Goodbye Year 1!
It has been a great pleasure to teach 1P this year. I am so proud of every boy for the effort and perseverance they have demonstrated each week; for their inclusivity and kindness towards each other; for their polite manners and the pride they have taken in all that they have achieved. They are a credit to their families and to the school. We have shared many enriching experiences from Titanic workshops to Circus Skills training, alongside a full curriculum. Their progress has been a joy to be part of.
I wish all the boys and their families the very best for the future and, of course, a wonderful summer. Thank you for all your warm wishes at the end of term. I leave you with some final photos of our work this week on volume and capacity, which involved lots of water (everywhere)!
Mrs Todd
London Trip
What an amazing week we have had in 1P, with lots of experiential learning.
We started off with a terrific Sports Day, where the 1P boys racked up numerous 1st, 2nd and 3rd place finishes. All the boys tried their best, despite the heat and the pressure of performing in front of an audience, to achieve great results on the day. Most importantly, they had fun.
Then we were straight into the highlight of our week: our school trip to London. What an amazing day! Our first sightseeing opportunity came whilst we were still on the coach as we sighted Wembley Stadium in the distance. We then passed Lords Cricket Ground with its wonderful modern stands before heading to our drop off point at the Royal Mews. From there we walked to Buckingham Palace where the boys were delighted to see that the Royal Standard flag was flying, meaning King Charles III was in residence! In fact it was extra special because The King was preparing to host the Emperor of Japan that same day! Then we took an open top bus tour of London with a wonderful guide who was rather impressed by 1Ps knowledge. That finished near to the Houses of Parliament and from there we took a river cruise to Tower Pier. The boys were delighted to spot so many of the magnificent landmarks we have been learning about. We finished at the Tower of London, with packed lunches eaten and time for an iced lolly before heading back to school on the coach. I was so very proud of how well the boys engaged with the day. They behaved beautifully, they demonstrated their knowledge, and were a credit to their families and the school. Well done to all!
Our week finished with a wonderful Circus Skills workshop during which the performer juggled with swords whilst standing on a wobbling board! Thankfully the boys were using soft scarves when it was their turn to learn some juggling skills! A thoroughly enjoyable activity for all.
What a great week! I will leave you to enjoy the London photographs.
Mrs Todd
Royal Standard
It has been lovely to finally see some sunshine this week, with the boys particularly enjoying their play and lunch times. We also managed to have our whole school and class photographs taken outside.
We have continued our work on time, this week focusing on how many seconds, minutes, hours, days and weeks particular activities might take. We used the sand timers to measure how long some activities in school take and we tried to count in time to an exact minute.
Our English lessons were based on the story ‘Happy Birthday Royal Baby’ by Martha Mumford, about a baby who is not enjoying his birthday party until an empty cardboard box arrives. I am sure many parents will relate to that story! The boys made lists of party foods and wrote their own invitations.
In Humanities we learned about several royal residences, where they are located and who lives there. We also looked closely at the Royal Standard flag, learning about the four quartiles and what they represent.
Then we revisited our work on landmarks in Art by fashioning London buildings out of clay. It was wonderful to see the boys building on their skills learnt when they made clay Titanic ships earlier in the year.
Super work, boys! Enjoy the sunny weekend.
Mrs Todd
Time flies
1P have continued to work hard this week.
In Maths, we spent time revising our learning from the term so far. The boys did very well to recall their knowledge of grouping and sharing, halving and quartering, solving word problems, and working with numbers to 100. We then moved onto the topic of time, with great enjoyment had when the boys got their hands on the clocks! We practised telling the time using analogue clocks and even had time for some games.
English lessons focused on the story ‘The Kings Pants’ by Nicholas Allan, which all the boys found quite hilarious. We then used adjectives to describe one pair of the Kings undies, based on the rather funny examples in the story. The King’s ‘edible pants’ were a favourite! We also worked on reasoning, using the word ‘because’ to extend sentences.
Our Topics and Tiaras theme continued in Humanities lessons. The boys labelled pictures of the various carriages and important objects which are present at each coronation. Then we extended our adjective work by describing how we thought King Charles III may have felt before his coronation. Some very sensitive and thoughtful responses were suggested.
Good work boys! Wishing you all a lovely weekend.
Mrs Todd
The King’s Hats
This week in Mathematics we have been working with numbers up to 100. The boys found patterns, used base 10 materials to identify how many tens and ones were in each 2-digit number, and then used number lines and 100 squares to identify and create number sequences.
Our English lessons centred around the book ‘The King’s Hats’ by Sheila May Bird, a fun story about all the hats that The King wears. This was accompanied by the poem ‘Buckingham Palace’ by AA Milne. The children then worked on comprehension activities before having a go at writing their own poems. They all tried so hard to include rhyme and repeated phrases.
Our Art lesson continued The Kings Hats theme with children making their own wonderful Royal crowns using collage materials. Such great focus and originality was employed to complete their finished articles.
In Drama, the boys used physical theatre to portray some of the characters and scenes from Julia Donaldson books. Their aliens from The Smeds and The Smoos were particularly effective!
We continued learning about the Royal Family in Humanities, with a focus on the life of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. The children sequenced photographs of The Queen chronologically before drawing portraits of Prince Philip. Everyone worked hard to represent the features of Prince Philip’s face and uniform, with some really lovely results.
Well done for another successful week boys! Enjoy your weekend.
Mrs Todd
Assembly Endeavors
The highlight of our week was delivering a fantastic assembly to parents and the wider Pre-Prep all about our learning this year. We focused predominantly on our Humanities and English work about London, whilst also sharing some of our learning in Maths, Music, Science and PSHE. 1P were fantastic! They delivered their lines with confidence and energy, sang beautifully, and impressed everyone with their ukulele playing. Miss Payne and I are so very proud of them, as I am sure you are.
