Seesaw!

Hello everyone,

We hope that you are keeping safe. You should have a QR code from school, which when you scan it will take you to your child's Seesaw page. This is what we will be using, alongside the home learning booklets, to keep in touch and post activities for your children to do.

The journal page is typically what the app opens on and here there will be stories, updates and videos.

There will be a button which says 'activities.' If you click this then you will be able to find work I have set, relating to posts on the journal page.

I hope this makes sense!

Miss Park

Week 9

This week, alongside our usual lessons, we celebrated Remembrance Day. We began with a circle time to share our thoughts and to see if we knew what a poppy was for and what remembrance day meant. Next, we listened to the story 'A Poppy is to Remember' by Heather Patterson. The story really allowed us to learn about the importance of remembrance day and what it means, we also learnt about what each aspect of the poppy symbolises. The most important part of our day was joining in with the 2 minutes silence, which began at 11am. We used this time to think about the soldiers who had lost their lives and to pay tribute to them. Finally, we used painted poppies using water colours, made poppy collages and also sun catches.

The children really enjoyed learning about Remembrance Day this week. We can't wait to see what the next week brings!

Miss Park and Miss Harker

Week 8

We have loved welcoming all our children and families back to school this week. We hope that you had a wonderful half term and that you are all now feeling refreshed.

This week we have enjoyed getting back in to the swing of our learning, particularly in phonics where we have learnt 5 new sounds and also in literacy where we have been reading Goldilocks and the Three Bears. In maths we have been looking at 3D shapes and describing their properties. 

Well done everyone on another amazing week of learning!

Miss Park and Miss Harker

Week 7

We cannot believe it is already the last week before October half term. What a wonderful first term back we have had! In maths we have recognised numbers to 20, practised counting forwards and backwards, found the missing number, found 1 more and 1 less and also developed our understanding of using part part while to reason and complete number sentences. In English we have explored the Three Little Pigs using Talk for Writing and Traction Man. In science we have been exploring materials and completed a very exciting experiment this week where we had to explore would be best to make Traction Man a waterproof outfit. The children also worked hard on Monday to be historians, observing, listening and making toys old and new.

We still have so much more to look forward to this week including R.E day on Friday.

We hope that the children have enjoyed being back at school just as much as we have and we can’t wait to see what the next half term brings!

Please stay safe.

Miss Park and Miss Harker

Exciting Trip (in school)

As you may be aware this year in Year 1 we had expected to visit Western Park Museum as part of our topic ‘Toys from the Past.’ Due to the Covid restrictions we are no longer able to do this, however, do not want the children to miss out on such an exciting opportunity. For this reason, we have decided to bring the toy Museum to school and so on Monday we will have a collapsed timetable and instead spend the whole day exploring toys old and new.
 

We would really love it if you could talk to your children about their toys at home and perhaps if you have some toys from your childhood you could share the memories and pictures with them. If you are able to take a picture of your child holding their favourite toy and send it into us at the parent email (parent@meynell.sheffield.sch.uk) then we would really appreciate this as we would love to include it on Monday, as one of our circle times.

The day its self will include children being given a ticket to the museum, which will be staged in the assembly hall. Children will explore the museum, sketching their favourite toys observing the different materials and finally, in the afternoon they will be able to make their own toys using materials such as clay. At lunchtime we would, weather permitting, like to take the children onto the snail park for a picnic. We have spoken to the children to pre-warn them that hot dinners will not be available on Monday and instead it will be packed lunch or cold dinners only. Please could you talk to them about this change at home so they are well prepared and able to decide that lunchtime option which best suits them.

Thank you so much for your support. We hope this learning opportunity will create special memories for our children after such an uncertain time.

Miss Park and Miss Harker

Week 6

We are blowing our teachers away with our determined work ethic! This week we have loved our phonics lessons, particularly partner reading. Our favourite story to read this week has been The Lorax. I wonder if the children can show the grown ups at home how to Fred Talk and read the word?

We know lots of grown ups are keen for their children to be sent home with new reading books, however we are just finalising how we can do this in the most Covid friendly way possible. We are so sorry for the delay and will send more information out at the start of next week.

Another brilliant week! Well done class 3 & 4!

Miss Park and Miss Harker

Week 5 

There is a big bad wolf on the loose! 

We could not believe our eyes when we set foot in our classroom earlier this week, someone or something had blown our room down! The children worked hard to look for clues, ask questions and investigate who could commit such a crime. Our prime suspect is the big bad wolf. We have been able to have lots of fun using role play to explore the characters in the story and also with our writing work where we have created instructions to catch a big bad wolf, wanted posters and a book review. We have worked so hard!

