Hello Year 1,

I wanted to share some happy news with you. In 1JW we always talk about our family and our pets. My rabbit Fudgie🐰 has had 2 baby rabbits🐇🐇. They are so cute and small. 

I wanted to ask you all if you could make me a poster on how to take care of baby rabbits and if you have any name suggestions. 

🌈 Looking forward to seeing you all soon.

Miss Webster 😀

Hi everyone, 

hope you and your family are well. I tried to do some baking today with my daughter and ... well it isn’t the best looking cake but we enjoyed making it. I’m hoping a bit of icing will make it look better x What have you all been making at home?

I have also been doing a tricky jigsaw over the last week and finally finished it today x Take some pictures of what you have been doing and we would love to see these when we return to school. If you are stuck for things to do don’t forget to log in each day for our daily quiz and keep reading x

Reading is a fantastic way to keep your mind occupied and will help all kinds of skills... reading, phonics, writing, knowledge, questioning, reasoning, comprehension and give you something to talk about to others x 

Stay safe, keep reading and keep talking x 

The Year 1 teaching team consists of Mrs Leader, Mr Clancy, Miss Webster, Miss Vicary, Mrs Adams, Miss Carter and Miss  Gray.  PE teacher Mr Broughton, Music Miss Hunter and PSED Mrs Croucher.

Your child's homework (red book) is due in on a Thursday. This allows enough time for new homework to be glued in and sent home again on the Friday. Please encourage your child to keep it at home all week to practise their weekly spellings (for their spelling test each Friday). Please support your child to read at home at least 3 times a week and record this in their green reading record book.

Thank you for your support.

Thank you for all the donations of food today it is heartwarming to see how we can pull together in times of need x 

The children have enjoyed the day finishing their science work. We have been learning about seasons and the children finished by making a beautiful seasonal picture and poem to say thank you to their parents/carers for supporting their learning and helping them grow. 

We had fun dancing, singing and sharing stories. The children were in high spirits and shone brightly in colourful clothes. As your poem says ‘every child is a different kind of flower and together we make this world a beautiful garden’. Well done Year 1 you are ‘magnificent’ keep up the great reading, the enthusiasm for learning and inquisitiveness to make sense of your surroundings. 

Year 1 have been learning about our county North East Lincolnshire in geography. We have been on a school trip to the Heritage Centre to find out more about Grimsby. The children have studied maps to look at the land in and around Grimsby and Cleethorpes and located our school, the beach and the Humber estuary.

We enjoyed making a poem about North East Lincolnshire to help us remember some facts - I hope you enjoy our poem as much as we do...

 Being a Scientist... Can you make the bulb work?

Year 1 were set a challenge to make a lightbulb work. They worked with a small group and their perseverance paid off. They then had to incorporate a switch to turn the bulb on and off.

What super scientists we have!

Being a mathematician... fractions.

Year 1 have been exploring fractions. We started off by looking at halves and quarters of shape. We learnt that fractions MUST be EQUAL. We then transferred this skill to finding fractions of amounts. Look at us being fab mathematicians using our equipment and halves and quarters knowledge to solve problems. 

Wow you all looked amazing! 

The children enjoyed a day focussed on reading and the love of story telling. We made giant book spines to decorate our school corridors, shared our favourite books, read with year 5&6 buddies, completed book reviews, comprehension tasks, coloured in book characters and completed the World Book Day Big Quiz. 

The children worked collaboratively, enjoyed dancing together and sharing their favourite stories. The year 1 staff all came dressed as characters from Alice in Wonderland and we enjoyed reading the story together too. 

The children were excited to receive their books from Waterstones. I hope you enjoy reading them together at home.

Well done year 1 for increasing your home reading scores again last week x 

Well done 1SV with an impressive 107 and 1JL for achieving triple figures too 102 x

Being a Good Communicator 

Year 1 had fun finding out about what each other had been doing during the half term. We had to ask each other questions ... but record our answer on a talking tin. We had fun listening to each other’s recorded messages on the talking tins.

Being a Scientist and Being a Designer!

1LC combined our D.T knowledge of how to manipulate paper using cutting, folding, tearing and curling to create a magnificent piece of artwork! We then used the artwork to help us with our Science work on understanding parts of a plant. Great work everyone!

Design and Technology

In year 1 we have been looking at paper artists and learning the different skills they used to create their masterpieces. We learnt how to measure, cut, tear, curl, fold and make a hinge. The children then worked in pairs to design and make their end piece using as many of the skills in imaginative ways. They were very proud of their end results! 

