Year 1 & 2 - Wednesday 13th May

Welcome to Wednesday - I'm glad you could join us! This is the 24th blog for home learning we have posted - the one prior to these was "Our Day At Colchester Castle" - happier times! Still, we have enjoyed making the blogs for you and moving forward we will strive to make this a more permanent method of communication with you, not just to explain what we do but why and how we teach things to your children.

English - Animal Reports

Last time we used sentence scaffolds to write the information we gleaned from the information tables. We can extend this in a number of ways today:

1.  You can add information about a different animal - think about using sub-headings if you choose this approach;
2. You can find additional facts about the animal you are writing about - think about using fact boxes for this (use the books from MyOn mentioned on Monday or other websites to find your facts);
3. Add a picture. Turn it into a diagram by labelling a feature.

Here is a page from a book about the coast which showcases these features:
Enjoy putting bells and whistles on yesterday's sentences!

Maths - Data Handling

Yesterday, we created our own graphs; this is one aspect of data handling. Another very important skill, however, is reading and interpreting graphs. It is a kind of mathematical comprehension.

There are different skills to apply to information when we are interpreting graphs:

• Adding;
• Retrieving;
• Combining;
• Comparing;
• Extrapolating;
• Hypothesising.

These get progressively trickier as you go through them, with the last two becoming more prevalent in Year's 3 & 4. Let's break them down - consider this graph that shows weekly pocket money and example questions:

Adding - Finish this graph to show that Sam has 10p. (We have to read the layout of the graph to include more information - just like yesterday).

Retrieving - How much money does Georgia get? (We just need to find 1 piece of information from the graph).

Combining - What is the total of Melissa and Nathan's pocket money? (As above, we need to find information but 2 pieces and then add them up).

The above 3 skills would be expected and modelled for the Year 1's and form the basis for further Year 2 learning:

Comparing - How much more money does Hannah get compared to Melissa? (Here we have to find the difference between 2 pieces of information. This is a key Year 2 skill - and one they find tricky! We can either find where Hannah and Melissa diverge (4p) and then count on the extra that Hannah has or subtract 7p - 4p = 3p).

Two points here - firstly the importance of language. We teach the children that total means we need to add and difference means we need to take away. Secondly, when counting on, we must check what steps to count in. In our graph, each block represents 1p but this is not always the case - remember yesterday when we could have made each block represent 2°C?

Extrapolating - If Georgia saves her pocket money for 3 weeks, how much will she have? (Here we extend the information we have into a theoretical future).

Hypothesising - If Melissa shared her money between 3 people, how much would they each get? (Here we take information we already have and apply it to a second question).

Here are 2 graphs with questions you can try out:

"Year 1"



"Year 2"




These resources are also on our class page http://www.downhallprimary.com/our-classes/year-1-2
- have fun!

PE - Mini Sports Leaders



Miss Sharman has sent me this course from Castle Point and Rochford's Schools Sports Partnership. It is designed for Year 2's to become "excellent sports leaders." It looks lots of fun and I'm sure that Year 1's would get something from it as well. I have placed the slides on the class webpage.

Please have a wonderful day!
Key Stage 1 Team