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Squirrels' Class Blog

Thursday 27th February 2025

I thought it was a good time to write a blog solely dedicated to our fab maths in Year 1 (affectionately known as the Squabbits!).

This term is all about place value (what does each numeral mean within a number eg How many tens? How many units ones?) and addition and subtraction and LOTS of vocab. We have spent the term focused on 11-20 and understanding that the '1' in 13 is not a 'one' but a ten. We've likened this to our phonics when those tricky words write it with an 'a' but we say it as an 'oa' (eg whAt); but with maths- we write it with a '1' but we mean that it is a '10' with the zero hiding behind the ones number.  This is essential knowledge for all future place value work from hundreds and thousands to fractions and decimals.

We have also done a lot of work on addition and subtraction techniques and recording. We have found patterns in our work but also focused on what the pattern actually means (it's all very well memorising 1+9/2+8 but if you don't really get that there are a total of 10 and 2 parts...). We continue to use PartWhole method in our recording and now we are also transferring to bar models. (Get them to show you!) We constantly use the rekenreks, our ten frames and our cubes because evidence shows that using concrete resources before visual before written creates long term mathematical understanding. So we play around with 3+ 14   14 +3   17-3   17-14  with 'stuff' before we see a diagram and before we do any writing. 

Presentation of our work is also something we are working on.This week in particular we have  spent  a whole lesson on how we can use the squares in our book more efficiently and neatly. I was thrilled to have 5 'teaching assistants' helping around the class as their work was immaculately presented so they helped their peers to follow my instructions. Taking care of our work is important and as an ex-examiner, I can tell you that presentation is a factor when marking test papers- rightly or wrongly -but something to be aware of now and not create engrained untidiness. So encourage an awareness of the reader in every aspect of their written work - in any capacity or topic. I will be! #PraiseAndPraiseSomeMore

Below are some ideas of what you can replicate at home to develop and consolidate their maths progress:

1. Use 'stuff' to count. Encourage counting in 2s and 5s. Make them create tally charts and they count in 5s for the total. (We use these for house points so is not new to them.)
2. Play memory games to aid number bonds and doubles. Write out the number bonds on pieces of paper for them to have to turn over and find a match or turn it into snap with playing cards but focus on number bonds. We have done all the number bonds from 5-10 and also 20. Can they see a pattern between number bonds to 8 and 18?
3. I wish I had shares in it but I still love Shut the Box game.  You can buy one or do what we do and use scrap paper. They will tell you what to do. It is an AMAZING way of getting really confident about number bonds to 10 and seeing different ways of making a number.
4. Wipe out. Another game they can tell you how to play. Use it for doubles or number bonds.
5. counting stick has gone down really well this week. See below pic (apologies for the orientation). We counted and looked and then took off a stickie and counted again. We kept doing this until all the stickies were off. The very visual children could 'see'  the invisible number by looking at the stick (isn't our brain clever!), some closed their eyes and said they imagined the full counting stick; others I imagine would prefer touching the stick or jumping on the paper. Whatever works! By May I want to see that they can all count to AND back in 2s, 5s and 10s confidently without looking at a number line or 100 square.
6. Practise writing equations such as : 5 + 15 =20    15 +5 = 20    20 - 15 =5    20 - 5 = 15. We use cubes to move the quantities around so they see the pattern. 
7. create your own number lines. We haven't used rulers yet to draw them as we have great lined maths books but at home drawing lines with a ruler is indeed a skill to be mastered. They know to draw on the sticks and write in the numbers and that a number line does not have to start with 0. They will be expected to estimate a number from a blank number line and then reason why they think that (eg I think it's 16 because half way from 10 to 20 is 15 and this is a little more.)

Vocab we're using these days (bracketed is the word that is still ok but is being used a lot less frequently):

equations (number sentence)

plus (add)

minus/subtract (take away)

estimate (guess)

number bonds /facts /pairs

I am very generous with house points/sticker book stickers when children bring me any maths work they do at home and I frequently suggest homework at the end of the lesson that they could do. They often seem very motivated to challenge me (!) which I accept willingly.

Coming up are the foundations of multiplication, division, fractions... Maybe if this blog is popular, I'll do another one early in the summer term about those skills. In the meantime, keeeeeeeeep learning those number bonds!

Mrs H

Thursday 9^th January 2025

Hello and Happy New Year!

Can you believe we’re in the Spring term? The weather certainly isn’t behaving like it but we’re having lots of fun while watching the snow fall as we play inside this week. Speaking of playing inside… it’s been great to see Squirrels demonstrate great team work, creativity and problem solving with our beloved class marble run, thinking of strategies to win four in a row, building planes after our History lesson on the Wright brothers or just simply reading a favourite book and hanging out with friends. It’s been a fun-filled (and noisy!) week of wet play.

