Mrs Paganuzzi and Mrs Shorthouse (Class Teachers)
Mrs Harvey and Mrs Sweeney (Support Staff)
Summer 2021
Welcome back. We hope you and your family kept safe and well during the Easter break.
This half term we will launch our ‘Flourishing in the Sun’ topic and have lots of exciting learning coming your way.
In Geography we will be learning about the human and physical features of the seaside. We will be finding out about the similarities and differences between seaside resorts and our own locality.
In History we will be studying the life Grace Darling. We will be investigating where she lived and finding out about her heroic rescue of the paddle steamer passengers.
We will then look at seaside holidays of the past. We will learn about the way in which people travelled to the seaside, the clothes they wore and the activities they took part in. We will then compare these with seaside holidays today.
As designers we will make our own boats or lighthouses. We will develop our cutting skills and will use a range of shaping and joining techniques when constructing our models.
In Science we will focus on the process of growing, exploring native trees and wildflowers. We are looking forward to utilising our local environment wherever possible. We will identify different plants and think about why plants grow in different areas. We will be busy planting our own seeds tending and caring for them in the classroom and quad. We will observe closely and take care to document the growth of our plants. It will be exciting to see our plants grow! We will be introduced to a variety of new vocabulary linked to our plant life topic.
This term, we will also continue our ongoing learning on the seasons. We will explore how our environment changes as we move into Summer recapping and reviewing the investigative work we have made through the year.
In art, we will be getting creative with our paintbrushes to make still life paintings of flowering plants. We will enjoy mixing primary colours to create secondary ones. We will be using powder paint to paint our plants and will use fine paint brushes to add detail.
In Phonics we will be focusing on applying some of our phase 5 alternative spellings in our writing. We will also learn to add suffixes where no change to root word is needed.
In English we will be recapping what we need to put in our sentences to make them more exciting to a reader. We will continue to place importance on accurate punctuation every time we write. Our first text Jack and the Beanstalk will lead to writing our own fairy tales.
In Maths, we will start using the language of problem solving to solve problems with the whole or part unknown e.g. 13 + ? = 19. Later in the term, we will be learning about multiplication and division in our maths. We will introduce the concept through repeated addition. We will learn how to divide and use the terms ‘share’ and ‘equal groups’. We will have lots of hands on exploration so that we can explain our learning to each other.
Spring 2021
Year 1 have impressed us week after week with the focus and continued hard work they have put into their learning. We have seen so many excellent pieces of work and it has been a pleasure to share their achievements and golden moments.
Phonics is a really important part of the Year 1 curriculum. Whilst at home, the children have worked hard on a daily basis to develop their reading skills when looking at alternate pronunciations.
Awongalema (an East African tale) was our first fiction text this term. The children have been busy mapping, stepping and performing the story and we were blown away by the super storytelling videos we have seen.
In our second unit of learning Honey and Trouble, we continued to develop our independent writing with an emphasis on description. We created our own toolkits for descriptive writing thinking carefully about adjectives and verbs to match the different senses.
This term’s maths has seen us exploring numbers within 50, looking at place value and using practical equipment to represent numbers. We have found 1 more and 1 less of numbers and used the language and symbols ‘more than’, ‘less than’, ‘equal to’ to compare numbers.
In Computing the children have been creating their own algorithms by writing and following simple recipes. They have put together some wonderful videos of the process and their final creations.
Throughout this half term, we have been learning about the how weather changes as the year progresses and the seasons change. Year 1 worked enthusiastically to observe the daily weather patterns when creating their own weather forecasts.
In science the children have been busy identifying, naming and comparing the characteristics of the five main animals groups (fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals). They’ve been outside to observe the types of animals that live in their local environment and have taken part in the Big Schools Birdwatch.
We have undertaken a number of art projects during our Mixed up Animal unit. We spent some time looking and researching the work of Henri Matisse and his paper collages. Using cutting, tearing, gluing and overlapping, the children created some outstanding mini Matisse’s on an animal theme.
To round off our unit, we focused on the work of Henri Rousseau’s Portrait Landscapes ‘Tiger in a Tropical Storm’. Just look at the children’s beautiful work!
Autumn 2020
We were very happy to welcome the children back to school to complete their first full week. Doesn’t it feel good to be back -finally! Miss Taylor and Mrs Fox have been delighted to see the children coming in with smiling faces and to see how well they are settling into their new class. We may have only been back a few days but the children have already impressed everyone with how well they have adjusted to their new adults, classroom and routines. They have so confidently settled into their learning making it a very positive start to our new school year.
Our focus over the first few weeks is on getting to know the children and ensure the children feel safe and settled, ready to learn. You may well have some very tired children after our first few weeks back at school. We’ve certainly been very busy!
In Maths, we have been learning how to use directional language and have used ordinal numbers to position objects. Next we will focus on using the numbers to 10. We will learn to sort objects in different ways and count objects up to 10, by writing the digits and representing them using objects and pictorial representations. The children will begin to see how numbers can be regrouped in different ways but still conserve their value.
In English, we have been reading the story ‘Plenty of Love to Go Round’ by Emma Chichester and have been learning how to write labels, lists and captions. The children have been introduced to the term adjective (a describing word).
We have already started teaching phonics as a whole class which the children have really enjoyed. They have learned the phonemes (sounds) j, i, v, w, y the tricky words, he and she and the spelling of the words the and to.
In science, we have begun our topic on the human body. We discussed what we already knew about ourselves and our senses. We loved singing the body part song, and telling each other what our bodies could do whilst naming the body part. Next, we used our observational skills to compare ourselves with others and to find answers to a question – Are people with bigger feet taller?
We look forward to a year of fun and exciting learning with you all.
