Year 1
Welcome back for the Summer Term!
This year is certainly flying by - here we are in our final term of Year 1! We have lots to learn this term, learning about plants and how they grow, our local area, cooking, numbers, fractions, time, stories and poetry and a whole lot more besides! Take a look at our curriculum map for Year 1 below to find out what we will be learning this term.
Our home learning expectations remain as before - children to read with an adult at least three times a week, spellings to be practised and pracising Numbots several times a week. Our PE day is now Thursday and our library day remains as Tuesday.
We are looking forward to a fun-filled term, and hopefully, some sunshine!
Numbots Certificates and Super Spellers
Well done to this week's Super Spellers who achieved full marks on their spelling test this week. Congratulations also to the children who have completed another level on Numbots this week. Well done to you all!
STEAM Week
We have had lots of fun taking part in lots of different activities this week as part of our whole school STEAM week. We learnt how orangutans are losing their homes due to palm oil production, we learnt how to program microbits, Made Ancient Egyptian water clocks, experimented with cyanotype pictures and enjoyed 'playing with maths'. It's been a busy week but lots of fun!
Numbots and Super Spellers
Well done to this week's Super Spellers who scored full marks in their spelling tests this week. Congratulations also to the children who have achieved the next level in their Numbots home learning.
Mother's Day
A very happy mother's day to all our mothers! We hope that you like the cards which the children have been busy making for you! We practised using our fine-motor skills to pick up and position small pieces such as sequins, gems, ribbon and wool.
PE - Football
This half-term, our PE topic is invaders and defenders. To start our learning, we learnt to dribble a football. We had to dribble it carefully, keeping it under control so that it didn't run away. It was harder than it looked!
World Book Day and International Women's Day
This year, to celebrate World Book Day and International Women's Day, we brought in books which either celebrated inspirational females, had inspirational female characters or were written by an inspirational female. We shared our books with the class, explaining why we had chosen them.
Great Fire of London Art
In our art lessons, we have been learning to mix colours. We have focused on mixing yellow and red to create different shades of orange to represent fire. We then used our colour mixing to create a background for our Great Fire of London pictures. In the foreground, we drew and painted a silhouette of the London skyline, adding buildings we had learnt about in our Geography work.
WRE Learning Day - Creation
We finished off our first week back after half-term with a WRE Learning Day. This time, our focus was on creation stories. In Year 1, we looked at the Islamic creation story and made collages to retell the story. In assembly in the afternoon, we shared our learning and then thought about our own world views of creation.
Samuel Pepys
In history, we have been learning about the Great Fire of London. This week, we learnt about the significance of Samuel Pepys and how his diaries tell us lots about the Great Fire. We learnt that Samuel Pepys did not have pens like we do, instead he wrote with a quill and ink. We tried writing with quill feathers, it was harder than it looked!
Child-Initiated Learning
In our role-play area, we have created a pizza shop where we can practise some of the skills we have been learning in our lessons. We have been practising our writing by taking orders for pizzas and practising our instructions by helping our friends to make pizza. We have been 'selling' the pizza in the shop, counting money and giving out change. We're having lots of fun creating our own pizzas!
Making Pizza
Our new English unit focuses on instructions. We have been learning to make pizza so that we can write our own instructions for pizza making. This week, we have been focusing on the 'Imitation' phase of our Talk for Writing sequence. We made French Bread Pizzas, following instructions, then practised making pizza in our role-play area before making our own videos giving instructions as to how to make pizza.
Bart Gee - Breaking Limits
We were very lucky to have a visit from the inspirational Bart Gee on our first day back after half-term. Bart suffers from a medical condition called arthrogryposis which causes his muscles to be week and stiff. Bart explained how his condition impacts his everyday life and the ways he has overcome obstacles he has faced. In our workshop, we learnt more about the ways in which Bart adapts and achieves everyday tasks and had a go at using Bart's methods.
