Year 1: Blog items
Date: 5th Mar 2024 @ 7:11pm
To explore our question for this lesson, ‘what is the best habitat for an animal?’ we visited our forest school area. We recalled what we already learnt about woodland habitats…
'They are covered by trees’
‘It is shady on the ground’
‘Lots of plants and animals live there’
We also recapped the names of animals and where in the woodland they might be found. Finally we looked specifically at animals that we might find on the woodland floor before going out into the forest school area to make observations to answer our key question.
We found lots of different mini beasts such as slugs, snails, wood lice, beetles and spiders. We orally discussed why this is the best habitat for each animal using the STEM sentence ‘I think it is the best habitat because …’
Date: 26th Feb 2024 @ 5:29pm
Today we learnt about finding the difference and exploring this as a form of subtraction. We worked to make comparisons between two amounts, asking questions such as who has more? How do you know? How many more does _ have? We used our skills of counting back and counting on to help us to find the difference. Some of us made both amounts to visually see how many more or less a number is.
Date: 26th Feb 2024 @ 5:08pm
This half term we are exploring yoga in our PE lessons. This week we practised the basic principle of yoga and mindfulness. We learnt what it meant to put our bodies into a yoga pose and how this felt for us. Throughout the lesson we began to learn a number of simple positions through fun games and activities.
Year 1 Our 100th Day in School!
Date: 19th Feb 2024 @ 6:19pm
Today we celebrated our 100th day in Year 1! We began the day with a special assembly with Miss Hooson, who introduced us to a very interesting Maths story! We enjoyed reading the story ‘One is a snail, ten is a crab’ and tried our very best to work out some of the questions in the story! When we went back to class we read and discussed the story again, to deepen our understanding of some of the calculations used in the text. We then used the animals in the story to find ways of making 10 or 20. Some of us began to think about working systematically to find all the possible options. We then chose a number between 2 and 20 and found how many legs could add together to make this number.
Date: 8th Feb 2024 @ 3:44pm
For our second RSE lesson we explored how we grow and change. We recapped on our ground rules before our lesson and practised our feeling faces. We all remembered how to listen respecfully to one another and use our talking object on our turn. Today we read another story and discussed key questions about the events. Our story enabled us to discuss how and why babies need more help and care than older children. We tallked about lots of things we can now do that we couldn't do when we were babies. Finally, we created a lifecycle for a human being. We ordered the cards from youngest to eldest and labelled each picture.
In our third lesson we explored trust, who our trusted adults are and who to talk to if something happens that we don't like. We each identified at least three adults we can each trust in school and at home.
Date: 8th Feb 2024 @ 3:03pm
This week we have enjoyed our three RSE lessons. Our first lesson included reading the story 'It's Okay to Be Different' by Todd Parrs. We all took part in a circle time session to discuss the story and its key themes. This story helped us understand an important message of acceptance and understanding through a fun story with some silly scenes! We celebrated our individuality through acceptance of others and self-confidence. Through our circle time we then explored how we are all different! We drew and wrote about an imaginary friend who is different to us. Some of us drew friends with different skin colours, different hair colours, friends who were a different size to us or friends who moved differently to us.
Date: 1st Feb 2024 @ 5:15pm
Today we learnt how to group animals based on what they eat. We learnt that all animals need to eat so that they can stay alive. We understood that this is because food is the main source of energy for all animals! We learnt that different animals eat different types of food and we discussed the scientific vocabulary to explain how to sort these animals into groups. We went through lots of examples together, naming the animal, discussing their diet and then identifying the diet group they belong to. Working with a partner, we then sorted a number of common animals into groups based on what they eat. We used the correct scientific vocabulary when discussing our choices and explaining our reasoning.
