Welcome To Year 1

Statement of Intent KS1

In Key Stage One we are passionate about supporting children to continue to develop their love of learning.  Our children’s wellbeing is at the centre of our curriculum, we understand that they need to feel safe, loved and secure within the environment in order to access a high level of learning. We teach topics in cross-curricular ways and are committed to providing hands on learning opportunities, enabling children to shape their own learning journey. We aim to foster children’s independence, resilience and perseverance and ensure that through our high quality provision they are able to consolidate and enhance a range of skills in all curriculum areas. Our inclusive approach enables us to foster our children’s curiosity and imagination as well as their academic achievement.

Helping My Child To Learn At Home

TERM 5

Maths – Fractions, Multiplication and Division!

This term Year 1 have been introduced to Multiplication and Division as part of our Maths learning. We have used practical arrays both outside and inside the classroom and also drawn them in our books to help us solve problems using these operations. We have used our counting in 2s, 5s and 10s to help us work out the answer.

We have also been learning about Fractions. We have been finding a half and a quarter of different shapes and have learnt that when we are splitting a whole into fractions, it needs to be equal parts. We have found halves and quarters in lots of different ways such as folding shapes and colouring a half/ a quarter. Making playdough shapes and finding a half / a quarter.

Next we will move on to finding fractions (a half and a quarter) of numbers and amounts

Mexico

As part of Around the World in a Week week, Year One children found out all about Mexico. As well as locating it on the globe, and on a map, we learned all about Mexican landmarks, some customs and traditions, listened to some Mexican music and even learned a simple dance.       We wrote instructions for how to make salsa which we then made and ate with tortillas which we practised cutting into halves and quarters. It was muy bien! In art, we learned about the influential, female Mexican artist Frida Kahlo who was famous for her self portraits. We then had a try at painting our own portraits, looking closely at ourselves in a mirror and observing our features carefully.

Space

This term, our learning theme has been, ‘To infinity and beyond!’ We have loved learning all about space and have gained a real insight in to life as an astronaut through role playing in our rocket role play areas, finding out about a famous astronaut in history called Tim Peake and finding out all about our solar system during our space dome experience. During writing we have focused on nonfiction and have written lots of facts about Tim Peake and his time on the international space station as well lots of interesting facts about our solar system and our home, planet Earth. We have also enjoyed being creative making planets using a range of styles and media – this term has been a blast!

TERM 4

Growing

In Year one this term, we have combined Science and Outdoor Learning and have been learning all about plants, what they need to grow and the parts of a plant and their function. The children loved reading the story, ‘Supertato’ by Sue Hendra and were then inspired to grow their very own evil peas and super potatoes using their newly acquired knowledge about how to plant a seed and nurture the plant to help it grow.

The children have also explored our wildlife area to look for signs of growing, new life and have identified many different plants in our wonderful outside space.

Music

This term the children have been very excited to practise playing some of the percussion instruments that we are lucky to have in our Music Room.

We used percussion instruments such as claves; tambourines; drums and rain shakers to create music relating to our ‘Wonderful World’ topic, which has focused heavily on plants. We have used these instruments to play alongside the story ‘Rainforest’ by Helen Cowcher, and also used a variety of instruments to tell the story of a seed growing into a flowering plant.

The children have learnt some technical musical terms such as ‘dynamics’ – how loud or quiet the music is and ‘tempo’ – how fast or slow the music is and have practised playing a range of instruments using different tempos and dynamics.

Easter

Term 4 is always such a lovely term to be in school finally saying goodbye to Winter and looking forward to longer, sunnier days ahead!  

A lot of time is spent in preparation for the wonderful Spring Christian festival of Easter.                                    We celebrated the beginning of Lent by making and eating pancakes in our classes on Shrove Tuesday. Much of our RE this term has focused on the story of Easter, exploring why this is such a special time for Christians. The children have learned that for Christians, it is a time of great sadness followed by much happiness, hope and joyful celebration.

It has been simply lovely to get together as a Year Group for Worship in the Hall on a Monday and once again, the school has been filled with the sound of children singing. We have been practising songs for a very special Easter service with the rest of the school at our beautiful church of St. Martin’s.                                      Parents were also able to join in the festivities by creating some fantastic Easter gardens and bonnets with the children at home.

TERM 3

Computing

In Year One, the children are always very excited to visit the computer room and learn new skills. This term the children have developed many new skills that we have built on each week. The children have improved their mouse control skills by creating season picture on a paint programme and have learned how to save and print our work. This is quite a tricky skill but it is something we will continue to develop during Computing time.

We have also learned how to use a webpage and have explored how to go back a page, how to scroll down to find a certain link and how to search for a webpage by using our safe search engine, ‘kidrex’.

Geography

Geography this term has focused on weather in our country and across the globe. The children began by keeping their own weather diaries and by exploring the weather by going on walks around the school to find signs of winter such as frost, bare trees, rain and mist.

We were able to answer questions about the weather and talk about points such as what the most common weather was and the difference in weather over two or more days.

