughtful responses and we decided that honesty was the best policy!

In History this week, we have combined our Reading lessons by reading a passage of information all about King Henry VIII. We used our skills to find out about when he was born, when he was crowned King of England, why he didn’t stay married to Catherine of Aragon and when he died. We found out about his hobbies which included jousting, watching sport and holding great parties with lots of food!

In Computing this week, we have started our new topic on ‘Animation’. The children have created have now created their second (and third, fourth) pages to our stories and we have learned how to add animations to make our picture move and our stories more exciting. The children have loved the challenge!

The Year 1 email address in a direct way of contacting the Year 1 Teachers: year1@buckdenacademy.org

Best wishes and have a lovely weekend.
The Year 1 Team

This week on World Book Day we talked about our favourite books. Talk to your grown ups about your favourite types of books. Do you like story books? Or fact books? Fiction or non-fiction? Do you like funny books? Do you like silly books? Think about the different genres of books that we can read. You could even give some examples of each type of book. We would love to hear some of your recommendations.

Reading

Thank you to everyone who has been logging their reading on our new Boom Reader app! Please ensure that you are reading EVERY DAY with your child and logging it on the Boom Reader app.

Please make sure that you send your child into school with their reading folder every day as we will be reading with your children in school at least once a week.

Spellings

The children will be tested on their High Frequency words on Monday. Please ensure your child has practised their dictation sentence(s) too.

In English this week we have been looking in more detail at our Power of Reading book, Claude in the City. The children have enjoyed freeze framing a scene from the story and using their body language and facial expressions to portray the different characters. We had lots of fun guessing who the children were acting out.

In Maths this week we have been looking at numbers to 20 and related facts. We have worked hard to show the addition and subtraction number sentences that make up a fact family for a range of different representations of number, including part whole models and bar models

In Geography this week we talked about what a human and a natural feature is. We talked about the different features in Buckden, those that have been made by humans and those that have grown/been created by the environment.

In Computing this week, we have started our new topic on ‘Animation’. The children have created the first page of their own e-book and we are looking forward to adding sounds and animations to our stories to make them more fun and interesting to read!

Thank you for your contributions to World Book Day – the children loved sharing their favourite stories, listening to a range of stories and enjoyed being in their pyjamas all day!

The Year 1 email address in a direct way of contacting the Year 1 Teachers: year1@buckdenacademy.org

Best wishes,
The Year 1 Team

Best wishes,

The Year 1 Team

This week we have been focusing on using our number bonds to numbers within 10 to help us when adding ones to larger numbers. For example, if 2 + 3 = 5, we know that 12 + 3 must be 15. We looked at what was the same and what was different – the children could see the number bonds within the addition number sentences and could tell us that it was different because a 10 had been added. Challenge yourself to answer some trickier number sentences, using your bonds within 10 to help you.

Reading

Thank you to everyone who has been logging their reading on our new Boom Reader app! Please ensure that you are reading EVERY DAY with your child and logging it on the Boom Reader app.

Please make sure that you send your child into school with their reading folder every day as we will be reading with your children in school at least once a week.

Spellings

The children will be tested on their High Frequency words on Monday 20^th February. Please make sure you practise these spellings over the half term as it will really benefit the children’s writing.

In English this week the children have been learning about the different word classes that we use in our writing. We have learned that an adjective is used to describe, a verb tells us what someone is doing and a noun is a person, place or thing. The children used what they know about the character, Anna, from our Power of Reading text ‘How to Find Gold’, as well as their knowledge and understanding of adjectives, to help them write a character description about the small, adventurous, brave girl!

In PE this week the children really enjoyed our football session, where we put our dribbling and passing skills into practise in small group sessions, as well as practised shooting the ball towards a target. The children showed determination and perseverance in their lessons and we all had lots of fun!

In Art this week we have been looking at the artist Hokusai who used a printing technique to create beautiful pictures of water. The children had such fun designing their own wave using a technique called relief printing. The children drew their wave design onto a piece of cardboard, before using string to cover the design. They then used a roller to paint over their print design before printing it into their sketchbooks. The children’s designs were successful and they had a great time learning a new technique!

Thank you all for attending our Spring Term Parents Evening this week, it was really fantastic to sit and have a proper chat with you about your children and their progress so far this week. We are really proud of how far they have all come since September and can’t believe that we are already halfway through the year!

