Welcome to Robin Class

Weekly updates

26th April

This week we have spent a lot of time talking about plants, looking at seeds and identifying flowers and trees in our school grounds. We have found tulips, daffodils, daisies and dandelions, as well as apple and pear trees. We have planted some sunflower seeds and are looking after them very carefully. On your journey to and from school it would be great if you could continue to identify some common plants.

Term 5 - 19th April

What a brilliant first week back! We've been looking at mass in Maths, beginning to write code in computing and even tried apple and honey as part of our learning around Rosh Hashana in RE. The children have settled in nicely and we look forward to seeing you all at Parents' Evening next week. As always, keep up the Doodle and reading - it's so valuable. Thank you

28th March

Robin class ended the term on a real high this week. On Monday, we were visited by the Earth Science Centre who came in to talk about fossils and bring some real fossils in for children to see. It was fascinating looking at lots of different fossils: ammonites and Trilobites which were over 250 million years old. The children loved exploring these and then they had a go at creating their own out of clay! We then read a story about Mary Anning before learning how a fossil is made. To test their knowledge, you could ask them about what a fossil is made out of, or even what word starts with 'u' that tells when a fossil comes to the surface and the one that starts with 'e' around when the cliff face begins to break away.

As always, we are so proud of our Robins. Have a great break - please continue to keep reading over Easter. 

Thank you for your continued support. :)

22nd March

Over the last few weeks, in maths, we have been thinking about numbers to 50 and their place value. We have been making the numbers using tens frames, bead strings and base 10 equipment, and counting how many tens and how many ones they have. We have also been placing these numbers on a number line and finding one more and one less. 

Any time you can spend at home, helping your child count forwards and backwards between 0 and 50, and to find one more and one less than a given number would be wonderful.

15th March

What a fantastic STEM week we have had! On Tuesday we worked in house groups to build the tallest tower we could, which could hold up a can for 10 seconds. We had some very tall, wobbly towers and some slightly smaller, more sturdy towers. Well done everyone, you worked brilliantly with people from all year groups and thought very carefully about how to construct your towers. 

In Robin Class, we have been investigating floating and sinking. We have been building boats and testing how many small elephants they could hold. Thank you to everyone who attended our STEM fayre and to Robin Class who lead our stall so sensibly.

8th March

On Thursday we had a wonderful time celebrating World Book Day! Robin Class looked amazing in their adjectives costumes and could explain what they had dressed up as. Throughout the day we took part in a book swap, and did some paired reading with Year 5. Thank you to everyone who came in to read with us in the afternoon.

In case you haven't found the QR code for our Jack and the Beanstalk video, here it is!

23rd February

It has been wonderful to see so many members of Robin Class engaging with reading this week, and being very keen to read at least 4 times to an adult. We will be checking the reading records, for our challenge, every Monday.

This week would like you to send us the photos! We would like to update our reading display with photos of the class reading at home. If you have a photo we could use, please either send in a paper copy or email it to the office. Many thanks.

9th February

In DT this term we have been designing and making windmills. Our structure needed to be stable and stand up on it's own. It also needed to turn in the wind. Everyone showed great perseverance and independence, creating stable structures and problem solving along the way. We then tested our windmills to see if they would turn, and found solutions if they did not. Well done Robins!

2nd February

This week we have been studying and learning the story 'The Leaf Thief' by Alice Hemming. We created actions for the story and performed it. This helped us to know the structure of the story so that we could write our own. We had stories of dogs losing bones, penguins losing icebergs and even a walrus losing his fish!

Here is the first part of the story. 

26th January

Geography and Eco Week

As part of our Geography and Eco week learning, we have been finding out about how diverse our capital city is, as well as learning about the human and physical features of both London and our Local area.

We looked at maps of the area and spotted the different features, then we went for a walk to see if we could find them. We were all very good at reading the maps and working our where we were.

In DT, we have been making models of some of the human features (landmarks) of London.

19th January

We are very excited to welcome Mrs Welch into our class this term. She is currently undertaking her teaching placement with us and will be with us until February half term. We know you will make her feel very welcome. She has been amazing and loves spending time with Robin Class.

This week, we have been exploring numbers to 20, begining to write a narrative about the seasons changing using the book 'The Leaf Thief' and also continuing to learn the basics of coding in Computing. It has been great fun doing all of this! We have also been learning about the 'Lost' stories in RE. Children have been busy retelling these to each, and exploring how the Lost Sheep was all about how God cares for everyone as part of our learning about Christianity. Have a lovely weekend. 

12th January

In Phonics this term we are revising the Phase 5a Grapheme-Phoneme Correspondence which we learnt in term 2. We will be reading and spelling words containing these sounds, as well as continuing to learn the Phase 5 Common Exception words. We wanted to share this video of us pronouncing each sound correctly.

5th January

What a lovely way to start the term! Robin Class enjoyed a trip to the library on Thursday morning. We listened carefully to the stories, and chose some books to bring back to class.

19th December

Merry Christmas from all of the Robins. We have been busy making this week: baking Christmas biscuits, making Christmas cards and reindeer food. We also got some PE and RE in there for some good measure too! Children have shown a great understanding of the Holy Trinity. 