Date: 1st Feb 2024 @ 5:09pm
Today we explored fruit options to use in our healthy fruit salad. We began by talking about different fruits, our favourite fruits, fruits we don’t like and fruits we haven’t tried yet. We also discussed which of our five senses we will be using to find out more about each fruit. We decided we could use four out of five senses to investigate the fruits. We needed to smell it, touch it, look at it and finally taste it! We discussed the different words that we can use to describe taste and smell before trying each of the different fruits. We enjoyed taste testing!
Date: 25th Jan 2024 @ 6:07pm
Today we created our final product to bring our designs to life! We followed our design to safely cut out the pieces we needed to create our mechanisms and put them together to make our final picture. We all showed lots of perseverance and determination to create our moving pictures.
Date: 24th Jan 2024 @ 6:56pm
Today we began our DT journey and learnt about different mechanisms.
The first mechanism we created was a slider. We created a slider based around a scene from ‘The Gingerbread Man’, which enabled a character to move forwards and backwards to chase the main character. We learnt how we were going to make the mechanism safely, read through the instructions and took great care to carry out each step.
The next mechanism to master was a lever. For this mechanism we linked our learning to the story Jack and the Beanstalk. Again, we talked through the instructions as a class, following the prototype Miss Kay made and spotting her mistakes! We then had a turn at making the lever mechanism ourselves. We followed each instruction carefully and all successfully made a lever to show Jack and his beanstalk! We accurately measured specific lengths and cut all the parts correctly. We recapped on the importance of safety whilst using scissors and putting split pins through pieces of paper and card. We then discussed the key parts of the mechanism such as the arm and pivot.
Date: 19th Jan 2024 @ 7:58am
Today, we had a very exciting from Travelling by Tuba. Alongside the rest of our school, we began the day with an assembly, where we were introduced to lots of different instruments from around the world. In the afternoon we then took part in a workshop with Chris and Stewart who helped us create a Mexican Samba. We learnt how to play each instrument before working in groups to play the correct rhythm in time we the music. We then put all our learning together to create our final performance!
Date: 17th Jan 2024 @ 7:41am
This morning we had lots of fun learning without the aid of a pen/pencil. We started off the day with our music lesson. We used the glockenspiels to learn how to play the backing track to ‘We All Sing A Song’. This song had three notes, ‘F, G. A’ which we had to listen to and then repeat back. This was is the style of the Waltz.
After, during our PHSE lesson, we learnt about all the hazards that you would find around the home. We worked in small groups, using our oracy skills, to explain why each picture may or may not be a hazard. We all had the opportunity to give a reason for their picture while the other children listened to their answers.
In our PE session we explored different ways of moving to begin to create a winter dance.
Date: 17th Jan 2024 @ 7:39am
We began todays lesson by recapping on the key features of our religion for this half term, using accurate vocabulary. We then watched two videos, which told us two Islamic stories, ‘The Prophet and the Ants’ and ‘The Crying Camel’ We discussed each story together, thinking about why Muslims might think that is it important to teach children to care for all living things. We learnt that Muslims believe in one God who created the world with the view that all living things should be cared for.
Date: 11th Jan 2024 @ 6:00pm
Today we focussed on understanding 10. We recapped counting to 20 from different starting points, both forwards and backwards before looking in-depth at the number 10. We used a range of resources such as, base 10, counters, cubes, tens frames and Numicon to investigate 10. We made 10 using either 2 or 3 parts and wrote the corresponding addition sum. Some of us then moved on to investigating 10 further with our number mats. We wrote the number in words, identified the tens and ones, displayed 10 on a part part whole, found one more and one less and identified if the number 10 is odd or even.
Date: 11th Jan 2024 @ 2:55pm
Today we began to discuss our key question in RE, ‘How might beliefs about creation affect the way people treat the world?’ We began by learning the name of the religion we will be learning about and that Muslims believe there is only one God – Allah. Todays lesson involved learning about how we should treat the environment, why it is important and whose responsibility it is. We did this through looking at images and real life nature examples. We went on a nature walk to collect lots of natural resources and we then used these natural resources to create transient nature pictures. After this, we looked at a number of images and decided which are examples of looking after the environment and which are not. We sorted them together, verbally discussing and justifying each example.
