Murakami Year 1

  Welcome to Murakami 

Teacher: Miss Taylor

TA: Mrs Svenson and Miss Morake (1:1)

Key Information

• PE is on a Friday this half term. Children need to come to school dressed in PE kits.
• Homework (English, Maths, Spellings, Number bonds (Yr 1 – after October half term) will go out on a Wednesday and is due back on the following Monday. Homework will be uploaded onto Google Classroom and should be completed in the homework books.
• Book bags with reading books and reading records are needed everyday. 
• Reading books are changed every Tuesday. 
• Spelling and times tables test will be on Monday.
• Spelling practise will take play on Spelling Shed - https://www.spellingshed.com/en-gb/
• Year 1s you can practice your number bonds using hit the button (https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button)

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me. 

IMPORTANT INFORMATION REGARDING READING

- Reading books will be changed every Tuesday. They will bring home a free-choice book and a stage-appropriate book.

- The children are expected to re-read the book throughout the week to help build word recognition, fluency and comprehension.

- There may be some occasions where children are given a book they have already had, this is no problem. In fact, it helps the children to build their fluency, comprehension and word recognition to read books over and over. 

- Encourage the children to read the book more than once over the period you have the book. 

- If you have not finished the book, please let me know. It is no problem, it just helps me keep track of the books being sent home. 

- Children should be reading for 20 minutes every day. 

- Ask your child questions about the story and unfamiliar words as they are reading to ensure they understand the book. 

- We will regularly reassess the children's reading to ensure they are taking home stage-appropriate books. 

- Please listen to your child read and sign the reading record. Let me know how they have got on with the book and any words they have found difficult.

- Please read TO your child regularly in addition to listening to them read. This will enhance their language, vocabulary, imagination and enjoyment of more challenging books than they would be able to read independently.  

Useful Documents

• accelerated-reader-launch-parents (1).pptx
• Common Exception Words.pdf
• Level 5 Sounds Mat.pdf
• Sound Families Mat.pdf
• t-e-2551141-level-6-phonics-sounds-mat_ver_3.pdf
• t-e-1626345461-phonics-level-5-actions-mat_ver_1.pdf
• T-L-4541-100-High-Frequency-Words-Word-Mat.pdf
• t-l-5995-200-high-frequency-words-word-mat.pdf
• t-l-526871-level-2-and-3-letter-formation-desk-mat-english_ver_5.pdf

Traction Man 

The children have been reading the story of Traction Man by Mini Grey. The story is set out in a comic book style and the children have enjoyed making comic strips using speech bubbles and captions. The children have also written letters and diary entries as Traction Man. In DT, the children designed and created a new toy box for Traction Man. 

Kindness Week

The children in KS1 had lots of brilliant ideas to show kindness to the world. In Warhol class, the children created a Giving Table. This was a table filled with donations from their own toy collections to give to children in Reception. In Murakami class, the children created bouquets of paper flowers to give as a thank you to classes and people in the school. In O’Keeffe class, the children made a Kindness Jar filled with kind notes to bring a smile to people when they are feeling down.

We welcomed Lenny the Elf to our classroom this Christmas time, click on the link to see his adventures over the past few weeks! 

Thank you for visiting us Lenny! 

Making Rockets!

We were inspired by our book this half term, which is called 'Look Up', to make rockets from recycled materials. In look up, the main character, aptly named Rocket herself, is intrigued by a meteor shower and wants to get he whole community involved in spectating the phenomenon. 

The children are loving the book so far and are so intrigued with the topic as it spans over from English into DT and History too. 

World Book Day 2024!

We celebrated world book day on Thursday 7th March. All of the children had such fantastic costumes linking to wonderful books. We shared the day with Basquiat class and Mrs Harris, 15 of their children came to us and 15 of us went up to them with. 

Throughout the day, we read the book 'Paper Dolls' by Julia Donaldson, made our own little books, wrote about the characters we had come in as and discussed books we would like to read! 

Science Week

This week we have celebrated Science week! In school, we have done two experiments. 

The first one that we did was testing whether pineapple would stop jelly from setting. We put jelly in three cups. One was plain and on its own, this was our control. We put jelly with pineapple in another cup and jelly with various fruits in another. We tested apples, bananas, oranges and grapes. We did this to see whether it was just pineapple that stopped jelly setting or if all fruits stopped jelly from setting. 
We found that pineapple was the only fruit that stopped the jelly setting and it was completely liquid when we took it out the fridge. When we researched why this was, it was because it contains an enzyme called Bromelain which breaks down the collagen in the gelatine. 

The second experiment we did was more of a project. On Thursday afternoon, the children worked in teams to make a volcano out of paper mache. On the Friday, we placed bicarbonate of soda in the bottom and put a cap full of vinegar in the top. We researched this and found that it is because bicarbonate of soda is a base and vinegar is an acid. That is what causes it to fizz. 

Murakami went to the library this morning as part of our skills builder project, 'Brilliant Books'. The children went, learnt a bit about the library and were read a couple of story books! They thoroughly enjoyed the journey out and behaved so well.