Numbots and Super Spellers
Well done to everyone who has achieved the next level in their Numbots learning and to everyone who has achieved full marks in their spelling tests this week. Super home learning everyone, well done!
Our Senses
As part of our science topic, 'Animals including Humans', we explored our five senses - touch, smell, taste, sight and hearing. We listened to different sounds and described them, observed objects carefully and used a range of adjectives to describe how objects felt. Our favourite senses to explore were our senses of smell and taste. We had great fun tasting the lemons!
Numbots and Super Spellers
Congratulations to everyone who has achieved full marks in this week's spelling test and has moved up a level in their Numbots learning. Well done to you all!
Volume and Capacity
Following on from our maths work measuring length, we explored measuring mass and volume. We had great fun in our outside area measuring volume using non-standard units.
Measuring Length
In our maths lessons, we have been learning to measure length, both with non-standard units such as cubes and with centimetres, a standard unit of measurement.
Super Spellers and Numbots Certificates
Well done to this week's Super Spellers who all achieved full marks in their spelling tests this week and to all the children who have achieved their next level on Numbots!
Mindful Mats - Yoga
This week in our final Mindful Mats session, Mr Wilkinson taught us yoga. It was very calming and we all enjoyed learning something new.
Little Red Riding Hood
Our new English text is a warning story - Little Red Riding Hood. Little Red Riding Hood was warned by her mother not to talk to strangers in the forest... but she did and the story unfolds. This week, we have been working on our speaking and listening skills, making a puppet show of Little Red Riding Hood and role playing the conversation between Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf as he lays in Granny's bed, pretending to be Granny. Next week, we will begin innovating on the text, creating our own warning stories.
Super Spellers and Numbots
Well done to all our Year 1 learners who achieved full marks on their spelling tests this week and to all those who have achieved the next levels on Numbots!
Mindful Mats
For our PE, we have been working with Mr Wilkinson from Stevenage Sporting Futures on the Mindful Mats programme. Each week we complete a different set of challenges based on the mats. We are learning new skills and improving our team working abilities.
Super Spellers!
Congratulations to our first Super Spellers of the New Year, achieving full marks on their spelling tests this week.
Shapes
Our first maths unit this term focused on shapes. We learnt to recognise, name and describe the features of 2D and 3D shapes. We made 3D shapes from playdough, printed with the sides of 3D shapes to recognise the faces, made shapes with straws and paper and made repeated patterns.
Key Words: square, triangle, circle, rectangle, sphere, cylinder, pyramid, cube, cuboid.
Art Exhibition
On Friday, we had an art exhibition of the pictures we created during our recent WRE learning day. We really enjoyed finding our own work on display and looking at the art work of all the other classes. At the end of the day, our parents and carers came to see our work.
St Peter's Church Visit
As part of our WRE learning, Mrs Spiller arranged for us to visit St Peter's Church. Reverend Kate welcomed us into the church and showed us the artefacts which are important to Christians, explaining their significance.
We enjoyed our visit and learnt a lot.
Giraffes Can't Dance
Our English text for the start of this term has been Giraffes Can't Dance by Giles Andreae and Guy Parker-Rees. We have innovated on the original story, creating our own stories such as Chimpanzees Can't Swim and Elephants Can't Cook. For our creative hook in this unit, we went to the Jungle Dance, making animal masks, playing instruments and making flower garlands. There is a link to a colouring page for the story below.
Happy New Year!
Welcome back for the Spring Term!
We are very much looking forward to starting all of our learning. Our topic this term is London and we will be focusing our learning on the Great Fire of London. Our history, geography, art and DT topics all link to the theme of London, as will some of our English units. We will also be learning about animals and plants in science and programming robots in computing. You can find out more about our learning this term by looking at the curriculum letter below.
Our P.E. Day this term remains a Friday. Mrs Spiller will continue to teach us WRE and Music, but this will now be on a Monday afternoon. Our Library day remains on a Tuesday. Please make sure children have their water bottle, coat, reading book and reading record in school every day and library books on Tuesdays.