Date: 21st Dec 2023 @ 10:37am
Today we completed a piece of Art to show an important aspect of the Christmas Nativity story. We recapped on the key events in the story, the order they happen and the important characters. We then chose which scene we wanted to use to inspire our own artwork and completed our own version of this.
Date: 20th Dec 2023 @ 2:36pm
Today Year 1 enjoyed our Christmas party. We played games, ate party food and even had a visit from Santa!!
Date: 15th Dec 2023 @ 1:42pm
This week we were lucky enough to visit St Mark’s Church in Layton. We met Reverend Matthew and told him everything that we have learnt about Christianity so far. Reverend Matthew then read the nativity story to us and we all joined in with different parts. He taught us about the key messages in the story and the roles of different characters. We then learnt about the advent wreath and the symbolism of the different candles. Finally we looked around the church and asked and answered lots of questions about features of the church.
Date: 14th Dec 2023 @ 6:23pm
Today we learnt to recognise the symbols used on an Ordnance Survey map. We learnt that these maps are used to help people find places of interest in an area. We looked at different map symbols together and worked out what each meant.
We then worked collaboratively to make a map of our local area. Together, we discussed the important features we should expect to see on our maps and then worked in pairs/small groups to create our own map of the local area. Some of us created our ‘messy map’ using loose parts and some of us made our maps by creating our own symbols on paper and placing them onto the correct part of Grange Park.
Date: 11th Dec 2023 @ 4:58pm
Year 1 are all looking forward to enjoying the Christmas activities around school over the next couple of weeks! Today, we had lots of fun on Christmas jumper day and enjoyed our delicious Christmas lunch!
Date: 7th Dec 2023 @ 2:52pm
Lots of our Year 1 children attended our Christmas Disco and we all had a brilliant time! We enjoyed playing pass the parcel, dancing and eating our picnic tea! We are all looking forward to our Christmas party!
Date: 6th Dec 2023 @ 7:06pm
This week we have learnt to use our knowledge of number bonds to find parts, and represent them using the subtraction symbol. We focussed on the meaning of the subtraction symbol and used part whole models to support us to write the related subtraction facts and start to build our understanding. We then moved onto answering missing number problems, subtracting by taking away and subtracting using a number line.
Year 1 Features of our school grounds
Date: 1st Dec 2023 @ 2:16pm
Today we began our Geography lesson by recapping on the key words urban and rural and features of each. We found the differences between rural and urban areas and recapped on the type of settlement we live in. We then began to learn about the features of our school grounds. We discussed the features we expected to find around our school grounds and considered how we were going to record our findings. Whilst outside, we completed our sheet with a partner and we discussed our findings together as a class. We then looked at aerial views of our school grounds. We identified and labeled the key features of our school area using words, pictures or Seesaw to create labels.
Date: 29th Nov 2023 @ 6:16pm
Today we helped Ted solve another problem! Firstly, we learnt our new vocabulary. We learnt that transparent means it allows light to pass through so that objects behind are seen easily. We also learnt that opaque means that no light is able to pass through it. We looked at different examples together until we were confident in identifying transparent and opaque. We then learnt that Ted had another problem! His new house needed curtains because his windows are transparent and let lots of light in. We then tested different materials to offer him advice on which material would be best to make curtains from. We identified how to make it a fair test and the method we needed to follow.
Date: 21st Nov 2023 @ 5:51pm
Today we began to formalise the idea of addition as bringing two or more parts together to create a whole. We completed three different tasks that encouraged us to explore and focus on bringing two parts together. We used the correct mathematical language to explain, e.g. ‘3 cubes plus 5 cubes is equal to 8 cubes.’ Some of our grow ups joined us for ‘together time’ and we showed them how we use tens frames, counters, part whole models and cubes to support our learning.