This half term is a busy but glorious one where we expect your children to make lots of academic progress. Squirrels are now comfortable in our class and know the routines and expectations so we can focus on our learning. We have a lot of growing our brains to do!

For Year 1s Little Wandle picks up the pace this term with the amount of code we will learn and it’s amazing how much this will impact on reading. We love our phonics lessons and it’s wonderful to see how excited your children are to learn new GPCs and the tricky bits in words. We will be learning 4 new GPCs a week before reviewing the week together on a Friday. We are amazed to learn that some GPCs now have more than 1 phoneme so we know say 'e' or 'ee' as well as learning that phoneme 'ee' can be spelt as 'e', 'ea', 'e' and now 'y'! It's a lot to get our heads round and remember but we love growing our brains. Please keep practising reading everyday to consolidate new GPCs and support fluency. We love playing digraph/trigraph spotter in words and LOVE spotting a split-vowel digraph! See how many you can spot with your child while reading. Can your child explain the tricky part in tricky words? Are they reading their book with 80% fluency and applying prosody? Can they retell the story and explain their favourite part? I will be sending a Grow and Code chart later this half term so you can look at it with your child. If anyone would like advice on reading please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Maths for Y1 is all about tens and ones (units) over the next 6 weeks. It is massively important that they understand that tens digit is not a '1' but one 10. They will be working within numbers to 20 to make this abundantly clear so that numbers to 100 will seem effortless to understand in the future. This is also the basis for + - x ÷ so we will be doing important work! At home replicate this by using real objects as much as possible; they need to 'see' the amount before they have to deal with it in any form of equation. This could look like bundles of twigs, frozen peas, pasta, pens, socks...

Y2s are continuing with spelling rules in our bridge to spelling lessons and ‘thinking’ about spelling and how to spell with confidence. Please ensure you are reading with your child every day to consolidate Phase 5 phonics and new spelling patterns.

In maths, Y2s are learning how to add and subtract by bridging through 10. This method requires children to be able to partition numbers to get to the next multiple of 10 and the add the remainder. For example, the 5 in 6 + 5 can be partitioned into 4 and 1 to make the addition easier. 6 + 4 gets you to 10 and then you’re left with 1 more to add.

A strong understanding of number bonds (2 numbers that add together to make another number, e.g. 1 + 4 = 5, 2 + 3 = 5, 5 + 0 = 5) for all numbers within 10 are vital for the understanding of this and to the development of further mathematical skills. You really cannot have too many opportunities to practice and refine them! I’ve attached a game called totally ten snake which is great for number bonds to 10 if you would like to play this with your child at home.

Other ideas for quick recall of number bonds are:

Cups:

1. Collect a chosen number of objects (pasta, toys, socks, pens, frozen peas).
2. Player one hides some of the objects under a cup (or anything you have at home! Bowls, blankets and bags are also good options).
3. Player two counts what’s left and guesses the number under the cup, were they right?
4. Swap turns.

Wipeout:

You need 2 dice to play this game. Two 10-sided dice is even better!

1. Both players write numbers 2-12 on a piece of paper.

      2. Player 1 rolls 2 dice and add the numbers on each dice together. Cross that number out.

     3. Take turns and the winner Is the first to clear their numbers!

Other fun maths games we love playing are:

1. 21 (this is a playtime favourite)
2. Magic number. We play this in a groups counting in 2s, 3s, 5s, or 10s. Choose a ‘magic’ number and whoever says that number is out. Keep playing until there is a winner
3. The cup game – again this is great for counting in 2s, 3s, 5s or 10s. Get a cup and coins (or anything that will make a sound when dropped) and drop coins into a cup slowly. Your child will count in steps of 2, 3,5 or 10 and tell you the final number. A great game for listening and maths! Want a real challenge? Try counting backwards!

Teachers have been busy discussing and trying to organise our spring trip. We are looking to be ambitious, arty and different; we will be thanking the PTA heartedly for the money for coaches to keep the cost down for you. Watch this space!

An outline of our curriculum is - as always- on our class page if you’d like to see what we’re doing this term. Please try not to read any of our class books for English at home, we like to discover them together as a class and build on prediction skills.

Don’t forget about our parent partnership meeting next Thursday at 2.45pm. It will be lovely to see you all there and I’ll be hanging around afterwards if you have any questions or just fancy a chat.

Y2 parents - please double check if you have paid the Y2 residential deposit. We will be talking about the residential in the parent partnership meeting next week. If you have any concerns or questions, please let us know.

That’s all from me, I’m off to go warm up!

Miss Jones

Monday 11th November 

Hello and happy Monday! 