** Maths Packs **

Lots of parents queried about how to support Maths at home during our Parents Evening appointments. We have sent home a maths pack for each child with some information on our Maths learning, including the use of part-whole models, fact families, using a number line for addition and subtraction as well as missing number problems. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to drop us an email, and we will do our best to help where we can.

** Shoebox Appeal **

Could you please save any spare shoeboxes that you have at home and send them in with your children next half term – we will be designing and making our very own sustainable sensory gardens as part of our skills builder project and ideally we would like the children to have their own – please keep boxes you may have as we would love to take them off your hands!

** Phonics Screening Check Information Afternoon 3:30-4:00pm **

An email was sent out yesterday to inform you that we will be holding a Phonics Screening Check Information Afternoon for ALL parents on Tuesday 21^st February 2023 from 3:30-4:00pm. Children are welcome to attend this meeting as we are aware that it is taking place straight after school. We will also be recording the meeting if you are unable to attend – please drop us an email at year1@buckdenacademy.org either way to let us know if you will be attending or if you would like a copy of the video recording sent to you after the meeting has taken place.

It has been an incredibly busy start to 2023 and we are so proud of how the children are continuing to show us their fantastic work ethic and enthusiasm for learning – please enjoy a well-deserved rest over half term and we look forward to seeing you all back on Monday 20^th February.

Best wishes,
The Year 1 Team

This week we have been learning about reptiles. We had lots of fun exploring what their features are and could name lots of different types of reptiles. Talk to your grownups about what you have learnt.

Reading

Thank you to everyone who has been logging their reading on our new Boom Reader app! Please ensure that you are reading EVERY DAY with your child and logging it on the Boom Reader app.

Please make sure that you send your child into school with their reading folder every day as we will be reading with your children in school at least once a week.

Spellings

The children will be tested on their High Frequency words on Monday. Please ensure your child has practised their dictation sentence(s) too.

In English this week Bramble Class have been exploring Anna’s character in our Power of Reading book, ‘How to Find Gold’. The children could talk about what she looks like, and what her personality is like based on what we know about her in the story!

In Willow Class the children have used their story boards to support them in writing their own adventure story about finding gold! The children had some amazing ideas and used everything that we have been learning in our writing sessions to help them in their independent work. We are really proud of their finished stories! J.

We finished the week with an end of unit assessment in Maths to give the children an opportunity to show us their understanding of number and place value to 20. The children have worked really hard and we are really proud of their learning!

This week in our Global Learning topic ‘Can we Sail from here to the Sea?’ took us on a walk down Mill Road to Buckden Marina. The children completed an environmental survey to think about the locality and how we feel about it. The children identified the River Great Ouse as a natural feature of the environment and we talked about how the Marina itself was made by humans in 1963 and houses over 200 boats! We will be exploring the journey of the River Great Ouse from source to sea next week and finding out if we really can sail from here to the sea!

Thank you so much to our fantastic parent volunteers for walking down to the Marina with us and supporting us with our learning – the walk was lots of fun and the children did so well to get down and back in the time that we had!

In Art this week we have been looking at the artist Hokusai who used a printing technique to create beautiful pictures of water. We have explored mark making to show different types of waves and have designed our own picture of water which we will be turning into a relief print next week – we are really excited to see the final outcome!

The Year 1 email address in a direct way of contacting the Year 1 Teachers: year1@buckdenacademy.org

Best wishes,
The Year 1 Team

This week we have been planning our adventure story to find gold! Tell your adults your story from start to finish, don’t forget the exciting details!

Reading

Thank you to everyone who has been logging their reading on our new Boom Reader app! Please ensure that you are reading EVERY DAY with your child and logging it on the Boom Reader app.

Please make sure that you send your child into school with their reading folder every day as we will be reading with your children in school at least once a week.

Spellings

The children will be tested on their High Frequency words on Monday. Please ensure your child has practised their dictation sentence(s) too.

In English this week we have continued to look at our Power of Reading book ‘How to find Gold’. The children have started planning their own adventure story about finding gold. We have story mapped our adventure and the children have worked hard to retell their story orally to their friends. We are looking forward to story boarding each stage of the story next week before we write them up in neat, and create our own zigzag books for our class library!

