We have been covering architecture and I thought I would mention that you can download Minecraft education edition ( the original game with additional features) from hwb for free. I have been playing around with it and while I am a tad hopeless need some practice, it may be something your children would love. I have not created any lessons on Minecraft but there are lots of fab lesson resources already on the system that I was able to browse which would challenge and appeal to older learners (I presume these are accessible to learners but these may just be teacher only features) so if your interested You need to download Minecraft and use your HWB login details.
(https://hwb.gov.wales/microsoft#how-to-get-minecraft:-education-edition-at-home to see how to download, you need to scroll down as the webpage talks about Microsoft office first.)
Topic Understanding features of buildings.
Architecture has certain features or parts. These features often have a purpose though the purpose can be symbolic, practical, decorative or a combination. An example of a architectural feature is a window, pillar and staircase. How many features or parts can you think of? What point do they have? Let them have a few guesses, they can have a wander around the house and see the different parts such as door, window, staircase etc for themselves.
Bronze: Identify the different features/parts of a house
Silver: Can you think of the purpose? Are they just practical, just decorative or a mixture of both.
Gold: https://www.terragalleria.com/pictures-subjects/architectural-details/ use this website or pick a famous building to compare the features of your home to other features.
Extension. What materials are each of the features made from and why? (Roof-slate, strong and waterproof ETC)
English Exploring adjectives further.
Ask the learner to pick a character they are very familiar with. This could be from a book, cartoon or film. They are going to use adjectives to describe the character by creating a very simple character profile. They draw (or you could cut and stick if its from a magazine) the character in the middle and they use appearance and personality words to describe the character. I have uploaded a character profile sheet in the literacy folder to help with the layout and I have uploaded a character description word bank that has pictures next to the adjectives to help with the meaning.
Bronze Use appearance adjectives to describe your character (What does the character look like?)
Silver: Use Personality words to describe your character (What is he like as a person, mean, kind ETC)
Gold: Use a thesaurus to think of some more words, eg instead of cruel you could use callous or monstrous. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english-thesaurus/cruel
Maths counting in tens using partitioning.
Now that the children have some experience in partitioning numbers we will look at counting in tens from a random number using whichever place value resource to represent tens and ones. (I suggest using sticks and stones or the arrow card website. https://www.ictgames.com/mobilePage/arrowCards/)
The purpose of this is to show to learners the pattern that occurs when counting in tens (the ones value stay the same 13, 23, 33, 43 etc) and why that happens.
Warm up by counting in tens from zero and back again. You could use a number square to support counting, as you count in tens keep adding a ten block. https://www.topmarks.co.uk/learning-to-count/paint-the-squares (useful as you can colour in numbers to demonstrate patterns) or you can use one of the many counting to ten songs
Bronze: Ask them to choose a ones number to explore. Then count in tens the place value resources and number square to help.
Silver: Do this forwards and backwards.
Gold: Do this from a random starting point and ask them to predict the amount of tens and ones. Eg show them 67 and ask what 57 would look like or 1 ten less then 67 if they struggle.
Extention. If you have been using the splat square they can
If the children are struggling with partitioning this video helps explain but it is a tad tedious https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F3AycEDksY
Kind regards,
Year 1 team