It was so nice to see and talk to you about your wonderful child in our parent evening meetings/calls. It was lovely to talk with every single one of you but then I have a class of super Squirrels who are incredibly kind, thoughtful, curious, excited to grow their brains and make me laugh with their observations of the world at 5 and 6; who wouldn’t want to talk about their all-round loveliness! 

Squirrels have had a busy and exciting first week back after half-term. We have been busy marvelling at the beauty of autumn, working together to make huge autumn leaves piles, meeting feathery friends, developing our problem-solving in maths, sharing exciting stories of Bonfire night and fireworks and writing about our new character in our story, Plop the baby Barn Owl.  

On Monday four feathery friends came to visit us. We were so excited to meet a Tawny, Barn, Little and Eagle Owl up close and got the opportunity to hold an owl (Miss Jones was very thankful we held the Little Owl and not the Eagle Owl!). We loved stroking their feathers and marvelling at how soft they are, watching the owls swivel their heads around to look at us and impressing us with their magnificent wingspan. The owls did do lots of ‘plops’ as Nanette, our owl expert, called them which we found very funny and now even funnier as our new character in our book is a baby Barn Owl called Plop!  

After our exciting visit we have been busy writing about owls, owls and you guessed it … owls! We were inspired to learn facts about our favourite owl, learn about adjectives and noun phrases and think about which ones to use when describing the features of an owl and finally, writing a description of Plop (we were delighted at calling him fat and fluffy which he completely is!). I have been blown away by beautiful Kinetic Letters, wonderful vocabulary, correct use of punctuation and the use of our new friend, the conjunction ‘and’ to join our ideas together. Well done Squirrels! 

In phonics, we have revisited ‘ay’, ‘ou’, ‘ie’ and ‘ea’. We have also introduced alternative sounds for GPCs. We now know /i/ can be ‘igh’, /o/ can be ‘oa’, /a/ can be ‘ai’ and /u/ can be ‘oo’. We have worked on using our best guess when writing words with these sounds in (clowd, cloud – which one looks right?) and playing our favourite game, digraph spotter when reading. We will be moving onto Phase 5 Little Wandle books soon so please keep up all the amazing reading at home to consolidate new GPCs and tricky words.

Year 2's have moved onto bridge to spelling this week which they are very much enjoying! Bridge to spelling teaches the children how to ‘think about spelling’ and spell with confidence. Over the next five weeks of daily lessons, your children will complete the alphabetic code and learn the underpinning concepts of spelling. 

This week your children have learnt /r/ can be rh (rhino) and /g/ can be gu, gue and gh (league, ghost), /c/ can be que (mosque), /m/ can be mn (autumn) and /t/ can be tte (baguette), /th/ can be the (breathe). Please ensure you are reading every day at home for 5-10 minutes to consolidate Phase 5 phonics and new spellings.  

Year 1 Maths is all about part and wholes and fact families. Fact families (number bonds, number friends) are basically a crucial element of the foundation of all maths. We have started to record our fact families as: Part Whole diagrams and number sentences. This week and into the next half term will be learning our number bonds to 10 off by heart. One of my 'go to' games is Wipeout. It can be used for number bonds, doubles, +1 -1 etc etc. Here's how to play it: 

1. each player draws a 9 square tic tac toe/0 and X board. 

1. use a dice, roll and record the practising  fact family. 

1. take it in turns until each player has filled their board. 

1. repeat the process of rolling the dice but now wipe out if you have the answer on your board. If you don't, you don't do anything. Next player's turn. 

1. first player to wipe out completely wins. 

1. repeat. 

This week we will play this with fact families of 5 and a bit. So each child will roll the dice and add that amount to 5 and record it. They already know 5 +1, 5+2, 5+3, 5+4, 5+5 well and it needs to be engrained to the point of off by heart. Wipeout can be played by themselves or with lots of players. 

One key 'mastery' element is to ask your child what number they need to roll on their dice to wipe out '8' (etc) although I can't promise that this will encourage a competitive element of 'manipulating' the dice to get it! 

Year 2 Maths has been all about counting forwards and backwards in 2s and 5s. Can you child count confidently from 0 to 100 and beyond? Can they tell you what the pattern is when counting? Can they explain which numbers will be odd/even? What will the ones digit be when we’re counting in 2s and 5s? These are all elements of pattern spotting and reasoning we have been working on in class. I know you know but can you now tell me how you know? A fun game to practise counting skills at home is coins in a cup. You’ll need a cup/bowl/jar and some coins (or any small object that will make a noise when dropped). Here’s how to play: 

1. one person decides whether to count in 2s or 5s and holds the coins and cup (make sure no one else can see!) 

1. the other players have a piece of paper and pencil ready and close their eyes 

1. the first person drops coins into the cup slowly 

1. the other players count in 2s or 5s in time to the coins dropping and write the final number on their piece of paper 

1. check to see if everyone got it right!  