In Maths this week we have continued looking at numbers over 10. We have focused on place value, looking at how numbers above 10 have two digits, the first digit represents the value of 10 and the second digit represents the number of ones in the number. For example, 15 is 1 ten and 5 ones. We have looked at where these numbers sit on the number line and spent Thursday estimating where we think numbers would be placed on a blank number line. The children found this quite tricky so we are looking forward to tackling this again in our arithmetic sessions!

In History this week we continued to look at Captain James Cook and his voyages on the HMS Endeavour. We wrote a diary entry about his travels and will continue this next week!

In Computing this week, we have enjoyed practising our typing skills. The children worked so hard trying to use the correct fingers to press different buttons on the keyboard and enjoyed putting their new skills to practise by typing as many high frequency words as they could in 5 minutes!

The Year 1 email address in a direct way of contacting the Year 1 Teachers: year1@buckdenacademy.org

Best wishes,
The Year 1 Team

1. seventeen
2. eighteen
3. nineteen
4. twenty
5. eleven
6. twelve 
Sentence: I can count to twenty.

Talk to your grown-ups about the teen numbers. We know that ten is made up of ten ones, or it can be shown using one ten! Eleven is made up of 1 ten and 1 one. 12 is made up of 1 ten and 2 ones. Can you show your grown-ups the value of the numbers up to 19 drawing a ten stick and different amounts of ones?

Reading

Thank you to everyone who has been logging their reading on our new Boom Reader app! Please ensure that you are reading EVERY DAY with your child and logging it on the Boom Reader app.

Please make sure that you send your child into school with their reading folder every day as we will be reading with your children in school at least once a week.

Spellings

The children will be tested on their numbers eleven to sixteen on Monday. Please ensure your child has practised the dictation sentence too.

In English this week we have started our new Power of Reading book. We don’t know what it’s called yet but we have made some assumptions about the new characters that we have been introduced to! Anna is brave and likes adventures – the crocodile isn’t so keen! We are looking forward to finding out more about the story next week.   

In Maths this week we have been looking at numbers over 10. We have focused on place value, looking at how numbers above 10 have two digits, the first digit represents the value of 10 and the second digit represents the number of ones in the number. For example, 15 is 1 ten and 5 ones. The children have worked really hard using a range of manipulatives to show their understanding of place value and we will continue this next week.

In RE this week we learned about the story of the Creation of the Earth. We acted out the story and took pictures of our freeze frames. We will be using these next week to retell the story to help us remember it!

In PE this week the children have enjoyed learning about controlling a football using their feet, including dribbling, changing direction and stopping the football. The children showed good skill and control and we are really excited to focus on passing next week. In gymnastic the children were amazing at showing the different ways in which our bodies can move when we travel, and we looked at moving in unison with synchronised body movements, and even looked at mirroring our movements!

In History this week the children have enjoyed learning about Captain James Cook, who explored the oceans three times and discovered new countries on the other side of the world!

The Year 1 email address in a direct way of contacting the Year 1 Teachers: year1@buckdenacademy.org

Best wishes,
The Year 1 Team

This week we have introduced our new Science topic ‘Animals, Including Humans’. Talk to your grown-ups about the different types of animals that you know. Think about their features – do they have wings, legs, feathers, fur? We will be looking in more detail at this next week!

Reading

Thank you to everyone who has been logging their reading on our new Boom Reader app! Please ensure that you are reading EVERY DAY with your child and logging it on the Boom Reader app.

Please make sure that you send your child into school with their reading folder every day as we will be reading with your children in school at least once a week.

Spellings

Spellings will be coming home with the children on Tuesday 10^th January so that they can learn them. They will be tested on Monday 16^th January.

In English this week we have had a focus on letter formation, handwriting and dictation. The children have been using their knowledge of the phonemes that we have learnt so far this year to support them in writing sentences containing these sounds. We have also had lots of opportunities to practise our cursive handwriting, the children have impressed us with their hard work.   

In Maths this week we have been shape detectives! The children have learnt the names of lots of 3D shapes, have been building using a range of these shapes and have been talking about the properties of the shapes that they have used.

In RE this week we have talked about our wonderful world. We talked about creation, and how we can follow a number of rules to look after our planet. The children came up with some really considerate ideas and rules to follow in order to help our environment.

The children have come back in with a super attitude towards their learning and we are looking forward to seeing them continue to work hard!

The Year 1 email address in a direct way of contacting the Year 1 Teachers: year1@buckdenacademy.org

Best wishes,
The Year 1 Team

Talk about the objects that move around your house. Can you find any examples of objects that move using wheels? Explore how they move and be ready to share in our DT learning next week.