Year 1 Being a Geographer

A geographer uses maps, atlases and globes to find different cities, continents and oceans. The children enjoyed looking for India and learning about Mumbai. They used geographical language to describe its relation to the Equator.  

Number Day 1LC

1LC took part in our whole school number day. We took part in lots of different activities, including times tables work on the 2x, 5x and 10x table. Here we are creating sticks of multiples of 5. The class collaborated really well and had great fun trying to complete the whole sequence

Home Reading Challenge!

Well done to 1JW again this week, with a combined total of 77 reads. An increase on last week and most reads in year 1!

Well done too 1JL close behind with 67 reads. 

Being a Geographer in 1JW

We love geography in 1JW! Especially learning about all of the places in the world, their capital cities and nearest oceans. 

We can also name all seven continents of the world and the five oceans, can you?

The children have been excited to share their home reading scores with each other again this week. We have noticed how the children are talking positively about the books they are reading. Well done year 1.

1JL had a combined score of 91 this week - fantastic! Top readers and an increase from last week. 1JW got 63 reads, 1LC 57 and 1SV 32. 

Artists in the making x

The children have continued recreating artwork by Andy Goldsworthy. They used clay to make their own ‘stone’ sculpture. They worked really hard making their stones from clay and joining them in an interesting way. The children used their artist skills to adjust their work and adapt their techniques in order for their sculpture to stand.

Investigating Volume and Capacity.

The children enjoyed investigating how much water the different containers held and discussing which held the most/least.

Being a Geographer 

We continue to build our skills of being a Geographer through finding different continents, countries, cities and oceans using maps, atlases and globes. The children are learning about different countries around the world and their capital cities. We are comparing nearest oceans, physical and manmade features and proximity to the equator. The children have loved using google earth to zoom in to different places and have been talking about where they have visited on their family holidays. The children are sharing experiences and prior knowledge of famous landmarks and weather.

The children were fascinated with facts about the Empire State Building in New York and that it had 102 floors!

Being Inspired by Famous Artists.

Following on from last week the children recreated Any Goldsworthy’s sticks art using artist straws and coloured match sticks. Don’t they look fantastic. I think we have some budding artists in year 1.

Being a Great Reader!

Well done to 1JW who had the most home reads this week with 77combined reads.

1JL were close behind with 68. 1LC had 54 and 1SV had 47. Keep it up x I wonder which class will win next week?

The children have embraced the ‘get caught reading’ challenge and have loved looking at each other’s photographs that have been sent in. We are going to make a year group display and the children are excited to write some book reviews to go up there too.  

The children are talking about the books they have read and who with. The more the children read, the more fluent they will become. The exposure to words and context in stories develop a child’s ability to apply the correct words and spellings in their written work. Their comprehension knowledge will develop from the questions you ask about what happened, what might happen and drawing on past experiences. 

Being a Scientist

Continuing our theme ‘Investigating Animals including Humans’ the children learnt about offspring and how they grow into adults. The children had fun matching up the animals and their babies, then naming them. To understand the different stages of growth we discussed the human stages of baby, toddler, child, teenager, adult and elderly. We had a laugh at some of the teachers pictures they brought in! The children then explained what you can and can’t do in each growth stage.

Being An Artist

The Artist we are looking at this term is British Sculptor Andy Goldsworthy. The children were fascinated by his land art and asked lots of questions about his work. They discussed how he thought of and constructed his sculptures. The children were inspired to create their own masterpieces. They enjoyed collecting lots of natural items from the playground and around our school. They worked together to create some amazing artwork ...

Being a Scientist

Learning about senses and the parts of the body associated with each sense. 

Have a lovely break x see you next year.

Year 1 have been set the challenge to get caught reading in the school holidays. Please see your child’s homework book for full details. We look forward to seeing the unusual places you get caught reading when we return in the new year. Happy Holidays x

1JL Being good communicators. 

Today the children made paper chains. They were given the challenge of making the longest chain. Some of the children worked together and discussed that if they joined their chains then they would have the longest chain. This sparked lots of conversation and teamwork. Ideas and conversation flowed as the children then decided to join all the chains together to see if it would fit around the classroom. It was fantastic to hear all the mathematical language come naturally of how the chain needed to be longer, they needed more chains, it needed to go further etc. The children asked me to cut more strips after lunch so they could finish off their new challenge, the chain reaching around the classroom. 