During the week we continued our Maths work on fractions with a focus on word problems involving halves and quarters. The boys really had to think about what the questions were asking them to do and they worked incredibly hard developing their knowledge. Then we moved onto working with numbers to 100 using base 10 materials.
In English we re-told the story of The King’s Bedtime in our own words using adjectives and time connectives before creating wonderful book covers including a blurb.
Computing lessons focused on using individual commands as part of a computer program to code a Beebot. The boys identified what each floor robot command does and used that knowledge to predict the outcome. They combined direction commands to make sequences of instructions to ensure their Beebot reached its destination.
Humanities lessons drew on our workshop with the Royal Mews, which included writing a non-fiction text about the history and work of the Mews, and drawing our own Landau carriages to demonstrate our learning on royal modes of transport.
I will leave you with some photos from the assembly and wish you all a fabulous and restful half term.
Mrs Todd
Royal Mews
1P have enjoyed another great week at Lochinver.
We had a fantastic workshop with an educator from the Royal Mews, who spoke to us live from within the walls of Buckingham Palace!
We were taken on a real-time video tour of the royal carriages including the Queen Alexandra Coach, which is used to transport the Imperial State Crown to the Palace of Westminster for the opening of Parliament. We also saw the Gold State Coach and several limousines before being introduced to the horses in the Royal Mews stables.
The boys engaged fantastically well, answering and asking lots of great questions.
Our caterpillars are growing nicely. They are at least twice the size that they were last week and the boys were delighted to see, just this morning, that some of them are beginning to create a chrysalis around themselves. How exciting!
1P also paid a visit to Reception to see the young chicks that have joined Lochinver for a few weeks of their early life.
In Maths we explored finding halves and quarters using a variety of shapes, before moving onto numbers. These were very practical lessons with the boys making their own halves and quarters out of paper shapes, and finding different ways to represent this.
English lessons centred on the book ‘The Prince’s Bedtime’ by Joanne Oppenheim, all about a prince who will not sleep! In the end, it was a bedtime story that did the trick. I am sure that rings true with some of our 1P families!
Wishing you all a wonderful weekend.
Mrs Todd
All Aboard
We’ve had another wonderful week in 1P.
One of the most exciting things to happen this week was the arrival of our caterpillars. These are wiggling around nicely and creating silk threads as they grow. We look forward to seeing them develop into butterflies in the coming weeks.
Our English lessons centred on the story ‘Katie in London’ by James Mayhew. The boys had a go at writing captions for the book’s illustrations then they wrote postcards pretending to be one of the children in the story. The characters in the book are taken on an adventure across London by a lion statue which comes to life in Trafalgar Square. I am so pleased with the boys’ postcard writing skills – perhaps they can send a postcard to school one day!
Maths lessons were focused on division by grouping and sharing. We did lots of practical work using counters before moving onto making our own jottings and drawings of groups in order to solve division problems.
In Humanities, we studied the London Tube Map paying particular attention to the key. They boys then used this to work out which underground lines they would need to take to get between particular stations. We also produced London fact files including information such as currency, languages and population.
Lastly we rehearsed some more for our class assembly in a few weeks. It is coming together nicely.
Well done for all your hard work this week boys. Enjoy the sunny weekend and remember to practise your lines!
Mrs Todd
London in a box
We’ve had another great week in 1P.
We read No, Nancy, No! by Alice Tait in our English lessons. The boys really enjoyed the story about a rather naughty child’s adventures in London with her dog, Roger. Then we completed comprehension tasks and made lists of London landmarks using capital letters for proper nouns.
In maths lessons, we solved word problems using our multiplication strategies and knowledge of counting in 2s and 5s. Then we explored dividing even numbers into equal groups by using concrete materials.
During our art lesson, we finished our London landmark cereal boxes by adding finer details such as London buses and taxis. They look fantastic, so good that they went straight up on display. I am sure the boys will enjoy showing them to you at Open Classroom in a few weeks time.
We also started practising for our class assembly, for which further details will be sent home next week.
In the meantime I wish you all a lovely bank holiday weekend and look forward to seeing the boys on Tuesday morning.
Mrs Todd
Turrets and Tiaras
Welcome back to all 1P children and families. We have had such a busy week back after Easter.
We started our new topic, Turrets and Tiaras, by learning all about Buckingham Palace and King Charles. We wrote fact files, completed comprehension tasks and continued to practise alphabetical ordering in our English lessons. I am sure the boys can tell you lots of interesting facts about Buckingham Palace now that they have written so well about it.
In humanities, we looked at the city of London, identifying key landmarks and imagining that we had visited lots of the sights. We then wrote postcards to Mr Wadge detailing our imaginary trip. This theme continued into our art lesson, where the boys began making 3D artworks of London skylines. This will continue next week and I am very much looking forward to seeing how they turn out.
Maths lessons saw us making equal groupings as the first step in multiplying. The boys engaged in lots of practical activities using concrete materials to reinforce the concept before moving onto written representations. We considered how the layout of each array, with counters and objects in equal rows, could help us to calculate and we used our knowledge of counting up in 2s, 5s and 10s to find the total amount.
We were lucky to take part in a wonderful Earth Day workshop where we learnt about keeping plastics out of our seas and oceans, and considered ways to be more eco-friendly. Each boy made a fish artwork using natural and recycled materials as part of the workshop. They look wonderful hanging up in our classroom to remind us all of the small things we can do each day to look after the Earth.
Well done for all your efforts this week boys. Remember to practise counting up in 2s, 5s and 10s!
Mrs Todd