What we have been learning this week

In literacy this week the children have been developing their imagination in preparation for creative story writing over the next couple of weeks. The children went outside to look and listen for anything that was travelling on a journey. We spotted planes, cars, bikes and birds (we looked carefully to see if we could spot any Minpins from one of Ronald Dahl's stories travelling on the birds). The children then returned to the classroom to imagine and plan their own journey story. They were asked to plan ideas for a character, how they travel, where they go and what happens on their journey. In a following session they developed their ideas into a story sequence using a 'story mountain' format. This helps the children understand that most stories follow a sequence of beginning, middle and a problem and an ending. The children will use all of this planning to write their own stories about going on a journey.

In maths this week we have focused on money. The children have used their knowledge of counting in 2s, 5s and 10s to help them count totals of coins. They have also been learning to make various totals to pay for things. To help with this the children were asked to use any number fact knowledge they already know, eg, something costing 4p can be paid for using double 2p. For more challenging totals they were also taught to try and use the highest value coin they could first, and then count on from that to find out how much more they still need, eg, something costing 13p.  10p is the biggest coin you can use, so count on from 10 to 13 to find out you still need another 3p. How can this be made?

The children have all spent an afternoon in Badger class this week to begin prearping to be Yr 2s! They also enjoyed meeting their new teacher, Mrs Bartley, on Tuesday afternoon.
 

What we will be learning next week

Next week is our whole school "Staying Safe Week". In literacy we will focus on lots of speaking and listening tasks to discuss issues and share understanding and views. In maths we will continue to learn about using money but will move on to using subtraction to calculate change when paying too much.

Home learning

To support learning from this week it would be very useful to engage in discussions about how to pay for items when out and about over the next few days. These are some example questions. Some are specifically about calculating and others are more general.

• What coins can I use to pay for this?
• What will happen if we pay too much?
• What are some other ways to pay for something apart from coins and notes?
• If you had £1 what would you do? Spend or save?
• Looking at and discussing prices of familiar items in shops.