Following this, we began our learning on weather and climate across the globe. We found out about the equator and how it effects the weather and climate for countries close to it and those that are further away. We loved finding out about two contrasting countries; Iceland and India. When learning about Iceland we found out about animals that live there, the food they eat, what the landscape looks like and even listened to some Icelandic Music. Learning about India was lots of fun and we enjoyed identifying things we already knew such as about the dishes and fruit that they eat. Many of us had tried some before! We enjoyed finding out about Yoga and dancing along to Bollywood music and finally learning about the Taj Mahal and creating our own art work of it.

Science

In Science this term, we have loved exploring and learning about materials, their uses and their properties.

We began our learning, by naming everyday materials and wondering what the materials could be used for. We discussed why we use certain materials for different objects and talked about the properties of 6 main materials; wood, glass, metal, plastic, fabric and rock.

We sorted materials in to groups as a class and discussed why each material fit in to each group. We even found that some materials fit in to more than one group such as a glass which was hard, waterproof and transparent!

We have loved being Scientists, investigating and finding out about what material would work best for an umbrella. We conducted an experiment using 5 different materials, sugar paper, some water and a pipette and we made sure to add the same amount of water to each material to see which did not leak through to the paper underneath.

New scientific words we have learned are, materials, properties, transparent, opaque, hard, soft, waterproof and absorbent.

TERM 2

Outdoor Learning

This term we have really enjoyed our outdoor learning. We learnt all about The Gunpowder Plot and celebrated on Bonfire Night with toasted marshmallows around the fire in the Hive and sparklers in the playground. We made sure that we all knew how to keep safe on Bonfire Night.

We enjoyed a wonderful Autumn walk to Curtis Wood. The weather was perfect, a little chilly but sunny and bright. We played in the woods and collected a range of things that had fallen to the ground. We picked some interesting leaves, some pine cones, acorns and noticed which trees were deciduous and which were evergreen. We worked together and collected different shaped and coloured leaves to help us with our learning the following week. From our collections we read the story ‘Leaf Man’ by Lois Ehlert and created our very own leaf people. During our Dark Night experience, we stayed later at school to see how things would change when dusk fell and it got dark outside.

We had some snacks and chose which topping we would prefer on our toast, we had some veggie sticks and a few crisps. As a treat, we were also allowed some hot chocolate!  As the night became darker we went outside to explore the playground, the Wildlife area and the Hive. In the playground we enjoyed exploring the night sky using an App which showed us constellations and where the planets were, we also enjoyed some music and made glow stick bracelets. In the Wildlife area we used our torches and noticed how different the space is in the dark, some of us even saw a badger! In the Hive Mrs Stroud helped us to make s’mores around the fire, they were delicious! We had a great time!

Christmas Celebrations

This term our theme has been Let’s Celebrate. Over the past few weeks we have been looking at Christmas celebration. We have talked together about how different families celebrate at Christmas time and traditions around the world. We loved learning the songs and our lines for the Nativity and were so proud when we watched our performances back. We have developed new skills and our creativity through the range of Christmas crafts that we have been involved in to take home and share.  We learnt how important it is to be accurate when weighing out ingredients for cooking when we made gingerbread men. They tasted delicious!

Art

In Art this term we have been developing our knowledge of colour mixing. We learnt which are primary and which are secondary colours. We also explored and experimented with different colours to find out which primary colours make which secondary colours. We applied the skills that we had learnt to create our own beautiful Christmas pictures.

TERM 1

COOL Time

This term, during COOL Time, we have loved exploring our new classrooms and all of the exciting things to do in year one. We have especially enjoyed role playing celebrating a birthday party, looking after our patients at the doctor’s surgery and being jungle explorers. We have continued our own learning by practising our handwriting and cutting skills when exploring the art trolley and we have problem solved using a range of maths resources to find one more or one less and practising our careful counting. We have also loved spending time in our class gardens telling stories, writing and building using construction toys.

Marvellous Me

This term our first topic has been Marvellous me! As part of this topic the children have enjoyed learning about their new class animals (Rabbits, Moles and Owls) and creating lots of Artwork around these animals.

Wherever possible, we have tried to link our learning to our Marvellous Me topic.

 In Geography we have thought about where we live and our local area of Herne.

In Computing, the children have practised their mouse control and used a paint program to create pictures of themselves and write their names.

In Science, the children have learnt about different parts of the human body and labelled them. It has been a fantastic start to the new academic year and we look forward to sharing more of our topic work with you as the year progresses.

Reading

Well, it is definitely true to say that the children in Year 1 love books and stories! Whether it is settling down in our cosy and inviting book areas in our classrooms or enjoying browsing in our wonderful library the children’s love of books is evident for all to see. Each day in class the children vote for their choice of story which is then shared at some point during the day. We have also celebrated the amazing Roald Dahl with all of the children participating in a selection of exciting activities as well as focussing on a range of environmentally themed books, both fiction and non-fiction, as part of our recent ‘Go Green’ week.

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