Please can you bring in ANY cardboard boxes that you have at home ready for our DT project on Tuesday. Any cardboard of any size (up to A4) would be greatly appreciated.

Reading

Thank you to everyone who has been logging their reading on our new Boom Reader app! Please ensure that you are reading EVERY DAY with your child and logging it on the Boom Reader app.

Please make sure that you send your child into school with their reading folder every day as we will be reading with your children in school at least once a week.

Spellings

The children will be tested on their spellings on Monday morning. This will be their final test before Christmas.

In English this week the children have been introduced to our new book, The Jolly Christmas Postman. We explored what a Postman/woman does as part of their job and we looked at some clues in the package that we received and predicted who the Postman may be delivering his satchel of parcels, letters and packages to! We began to story map the journey that the Postman took during his day at work.

In Maths this week we have continued to look at subtraction and the children completed their unit of work by showing us everything that they have learned so far. They did really well and could talk about our learning.

In PE this week, the children explored tag rugby through a game called Cat and Mouse. The mice had to try and escape the cats by dodging, ducking and pivoting to change direction and to avoid getting their tail (rugby tag) removed! They loved the challenge and we will continue to explore this next week in our outdoor PE lesson.

We have continued our skills builder project today where the teams of children created their own logo for their postal service. They used their listening, teamwork and creativity skills today and really showed us what they could do. We are really excited to complete this project next week, in which the children will sort and post all of the school’s Christmas cards on Friday!

If your child would like to send Christmas cards, please make sure that they write the recipients full name, year group and class name on the envelopes so that our little helpers can send the post to the correct class.

The Year 1 email address in a direct way of contacting the Year 1 Teachers: year1@buckdenacademy.org

Best wishes,
The Year 1 Team

This week we have been looking at subtracting or ‘taking away’ in different ways. Talk to your adults about the different ways of subtracting numbers, for example by using a number line to count back in ones, using objects and counting what is left and by counting up to find the whole.

Reading

Thank you to everyone who has been logging their reading on our new Boom Reader app! Please ensure that you are reading EVERY DAY with your child and logging it on the Boom Reader app.

Please make sure that you send your child into school with their reading folder every day as we will be reading with your children in school at least once a week.

Spellings

Although we sent the spellings out this week on our class blogs, the children didn’t come home with their spelling words this week as our printer has been poorly! We will therefore be giving you all another week to practise the spellings AND the dictation sentence. The children will come home with their spelling words tomorrow and will be tested on these spellings on Monday 12^th December to ensure that they have enough time to learn them.

In English this week the children have been looking at a range of different poems, with a focus on rhythm and rhyme. The children worked super hard in their teams to learn a poem as a group and we look forward to hearing them perform them to the class tomorrow!   

In Maths this week we have moved on to look at subtraction within 10. The children have explored taking away by moving objects away and counting the remaining objects left, counting up to the whole in order to find the missing part, and by using a number line to count back in jumps of one.

In Science this week we helped Ted in the rain! We conducted a fair test experiment to find out which material would make the best umbrella to keep Ted dry. We now know that a fair test means that we must test in the same conditions to get a fair outcome, and we also know that plastic is a super material to keep us dry as it is ‘waterproof’ which means that if water is poured onto it, it will run off rather than soak through, unlike materials such as paper, tissue and fabric. The children enjoyed predicting which material they thought would be the best and most of the children were correct!

The Year 1 email address in a direct way of contacting the Year 1 Teachers: year1@buckdenacademy.org

Best wishes,
The Year 1 Team

Group 2
some
Mrs
day
Mr
if
people
One day some people will ask for help. 
 

Group 3
some
children
Mrs
could
house
day
Some children could use a day at your house.
 

The children will be tested on these on Monday 5th December.

Talk to your grown-ups about the word ‘bendy’. What materials have the property of being ‘bendy’?. Find some objects around the house and predict if you think that they will bend or not. Which materials are good at bending? Which materials are not so good at bending? Why/why not?

Reading

Thank you to everyone who has been logging their reading on our new Boom Reader app! Please ensure that you are reading EVERY DAY with your child and logging it on the Boom Reader app.

Please make sure that you send your child into school with their reading folder every day as We will be reading with your children in school at least once a week.

