This week in Year 1, we have started our exciting new writing unit on setting descriptions. We have kept this closely linked to the character descriptions we recently completed and have focused our writing on the Gingerbread House to continue our learning around the Gingerbread Man story. The children came up with some wonderful ideas and used fantastic adjectives to describe the setting.

In Maths, we have been revisiting halves and have also introduced quarters. This has been quite tricky, but the children have worked incredibly hard using lots of practical resources to help represent four equal groups and find a quarter of a quantity. We are so proud of their perseverance and determination.

In Geography, we recalled the four countries of the UK and named their capital cities. We then explored different landscapes, including mountains, rivers and coasts, and discussed the features of each one. The children had great fun sorting pictures into the correct groups.

In PSHE, we read the story Dogger and discussed the emotions people may feel when they lose a special belonging. We talked about how Dave felt after losing his toy dog, Dogger, and the children used some lovely adjectives to describe his emotions.

Well done, Year 1 — what another busy and successful week!

Year 2

This week in English, we continued looking at features of diaries. We created some bullet point lists of the things that Charles Darwin could have seen in the Galapagos Islands and we are going to use some of these ideas when we write our diaries. We also thought about facts and opinions and how we can use both in a diary to recall key events and share thoughts and feelings.

In maths this week, we started a new unit on time. We had a recap of learning from Year 1 and identified times that were o’clock, half past, quarter past and quarter to. We used our knowledge of fractions to imagine that the clock has been split in half or quarters!

In Science, we continued thinking about habitats. We conducted some research to find out more about different habitats and what can be found there. We have looked at mountains, polar regions, jungles, the savannah, oceans and deserts.

In RE this week, we were again thinking about community. We thought about our special places in the community and why we go there.

Our PSHE this week focussed on how friendships can change. We used the story ‘On Sudden Hill’ to think about both positive and negative changes that can happen in friendships and how we can deal with them. We also thought about who can help us with friendship problems and revisited the idea of trusted adults.