Our home learning remains the same as last term - reading at least three times a week, spellings and Numbots. Copies of children's spelling sheets can be found by following the link below.
Mrs Cargill
Christingle Service
As the festive season began, KS1 and EYFS took part in their annual Christingle Service, kindly led by Reverend Kate from St Peter's Church. Before the service, we learnt about a Christingle and what all of the different parts mean. You can find out more about the Christingle by clicking on the link below.
Kindness Workshop
On Monday afternoon, we all took part in a kindness workshop. We learnt how to be kind, show empathy and to be generous. We all learnt a lot and took away a very important message. As part of our workshop, we all made a card to give to someone as an act of kindness. The kindness workshop was brought to us by the charity, 52 Lives. You can find out more about their work by following the link below.
Super Spellers and Numbots!
A big well done to all of the children who achieved full marks in their spelling tests this week and who have achieved a new level on Numbots! Super home learning, well done!
Wind Socks
Last week in science, we made rain gauges to measure the rainfall. This week we made windsocks to enable us to measure the wind direction. Our wind socks have all been hung up in our garden and we can see the direction of the wind when it blows.
Christmas Performance Poetry
Our new English unit focuses on Performance Poetry. As it is the festive season, we are learning the poem, 'The Colour of Christmas' by Moira Andrew. This week we have been learning the poem, with actions, off by heart, ready to innovate on the poem and create our own versions over the next two weeks. Here we are, practising!
Super Spellers!
Congratulations to this week's super spellers who all scored full marks in this week's spelling tests. The link to the weekly spellings is below. Children have a sticker in their reading record detailing their group.
Scottish Inventors
In history, as part of our Scotland topic, we have been finding out about famous Scottish inventors. This week, with Mrs Howard, we learnt about John Logie Baird who invented the television. Here are pictures of the television broadcasts we made to show what we have found out.
Numbots and Super Spellers!
Congratulations to these children who have worked hard to achieve their Numbots certificates and who have achieved full marks on their spelling tests this week. Well done to you all!
Children in Need Ramble
On a gloriously sunny Friday morning, we put on our wellies and went out for our annual Children in Need Ramble around Shephalbury Park. We all had fun and enjoyed a well-deserved drink and rest when we returned to school!
WRE Learning - Special Books
During our WRE lesson with Mrs Spiller, we shared our own special books, explaining to our friends why they were special. We then learnt about the Bible and why it is special to Christians.
Pudsey's Bearpees!
To raise awareness of Children in Need, we took part in Pudsey's Bearpee's challenges, working with David Lloyd. We were helped in our challenge by learners in Year 6 and were very excited to have a visit from Pudsey himself!
WRE Day - Being and Belonging
This week we celebrated our first WRE day of the year, on the theme of Being and Belonging. We thought about our own worldviews and listened to the viewpoints of our visitors who explained their Christian and Muslim beliefs. To celebrate our uniqueness, we created a piece of art to represent ourselves.
Super Spellers!
Well done to this week's super spellers who have achieved full marks on their spelling test this week. There were so many more children who were so close with only one tiny mistake! Let's work hard this week to see if we can have many more super spellers next week!
Spooky Disco!
A big thank you to FOSP for organising our spooky disco. We had lots of fun dancing to the music, playing party games and enjoying a delicious snack!
Super Spellers and Numbots
Congratulations to this week's super spellers who have acheived full marks in their spelling tests and to all the children who have gone up a level with their Numbots learning. Well done to you all!
Maths Games
To consolidate our learning with numbers to 10, we took part in a range of maths games and activties, using the skills which we had learnt to solve these. We've learnt to add and subtract numbers, count and order numbers, compare numbers and use the greater and less than symbols. We are now moving on to numbers to 20.
Drop Everything and Read!
Every day, after lunch, we have a reading session called Drop Everything and Read, or DEAR for short.
