Welcome to Bats Class!

Welcome back to school and welcome to Year 1. We hope you had a restful and exciting summer.

On the class page you will find important information about our learning and updates as to what we have been doing in class.

Please ensure children are reading regularly at home and they may choose to complete an activity from the Home Learning Grid (see below).

Feel free to contact us via the class email address bats@watlington.oxon.sch.uk if you have any queries or questions.

PE days this term are Wednesday and Thursday.

Term 2

PE days have changed this term to Wednesday and Thursday.

Week 4

Highlights from this week include:

- The Peter Pan pantomime - the children in Bats class loved it and really got into the spirit of the story.

- Beginning to learn our new story 'The Queens Hat', the model text is on our website if you would like to help your children to learn it, ask them to show you the actions we have been learning!

- Exploring 3D shapes in maths; we have made pictures and towers using them. Ask us what they are called.

- Creating timelines for the Kings and Queens of the past. Ask us which King had lots of wives!

- Discussing the characters in our new class reading book, Prince Cinders. Ask us what other story it reminds us of?

Week 3

Mrs Eltham has been very happy to be back in Bats this week and it sounds like you had a lot of fun with Mrs Heycock and Miss Sharman last week.

This week we have been really busy, some highlights include:

- Writing our own recounts based on all the learning we have done the past few weeks. 

- Investigating objects and the materials that they are made from in Science.

- Creating some beautiful Christmas decorations based on 'The Elves and the Shoemaker' that will be hung on the Christmas tree in the church.

- Practicing our subtraction skills using the different techniques of crossing out and counting backwards on a number line.

- Meeting our buddies for a play outside, and then playing a game 'build a monster', which allowed us to use our counting and creative skills.

- In PE we started to learn a dance to 'The Lion King'. Next week our PE day for dance will be on a Wednesday so that we can use the hall instead of risking the unpredictable weather outside!

Week 2

Mrs Heycock and Miss Sharman would like to say a BIG thank you to Bats for looking after us this week-we've had a lot of fun....here are some highlights...

1. Dance lesson where the Bats learned to put steps into a sequence (Mrs Sterjo was very impressed!).

2. Lots of hard work learning how to SUBTRACT...we worked on how pictures can help us tell a subtraction story:

FIRST there were 6 birds.

THEN 2 flew away.

NOW there are 4 birds left.

Great calculating Bats!

Next we are going to learn how a number sentence can be written in different ways...

7- 3 = 4  OR .......4 = 7- 3

4. Great dribbling and passing to a team in football.

5. Bats can write a recount in the PAST TENSE and FIRST PERSON.

6. We started a new unit of work in Art all about sketching...today the Bats experimented with different materials. They drew careful lines with 'scratchy' charcoal, smooth pastels, and 'bumpy' paper!

7. Can the Bats spot some of this week's graphemes in their reading too.....c as in city and u-e as in flute? We even practised writing some using STICKLE BRICKS and PEGS-very inventive!

Happy weekend!

Week 1

Welcome back to a new term in Bats class. The children have settled quickly back into their learning.

Highlights this week:

- Learning our new model text - a recount about a 'Trip to the Zoo' and creating our own story maps for the text

- Introducing our new topic 'Kings and Queens'

- Learning about Remembrance Day - creating a poppy picture using our fingerprints and writing some describing words about Remembrance Day.

- Addition stories in Maths

- Computing - creating abstract art using lines, shapes and colour

Term 1 

Weeks 7 and 8

We have had a busy couple of weeks to end the term:

- We made hand puppets in DT

- We had some buddy time on the iPads drawing self-portraits

- We wrote our own set of instructions

- Making shadow puppets to learn about daylight in the different seasons

- Using our wind catchers to 'measure' wind

We are looking forward to next term and our new topic .... Kings and Queens 

Thursday 17th October

We have been busy using play doh for funky fingers, joining year 1 for science and playing with our friends in Hedghogs.

Week 6

Science

This week Bats learnt about the signs of Spring and created wind catchers so that we could look at the weather. We will hang them up outside so that we can see the direction of the wind.

English

This week we have been writing our own stories about losing a toy. We have been working on writing clear sentences and reading them back to our friends. 

Mrs Eltham was very proud of our Harvest poem that we created with Miss Sharman last week; and we performed it confidently to the rest of the school.

Maths

Bats have been learning all about how to use part, part, whole diagrams to help with addition facts. The Bats used these with counters to make number stories too.

There are 8 birds in a tree. 5 fly away. There are 3 birds left. The Bats were great at creating their own number stories all about pies, pirates and children too!

Open Afternoon

 It was wonderful to welcome so many family members into Bats this week for our open afternoon. The Bats created Victorian Thaumatrope toys linked to Autumn-they were really effective! We hope they enjoy sharing them with wider family and friends at home too. Thank you to all those who came for being so enthusiastic about the learning in class; the children were thrilled to show all their hard work so far this term.

Week 5

Finally the weather smiled on us on Thursday!

The Bats went on an Autumn ramble using their senses to help gather words and ideas for our Autumn poem-this celebrated National Poetry Day. The Bats then created their own lines to add into a list poem. They can't wait to share some of their ideas with the other classes next week.

The Bats also continued with their ball skills in PE-they loved honing their skills in a game of 'crocodiles in the river'. The children had to accurately bounce and throw to each other without the pesky, hungry crocodiles intercepting them! The children learned that they needed to throw high, low or dodge to avoid the crocs.

The Bats also demonstrated their skills of 'greatest' and 'smallest' by ordering a range of numbers and impressed Miss Sharman by correctly all her mistakes. Great job Bats!

Week 4

Highlights this week:

- Languages day - learning about France with Mrs Eltham and about Italy with Mrs Flynn

- Maths - crocodile signs - greater than, less than and equal to - can you test us on this maths language?

- Art - creating Autumn leaves using watercolours

- Topic - comparing old and new toys - we learnt how toys are made, what they are made from and how they are able to move

- English - we have started to change our Dogger story as a class by introducing new characters and a new setting

Friday 13th September

A busy week in the nest. Some of our favourite learning opportunties were: making homes for various animals using duplo, going on sound walks to see what we could hear, using our cutting, sticking and colouring skills to make animal pictures.

Week 3

Highlights this week:

- Visiting the new pond

- Creating models, collages and pictures to represent summer in Science

- Hosting a toy museum in class - talking about the toys we have brought in and showing Owls class

- Creating beach pictures in Art using texture and different brush strokes

- Meeting our Year 6 buddies

Week 2

Highlights from this week:

- Creating a colour wheel in Art

- Using our rekenreks to count in maths

- Visit from PC Sue to share a story about PC Ben

- Learning our new story Dogger

Week 1

It was wonderful seeing all the Bats today after the summer. They settled so well into the start of life as a Year One! Thank you for putting a smile on the faces of Miss Sharman and Miss Watts-we had lots of fun getting to know you all. We enjoyed doing 'Batty' art, learning about the classroom and the wider school and using a range of maths resources. We hope you all didn't get TOO soggy on your rainy journey home. Don't forget to bring wellies in so we can all enjoy the outdoors whatever the weather. Some pictures of today will follow soon. Mrs Eltham can't WAIT to see you all tomorrow!

We have had a lot of fun today; the children made Mrs Eltham's day and she is so impressed with their manners, kindness and listening. Well done! We introduced our new topic today; The History of Toys, and discussed what we know already and asked questions about what we would like to find out. We also went on a toy hunt outside and found all of Bats missing toys! Thank goodness! Have a great weekend and we look forward to seeing you all for our first full week,