In Maths we have been practising our counting backwards from 20 and finding 1 more and 1 less than a given number. The children were excellent at finding one more and have worked really hard to become just as confident with the concept of 1 less. This is something you can practice at home too! 

We can't wait to start our new story next week: Traction Man! Well done boys and girls.

Miss Park and Miss Harker

Parent phone calls home

Thank you so much to all the families who took the time to speak with us over the phone this week. It was so lovely to speak to you about how your children are doing and to see how you are, particularly for Miss Harker who enjoyed getting to know her new families. We miss you so much! We know some of you were unable to answer or missed the call and we would just like to reassure you that as soon as we are able to we will call you back. This will likely be Tuesday afternoon but we will do it sooner if possible.

Many of you were asking about the best way to help support your child's progress and so we have put together a few website links of games and learning materials that you can access for free at home. As always, reading at home every night is so important and will help support your child's development. Next week we will begin to send home homework and reading books too. Please ask your child's class teacher if there is any other support you would like and they will be happy to help.

If the links do not work directly, please copy and paste them into your search bar.

Oxford Owl RWI Free eBooks -  https://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/library-page?view=image&query=&type=book&age_group=&level=&level_select=&book_type=&series=Read+Write+Inc.#

Topmarks Maths - https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/5-7-years/counting

Thank you

Miss Park and Miss Harker

Week 4:

Another wonderful week learning and exploring in Year 1. We are so impressed with our children, they must be the best Year 1's in the world! It is lovely to see how settled they are now and confident too.

This week we have continued reading The Three Little Pigs. We enjoyed pretending to be Mummy Pig and practising our questioning during a hot seating activity to find out if the pigs were safe.

In Maths we have been introduced to ten frames. This has been a great way to practice counting, matching quantity to numeral and to also extend our reasoning and problem solving skills. One activity, which we so good at, was using the ten frame to take our animals on a picnic. There were 10 animals in total and we used to ten frame to see how many items of food and drink we had. We could see that there were only 5 sandwiches, when we needed a total of 10. We decided that we could make another 5 sandwiches so that the animals had one each or we could ask 2 animals to share 1 sandwich. 

We have so many exciting new challenges for next week that we can't wait to share with you.

Miss Park and Miss Harker

P.E Kits!

Please can we ask that you send a P.E kit in to school with your child before our next P.E session next week. This can stay in school and we will send it home to you at the end of each half term. P.E is every Tuesday afternoon. The children have loved P.E so far!

Thank you so much.

Miss Park and Miss Harker

Week 3:

This week the we have begun our topic of The Three Little Pigs. We have enjoyed cutting and sticking to help us sequence the story and also making puppets to help us retell the story. When we have had a little more practice we hope to share a video with you so that you can see how brilliant we are! In maths we have started to look at place value, this week our focus has been order numerals and number formations. We have enjoyed our second P.E lesson with Mrs Gawler this week where we were able to use the matts to practice our gymnastic skills and balance.

Another fabulous week!

Miss Park and Miss Harker

Week 2:

This week we have taken part in daily phonics lessons and have enjoyed sharing the story The Rainbow Fish. We have thought about the stories setting and written character descriptions, then we had a go at acting it out with the puppets we made in class. In maths we have been exploring 2D and 3D shapes, creating our own shape sculptures and describing what we can see. Its been a brilliant week and the children have continued to wow us with their positive can do attitudes!

Well done Year 1

Miss Park and Miss Harker

Week 1:

What a wonderful week in Year 1! We are so proud of our children as they have taken the changes in school in their stride. It was lovely to see friend reuniting and playing together again.

This week we have enjoyed exploring our new provision and classrooms, meeting our new teachers and seeing our friends. We have shared lots of stories and circle times and proven to our teachers that we are SUPERSTARS. We can't wait to see what next week brings!

Miss Park and Miss Harker

Welcome to Year 1!

We are so excited to welcome back our wonderful families and children! If you have any questions please don't hesitate to contact us. We have so many exciting topics this year that we can't wait to explore with you. We are sure that we will make lots of lovely memories all together! Our team is made up of 6 members of staff: Mrs Gawler is the Key Stage 1 lead, Miss Park and Miss Harker are the class teachers and Mrs Reed, Miss Bellhouse and Miss Elwood are our wonderful learning support assistants.

We know it can be a little tricky to speak with Mrs Gawler, Miss Harker and Miss Park during drop off and collection at the moment, but please know you can ring us and that we are still here for you.

Miss Park and Miss Harker