Year 1

Summer Term - Literacy

We have enjoyed reading 'The Lonely Beast' by Chris Judge. We started off looking really closely at an illustration from the text. We used the illustration to make predictions about what the story might be about. Next, we watched the 'book trailer' and learnt some more about the Beast. We composed some interesting questions that we would like to ask the Beast if we were to ever meet him. After that, we finally read the text. We were so excited and absolutely loved it! We had great fun role-playing parts of the story. We looked closely at different parts of the story and had a go at writing in role. We wrote some super diary entries as the Beast! The Beast wrote us a letter asking for a friend. We decided to put our imaginations to work! We worked with a partner to design a friend for the Beast using chalk in the playground. We then wrote character profiles for the monsters we had designed. Finally, we wrote letters back to the Beast in the role of our monsters.  

Summer Term - Maths

This term, we have loved learning more about place value in numbers to 100. We have had lots of fun building numbers using Base 10, comparing numbers using < and > signs and ordering numbers. We have also been looking at making groups of objects and adding these together as an introduction to multiplication as well as sharing groups of objects as an introduction to division. 

Recently, we have enjoyed learning more about money. We have been practising recognising coins, recognising notes and counting in coins to make totals. We have enjoyed using our class 'shops' to practise our money skills! 

Summer Term - Science

We studied materials in science this term. We went on a materials hunt and thought about man-made and natural materials. We thought about the words we can use to describe materials. We enjoyed learning more about waterproof materials by taking part in a experiment to find the best material for our class teddy bear to use to make their raincoat!

Summer Term - Other Curriculum Areas

We have had such a busy term so far! We started the term with two days dedicated to local history as part of our school's 50th birthday celebrations. Year 1 went on a trip to the Guernsey Folk and Costume Museum. We travelled back to simpler times to learn about how people lived in the past and compared it to how we live in the present. We talked about the similarities and differences in our way of life. We went on a tour around the museum and saw an old kitchen, school, bedroom and playroom. There were lots of toys from the past in the playroom. We looked at what materials they were made of and compared them to our toys today. We took part in some activities where we had the chance to play with various toys from the past. There was even a Victorian washing workshop! We learnt how the Victorians washed their clothes. We had lots of fun! When we got back to school, we made our own versions of some of the Victorian toys we had seen at the museum. 

Our art unit this term was about sculptures. We looked at different types of sculpture and then made snail sculptures out of clay. We used a technique called 'etching' to make different markings on our snails. We looked at the artist Louise Bourgeois's giant spider sculpture. As a class, we collaborated together to make giant spider sculptures using rolled up newspaper. 

In computing, we looked at collecting data and seeing how we could use technology to present the data. We went on a minibeast hunt around the school garden. We recorded the minibeast data in a tally chart and then made pictograms on the Chromebooks to present the data.

Finally, in DT we were given a design brief to make a stable windmill with a moving turbine. The windmills had to be colourful and appealing for a mouse to live in! We loved getting creative and making bright, eye-catching windmills. We tested our windmills and evaluated them against our design brief after we had finished making them. 

In PE, we were so excited to start our swimming lessons! We are working so hard on developing our water confidence and even our distance swimming. We loved showing our grown-ups how confident we are in the water at the school Sponsored Swim. 

Spring Term - Literacy

We have had another fantastic term exploring some really high quality texts in our Year 1 literacy curriculum. We started the term looking at 'One Day on Our Blue Planet - In the Savannah' by Ella Bailey. This text was absolutely fascinating as we began to explore what life is like in a very different part of the world to what we know. We enjoyed learning about some of the animals that you'd expect to find. The language and illustrations in the text inspired us to find out more about lions using other non-fiction texts. We produced some informative non-chronological reports about African Lions using the information we found out. 

We then looked at the fiction text 'Egg Box Dragon' by Richard Adams. We loved this story! We made our very own egg box dragons and wrote some instructions to explain to our families how to make them. We used the story structure to create our very own stories about Egg Box Dragon. We made up a character who had lost something unusual for Egg Box Dragon to help find!

This term was World Book Day. We loved celebrating World Book Day by dressing up as one of our favourite book characters. As it is our school's 50th birthday celebrations this year, each year group had a focus text written in the 1970s to enjoy on World Book Day. Our focus book was 'The Giant Jam Sandwich' by John Vernon. We had great fun listening to the text, making jam sandwiches and having a year group picnic together to enjoy eating our sandwiches! We also wrote instructions on how to make a jam sandwich. 

Spring Term - Maths

We started this term looking at the value of each digit in numbers to 20 and beyond! We enjoyed making 2-digit numbers using Numicon and Base 10 to understand the value of each digit. Then we used our knowledge of place value to compare amounts of objects and numbers. 

We also learnt learnt lots of new positional and directional language. We had lots of fun giving each other directions to follow. We learnt how to use 'left and right', 'quarter, half and full turn', and 'clockwise and anti-clockwise' to give directions. We loved combining our knowledge of directional language with our programming skills to direct the Beebots around. We used real Beebots and virtual Beebots online. We even followed a line dancing routine using our new directional language! 