Spellings

Please continue to practise your spellings over the weekend, they will be tested on Monday.

In English this week the children have been working hard on writing sentences that have been dictated aloud to them. We have been focusing on using our ears to hear every sound in each word, using a phonic mat to find the matching sound and writing the grapheme down to form words and sentences. We will continue to do this weekly to support the children’s confidence in writing more independently. 

In Maths this week we have been looking at Fact Families! The children have been given a part-whole model with a whole and two parts. The children have understood that a part + a part = the whole. They have also understood that when we take a part away from the whole, it leaves the other part. The children have built up their understanding and can now write four addition and subtraction facts to form a fact family!

For example:

2 + 4 = 6
4 + 2 = 6
6 – 2 = 4
6 – 4 = 2.

The children have worked so hard and can even find the missing part, using their knowledge of fact families to help them.

In Science this week we investigated the property of ‘bendiness’ in different materials. We found different objects around the classroom and predicted whether we thought they would bend or not. The children then tested the bendiness of the materials and recorded their findings. We learned that metal is the least bendy as it is super strong, and that paper is really bendy as it is very weak. We also learned that some plastic is bendy and other plastic isn’t – plastic is a very versatile material!

We have begun our Skills Builder project ‘Special Delivery’ in which we will be working in teams to sort and deliver the school’s Christmas cards this year. We worked on our listening, teamwork and leadership skills this week and will continue this on the build up to Christmas!

The Year 1 email address in a direct way of contacting the Year 1 Teachers: year1@buckdenacademy.org

Have a fabulous weekend, we hope to see you at the Light Switch on on Sunday!
Best wishes,
The Year 1 Team

Group 1

Group 2

Group 3

and

my

my

it

that

what

my

out

there

at

this

out

for

be

this

I

have

have

My mum and I went for a walk.

That has to be my best work.

What is out there?

My mum told me this is my best work.

Group 1

Group 2

Group 3

put

very

looked

old

put

very

by

saw

people

as

make

put

no

by

could

so

come

saw

He said no by the old man.  

I was very happy when I saw mum come by.

They all looked very happy after school.   

Talk about what we have been learning about in Maths this week. Addition is where two numbers are put together to find the total amount. Talk about the different ways and resources you can used to add two numbers together.

Reading

Thank you to everyone who has been logging their reading on our new Boom Reader app! Please ensure that you are reading EVERY DAY with your child and logging it on the Boom Reader app.

Please make sure that you send your child into school with their reading folder every day as We will be reading with your children in school at least once a week.

Spellings

Please continue to practise your spellings over the weekend, they will be tested on Monday.

We have had a busy week in Year 1!

In English we have been exploring poems and looking in detail at the language used to create an image. We have written a shared poem about Mud, using the children’s ideas and vocabulary to paint a picture in the readers’ mind.

In Maths this week we have introduced addition. We have practised adding two numbers together by counting them all (using resources to support us), by adding the second number to the first number, and using a number line to find the first number and count on in ones to find the second number. Today we solved word problems and the children were super maths detectives in finding the information and solving the number problems.

On Thursday we went on a walk around the village to identify the different types of industry in Buckden. We walked via the shops, to the library and the pre-school, past the tennis courts and the bowling green, down to the Church and the Towers, passing the Lion and the George Hotel on our way. On the way back, we spotted the dentist and of course, the school as part of Buckden’s industry. We talked about the different services these building provide for the community and the children behaved wonderfully, they were a credit to the school.

The Year 1 email address in a direct way of contacting the Year 1 Teachers: year1@buckdenacademy.org

Have a lovely weekend,
The Year 1 Team

After assessing the children on the first 100 High Frequency words before half-term, we have looked over the results, as well as the children's English books and picked out the gaps in the children's knowledge. 

We have started with the first words on the list which are easier to spell, however these words will get progressively more difficult as we move down the list. 

The children have been grouped, and you will find their spellings in their reading folders.

Please learn the spellings as well as the dictation sentence as this will be a part of the spelling test on a Monday.

The children will be tested on these on Monday 14th November 2022.

Kind regards, 
The Year 1 Team 

Each day should start with a capital letter.

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday

Practise writing the sentences:
On Monday I tried to count to ten.
On Tuesday I had fish for tea.
On Wednesday I had to play football.

These spellings will be tested on Monday 7th November.

The children will be sent home with them tomorrow.

The Year 1 Team