Today, we had a Christmas sing-a-long and our Christmas Party. We hope you all have a lovely break and see you on the 4th!

15th December

We have continued our learning about shapes this week. We have been printing using 3D shapes, and noticing which 2D shapes it creates. We have also been creating our own repeating pattern wrapping paper.

8th December

In maths this week we have been learning about 3D shapes. We have been learning the names cube, cuboid, sphere, cylinder, cone and pyramid. We have made towers out of the shapes, thinking carefully about the best position for each, based on it's features. Would a sphere be good at the bottom of a tower? We have also had a go at making our own 3D shapes out of playdough, making sure we had the correct number of faces. Can you find any 3D shapes at home?

1st December

Wow! Another busy week in Robins. We have been fortunate to try some new things. The children have been working on courage and putting themsleves out of their comfort zones thinking about how they travel on the apparatus. We have also been incredibly busy working on our Christmas production. The singing is sounding angelic.

We also had our wellbeing Wednesday for this term where we tried out VX ball - we all had great fun!

24th November

As you will have seen from the newsletter, this week we have been creating stained glass windows for the Midsomer Norton Christmas Art Trail. Robin Class tried very hard to draw around templates, and cut out the shapes neatly. The end results are wonderful!

In maths this week we have been learning about subtraction. We have told 'first, then and now' stories and then written the subtraction as a number sentence. We are beginning to make links between the addition facts that we know, and subtraction facts 

eg if we know that 3 + 4 = 7, then we know that 7 - 3 = 4. 

17th November

Maths Week

As part of our learning during maths week we have been naming 2D shapes, and thinking about their similarities and differences. We have been spotting shapes in the world around us.

We looked at the natural art created by Andy Goldsworthy, and thought about how he uses shape. We then tried to create some of our own! We also made pictures using only 2D shapes.

In computing, we created pictograms showing the results of dice rolls. Well done Robins, you've had a super week of learning!

10th November

Another fab week with the Robins this week! We have been on a dragon hunt, using our knowledge of adjectives to describe. We even added some similes. We have also been reflecting on remembrance and why we have a Remembrance day. We have been so impressed with how thoughtful all of our children are. We also had fantastic fun in PE looking at how we move with synchronisation and differently as animals. We all loved being snakes!!! Have a great weekend and see you on Monday!

3rd November

It's been so wonderful having Robin class back in this week. We have missed them! We have been incredibly busy looking at number bonds, the importance of History and what is meant by past and present and also being collaborators in PE, focusing on working as a team and our listening skills. We are looking forward to learning about the Shirley Hughes book, Dogger, next week. We will also be talking about Remembrance and why we remember.  Have a lovely weekend!

20th October

This week, as part of our Black History Month learning, we have been finding out about Rosa Parks and how she fought for equality. We have created some fact file about Rosa Parks, which the children will be bringing home.

We have also enjoyed playing some music this week. We used xylophones to keep a steady beat.

13th October

It was so lovely to see so many of you at our parent workshop this week. The class loved showing you the learning they have ben doing - retelling the story of 'Giraffes Can't Dance' and investigating line and media in art. Thank you very much for coming in!

6th October

This week we have tried something new, again! On Wednesday we had a go at Tchoukball. We needed to concentrate on our throwing and catching skills in order to bounce the ball off the net to score a point. Well done Robins, you all worked really hard and improved lots during the session, thinking about the best position to stand in to score a point.

29th September

What a wonderful week of learning we have had in Robin Class! In maths, we have started to compare numbers. We have made towers of cubes and used the words 'more', 'the same' and 'fewer' to compare them. We all had fun trying something new during our taekwondo taster session, particulrly when we got to try using the nunchucks!

We enjoyed singing our song, 'Big Red Combine Harvester', to the whole school in our harvest assembly.

22nd September

Another busy week in Robin Class. We have enjoyed learning about the story - Giraffe's Can't Dance and creating some alliterative sentences, alongside using-ing verbs to describe what a character is doing. We've had lots of lonely leopards, crazy crocodiles and gentle giraffes dancing around. As well as this, we have been exploring the creation story in Christianity and created a story wheel to help us remember what happened on each day. We also took part Wellness Wednesday, where we created some collaborative art. Children were connecting with each other using different lines and media to produce some fabulous Under The Sea artwork. Well done Robins. 

15th September

What a week to be a Robin!

This week, we had our first visit to the library, went outside and did some maths and continued to learn all about different creatures. Many of the Robins are becoming super confident about telling you what a noun is and we can't wait to learn all about verbs next week. We will be reading one of Mr Lyle's favourite books - Giraffes Can't Dance! Well done Robins - a super week!

8th September 2023

What a brilliant week we have had in Robin Class! We have been looking at sorting and counting in Maths, writing postcards about our summer break in English. Children have been busy creating self portraits in Art and also learning about Alexander Bell and the telephone in History. It's been great seeing them settle in to life as Year 1 children. We are very much looking forward to next week. 

Our TAs in Year 1 are Mrs Cockerill and Mrs Dando who will be with us throughout the week.