In these sessions we read with the adults in our class and enjoy exploring the book corner and the new books from our Usborne Ready Steady Read challenges. We are also joined sometimes by our Year 6 reading buddies who read stories to us and help us with our reading.
Super Spellers and Numbots
Well done to all our super spellers this week who have scored full marks on their spelling tests this week and to all those who have achieved another level in Numbots.
Our Science Experiment
In our science lessons, we have been learning about the properties of materials. We have investigated different materials and have explored how they are used around our school. In our final lesson, we used our knowledge of the properties of materials to design and make an 'umbrella' for a teddy bear. We tested our 'umbrellas' outside to see if they worked.
Super Spellers!
We've been trying really hard to practise our spellings at home. All of our words are linked to the phonics we have been learning each week. Well done to these children who scored full marks on their spelling tests this week.
Numbots
We gave out our first certificates for achievements in Numbots this week - we've done really well! Well done to everyone who achieved a certificate! We're looking forward to giving out lots more.
National Poetry Day
Thursday 5th October was National Poetry Day. We looked at the poem 'My Treasures' by Kate Wakeling. We had fun listening to the poem with Mrs Spiller before thinking about the treasures we could include in our own poems. A link to the poem is below.
Cinderella
We were very excited this week as Mrs Cargill received an invitation from the Prince, asking Year 1 to go to the ball at the palace. We hurriedly made crowns and turned a pumpkin into a carriage and off we went! Since the ball, we've been learning the story through puppet shows and role-play. We are going to be writing our own change stories based on Cinderella in the coming weeks.
Child-Initiated Learning
As part of the transition from Early Years into Key Stage One, children in Year 1 continue with child-initiated learning, or 'exploring' as the children refer to it. The amount of time children spend participating in child-initiated learning reduces as the year progresses, in preparation for the transition to Year Two. Have a look at some of the fun we are having during child-initiated learning.
Place Value
In maths, we have been revisiting numbers to ten from our work in Reception. We have been counting, comparing and ordering these numbers.
Curriculum Meetings
Thank you to everyone who attended this week's curriculum meetings. We hope that you found the information useful. The slides from the meeting can be found below.
Helping out in the Shop and Post Office
It's been very busy in the Isle of Struay Shop and Post Office. Katie Morag and her family asked us to help out. We wrapped parcels, tying them with string, before weighing them. We wrote letters, stuck on stamps and posted them and helped Katie Morag to deliver the mail.
Visiting the Isle of Struay
In English, we are reading the story of 'Katie Morag Delivers the Mail' by Mairi Hedderwick. As part of our learning, we 'visited' the Isle of Struay to find out about life on the island. We visited the shop and post office, painted walls with Mr MacMaster, painted miniatures with the Lady Artist, planted seeds with Mrs Bayview and went fishing with the Holiday People. We also had lots of fun paddling in the stream by the Redfern Bridge. All too soon it was time to get back on the ferry to come back to school!
Our First Week in Year 1!
It's been a busy (and very hot) week in Year 1. We've all settled in well and are having lots of fun learning and playing. We've been exploring our new surroundings and learning our new routines.
Welcome to Year 1!
We hope that you have had a fantastic Summer and had fun making lots of memories with your families!
We are excited to start our learning in Year 1 - We will be learning about Scotland, its geography and history and looking at the Katie Morag stories in English. In art, we will learn to create water colour paintings of Scottish landscapes and weave our own tartan in DT. We'll be learning about different materials in science, different types of music and about families and friendships. There's lots to learn and we can't wait to get started!
This term, our P.E. day is Friday, so please come to school wearing your P.E. kit. Our library day will be Tuesday. Spellings will be given out on Fridays and tested the following week. You can find spare copies of the spellings by clicking the link below. Reading books will be given out in the first week back.
To find out more about our learning this term, have a look at the curriculum letter below.
We look forward to seeing you soon!
Mrs Cargill and Miss Stringer