This is a great way to practise counting in 2s and 5s. Your children also have a times table rock stars log in to use at home. Timetables have been set to 10, 2 and 5. We will be introducing counting in 3s this week which will then be added.  

Don’t forget to book a mystery reader slot! Please email myself via admin and let me know which dates are best. Mystery reader is 3pm every Friday.  

Show and tell is now as and when every day. We define show and tell as something your child has spent a considerable amount of time doing or working on at home (an activity from our optional homework menu, a painting, a story) or something they have achieved (swimming/gymnastics/football certificate or trophy). Photos can always be emailed in via admin and we can show them on the class screen.  

Harvest Festival is over so that can only mean one thing … yes, it’s time for NATIVITY! It’s been lights, camera, action here at Tarporley as we have officially started our nativity rehearsals! Year 1's have been given a part to act out in the nativity story and Year 2's will receive their lines as narrators. If your child has a speaking part then they will have their lines to take home. Please practise as much as possible so your children are confident speakers and can project their voices as Year 1's will not have a microphone.  

As always, I’m here to answer any questions, concerns or if you just fancy a chat. Email me via admin or pop in after home time. 

That’s all from me, I’m off to practise a firm favourite - Knock Knock, Who’s There? 

Miss Jones  

Friday 13th September

Hello new Squirrel parents and carers,

Welcome to our first Squirrel class page blog. This blog will aim to give you information about our weeks and ideas for you at home.

Well done, we did it! The first full week of Year 1 and 2 and we are immensely proud of your children. We have spent the first few days in school getting to know our new classroom and all the lovely things to play with (the finger puppet theatre and the ‘magic’ gems are firm favourites so far), learning new expectations and routines, meeting Barney and Daisy (our ray of the day buddies), saying hi to old friends and getting to know new people in our class, and finally waking our brains up after 6 fun-filled weeks and learning lots of new things! Hands up if you had a sleepy child at the end of the week?

We’ve started our timetable straightaway this week with a busy day of recapping phase 4 phonics (Y1), recapping phase 5 in spelling (Y2), starting reading practise, lots of counting in maths and mastering number, discovering our new story in English, learning about the life cycle of chickens in science, learning about the Torah and a yad in RE and developing our throwing and catching skills in PE this week. Year 1’s were delighted to learn we have books for everything and Year 2’s have been fab at remembering neat presentation in their new books. Children will still have ‘choosing’ time to play and socialise at various points of the day and there is always an afternoon playtime to see friends across all KS1 classes too.

Some of you may already met Barney the Bear and Daisy the Rabbit. They are our ray of the day buddies to celebrate a child’s achievement or effort every day. We like to call it someone who’s been letting their light shine extra brightly and they will get to take either Barney or Daisy home for 1 night (if your child is ray of the day on a Friday, please bring Barney/Daisy back on Monday). Please get your child to contribute to the book and then we will share it with the rest of the class the next day. We love hearing about yummy tea’s and favourite stories. It is a lovely time where we come together to celebrate one super squirrel. I will plan for every child to have been ray of the day by the end of the first half term.

Our learning this term is available on our class page and we’ve got lots of exciting things to come; KS1 disco, Harvest festival, a visit from owls, and dare I say it … nativity rehearsals will start after half-term! In English we have loved discovering new pages of Meesha Makes Friends together and thinking about what qualities a good friend has. Year 1’s have been working on accurately using their phonics to spell and learning about capital letters and full stops and Year 2’s have been focusing on using expanded noun phrases to describe. We had lots of fun designing our own friends just like Meesha and worked hard to think of adjectives to describe. I wonder if your child can tell you any adjectives to describe something at home or in a book?

In maths, Year 1 have been learning to verbalise ways of sorting objects. They have worked on confidently being able to say something along the lines of: this group of objects have been sorted by colour/shape/size etc. I wonder if you could practise this at home with toys, food etc. They had a go in the classroom and then went outside. They loved sorting twigs, stones, fallen leaves, grass!

Year 2’s have been focusing on place value within 100 which has meant lots of counting forwards and backwards, learning about the tens and ones digits in numbers and thinking about when they change. Some children were able to spot patterns in numbers and realised the ones digit changes from 29 to 30 because one more means 9 ones become 1 ten. I wonder if you could practise counting forwards and backwards crossing the tens boundary at home? Can they confidently say what numbers come before and after 30, 40, 70, 100?

That’s all from me! We’ve had a busy but wonderful first full week at school and have loved getting to know your children. I am so proud of how hard all children have worked, they truly are super squirrels! If you need anything from me, you can email any questions to the office and I’m always available for a phone call or face-to face chat. Apologies for my blank face at home time, I promise I’m trying hard to learn your faces!

Have a lovely weekend,

Miss Jones

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