We have just started to revisit addition and subtraction again. We have been working so hard to learn our number bonds of 10 and started to learn the bonds of 20. We have been using these number facts to help us with some new addition and subtraction strategies.   

As always, we have also been combining our knowledge and resilience to try some tricky problem solving!

Spring Term - Science

Our new science unit this term fitted in wonderfully with our literacy as we began learning all about animals, including humans. We learnt that some things are living, some things were once alive and some things were never alive. We looked closely at humans and our basic body parts and how these are similar or different to other animals. It was also really interesting to learn that there are so many different classes of animal - mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish! We enjoyed sorting animals into the different classes and even created branch graphs on the computer to show how some animals can be sorted.

Spring Term - Other Curriculum Areas

We have certainly been kept busy this term with some of our other curriculum areas!

We started the term with two days dedicated to DT! We loved being able to immerse ourselves in the product design cycle and made some super moving vehicles!

To support our science unit on animals, we learnt about David Attenborough as a significant individual in history. We learnt about David Attenborough's love of the natural world and how he has really contributed to our understanding of the world around us. 

Linking brilliantly with our positional and directional language learning in maths, we have had an introduction to programming in our computing lessons. We have used the Beebots and the virtual Beebots online to practise programming a device. We have great fun completing a variety of challenges, such as directing a Beebot under a bridge that we had made!

We were lucky enough to have another DT project this term. This time it was a textiles project looking at joining materials. Our project brief was to make an animal puppet. First, we learnt about different ways of joining fabrics. We had a go at joining fabric by stapling, using safety pins and using glue. We decided that stapling would be the best joining method for our puppets. Next, we cut out a template for our puppet and thought carefully about our choices of materials. We drew a plan of our puppet design to follow. We used out cutting and stapling skills to make our puppets. Finally, we got creative and decorated our puppets using a variety of materials. 

We also loved our geography unit about the Channel Islands. We learnt about Guernsey, Jersey, Alderney, Sark and Herm. We practised located them on maps and compared the islands using the key facts we had learnt. 

Autumn Term - Literacy

This half-term we have absolutely loved our class text 'Whatever Next!' by Jill Murphy.  First, we looked at the front cover and made predictions. Next, we thought about how to ask and write questions. We wrote questions to Baby Bear, the main character in the story. Baby Bear visits the moon, so we enjoyed using our phonic knowledge to write lists of things we would take to the moon! Finally, we sequenced the story and had a go at retelling it. 

In Year 1, we have been working so hard on our letter formation and writing a sentence. We are trying to remember our finger spaces, capital letters and full stops. 

Autumn Term - Maths

We started this term by learning more about numbers to 20. We worked hard on our careful counting and looked at how we could represent groups of objects in different ways. We drew pictures and used different resources (such as Numicon, counters and cubes) to show amounts of objects. Next, we practised our number formation. We learnt some funny rhymes to help us remember the correct formations and tried hard to keep our numbers neat! We enjoyed playing different games to practise counting forwards and backwards and to find one more/one less than a number to 20. We even started to compare numbers using the greater than/less than signs!  

We had lots of fun exploring 2D and 3D shapes! We played lots of games to help us recognise, name and begin to describe the shapes.

Autumn Term - Science

We have found our science unit on plants very interesting! We have learnt about the main parts of a plant and the difference between wild plants and garden plants. We loved spending time in our own school garden, identifying some of the plants in there, and going on a wild plant hunt around the school outside area. We have also enjoyed learning about the parts of a tree and different types of trees. We have learnt about evergreen and deciduous trees. We were excited to see the leaves start to fall from all of the deciduous trees when autumn arrived!  

Autumn Term - Other

We have been developing our dance and yoga skills during our indoor PE sessions and have been practising some of the fundamental movement skills during our outdoor PE lessons.  We enjoyed our trip to Cobo Beach and had fun jumping the waves as it was quite a blustery day! 

In geography, we thought about the four seasons of the year and the months that are in each season. We focused on autumn. We went outside and collected leaves from the trees. We enjoyed making some colourful leaf rubbings! We also looked at our daily weather chart for the first time. We began talking about the weather each day and taking turns to change our weather chart.

We have been exploring line and colour in art. We looked at Bridget Riley's art and used this as inspiration to experiment with different types of line. We used chalk to experiment with creating different types of line and used this to create a whole class piece of artwork. Next, we moved onto looking at colour in art. We learnt about primary colours. We experimented with mixing primary colours to make other colours. We had such fun using both playdough and paint to experiment with colour mixing!

During our DT unit on mechanisms, we looked at how sliders can be used to make things move up, down, left and right. Our next challenge was to design a moving picture based on the story 'Whatever Next!'. After planning our designs, we used our knowledge of sliders to make moving pictures. We loved making our pictures move and started to independently add sliders to some of our other drawings and paintings. 

We had a fantastic time during our outdoor learning afternoons in Year 1! We were really creative and made our own tree people using natural materials. When the heavy rain stopped us from going outside for one of our sessions, we loved collaborating with members of our class to make dens in the classroom instead!