Over the past few weeks we have been learning about all different types of animals, their habitats, diets, names and the key features that help us to categorize them. Today we have bought together some of our favourite facts by creating a fact sheet on the computer platform Purple Mash.

As always, we talked about how to stay safe online. We discussed the importance of telling an adult if you feel you have come across something that you shouldn’t have and how it is important just to close the lid on your Chromebook and put your hand up.

We started off the day planning out our facts, using books and websites to gather new ideas and check that our ‘facts’ were correct. We talked about how using the internet to ‘find things out’ is a common use of computers and lots of people do it at home and at work every single day on their computers, phones and tablets. We then wrote down our facts in the same format as we would be using later. This meant that we would be able to focus on using the Chromebooks and not on trying to remember all of our brilliant ideas!

Ok, so we have our facts ready. Next we needed to Log into the chrome books and open up Google!  This is quite new learning to us in year 1, everyone was really resilient as we learnt how to use the mousepad and not just tap the screen. At first some of us found it tricky to use the keypad, tapping the keys carefully so we didn’t end up with lots of the same letter.

Next we opened a new tab ‘Purple Mash’. We logged on using our individual logins and found the work that had been set for us. So now it was time to start typing. We learnt about the different ‘keys’ on the keyboard, how to make a finger space using the space bar and how to double click to select different parts of the factsheet that we wanted to work on.

I was absolutely blown away with the resilience that everyone showed this morning. Every single person managed to create their own fact sheet with two sentences and two images either drawn or from clipart or sometimes even both! These have come home with the children today for you to celebrate with them.

A brilliant and really fun day in Year 1. I am really proud of you all.