The children were so excited when they finally finished their task. I then posed the question of whether or not the children thought it would fit around the playground. Wow, the buzz of prediction and what if’s and what not’s was fantastic. We went outside to see how far it would reach. It stretched across one side of the playground... so the children asked if the other year 1 classes would join theirs on to see if it would work. What a lovely activity to promote spoken language which sparked super teamwork and mathematical application. 

Save The Children Christmas Jumper Day

Thank you for your donations for this years Christmas Jumper Day in aid of St Andrews Hospice. The children looked fantastic in their jumpers.

Being a designer

The children further developed their construction techniques by making a bottle character of their choice. We looked at pictures of different bottle characters and chose the design we would like to create. The children started by using glue and paint to colour the inside of their bottle or wrap it in coloured paper. They were then given a variety of materials to create and construct their design. The end results look ‘magnificent’.

Lots of discussion and decision making took place and the children were engaged from start to finish. We even did a tally to find out the most popular and least popular character and used our maths skills to justify our answers. 

1JL had an Elf visitor over the weekend. Eric the Elf left the children a book to read. The next morning he had done a book review too. We read the book and wrote our own book reviews. 

The children have decorated a diary for Eric the Elf to see what he gets up to each morning. The children are going to write if he has been good or bad, or if he has made the right or wrong choices.

Eric seems to be making the right choices this week x

he brought the children some paint from the art cupboard and asked them to make a bottle character then made himself into one! He had a go on the key board, although some of the children said he hadn’t asked if he could have a go x 

the children have been making predictions about what Eric might do next... I wonder what he will get up to next week?

Being a scientist

Year 1 have continued their scientific investigations by learning about power. The children sorted electrical and non electrical items. We discussed how somethings needed to be plugged in to make them work. We had fun ‘blasting’ each other with the hairdryer.

Through discussion we talked about items that needed ‘power’ but we may want to use whilst out and about or in a place where we do not have an electrical source. We discussed battery power and how this form of power allowed us to have mobile powered items. We discussed the kinds of things we might need power to make work but need to be moved around ‘mobile items’.

Mrs Leader brought in a selection of appliances from home for us to experience mains power and battery power. The inflatable suit was a hit with the children!

Year 1 have been using their design skills to design and make a model of Big Ben. Linking to our Geography lesson about London, the children were fascinated about some of the landmarks and iconic buildings in London. We set ourselves a Designer challenge... to make Big Ben from junk model materials. The success criteria was to make the tower look like Big Ben, so it needed a clock, to make the tower as tall as themselves and it needed to stand up unaided. The children rose to the challenge. They designed their models and wrote about what they needed and how they were going to construct it.

The children then worked in teams of 4 (one from each class) and used their team work skills to build a tower that met the success criteria.

The children then needed to assess their finished product to check it met the brief. Also they had to critique their models afterwards to see what worked well, what did not work and how they could improve on their design.

Being a Scientist and exploring forces in 1JW

In science we looked at forces and how things move. We investigated push, pull and twist and how this affected the movement of objects. Did they move forwards or backwards? Did the force make the object move faster?

We enjoyed looking at a selection of toys and discussing the force that was needed to make the toy move or work. We ended the lesson with a good game of Bop it! Children had to beat the timer by either pulling, twisting or bopping (push).

Being a Scientist

In science the children have been learning about different materials and their properties. We identified things around the classroom that were made of certain materials. We discussed why we used different materials for different things and explored scientific terms such as transparent, opaque, strong, durable, hard and waterproof to explain why.

1JW's Fab Fact Files

In English this week we have been researching all about lions. We used the information to create a non-chronological report. 

We found out some WOW facts. Did you know lions can sleep for up to 20 hours a day? Me neither!

Please enjoy reading some of our reports.

1LC Non Chronological Reports

We have been learning about how to use facts in our writing and how to organise the information. We used lions as our focus and did lots of research about them, which we then used to create a fact file.

1LC putting our KIRF knowledge to the test!

Miss Webster's Maths Challenge!

Can you work out were I went wrong?

All of my maths group managed to work it out. They persevered with the problem, used our steps to success and finally came to the conclusion that I was wrong because...

See if you can work it out!

Designing odd socks in 1LC

1LC are designing a pair of odd socks with friendly patterns and kind words included as part of our Anti-Bullying awareness.

In art this week we have taken inspiration from the artist Gustav Klimt and created our own artwork using the form of print. In recognition of Remembrance Day we made a cascading poppy cloak for the brave soldier. We used carrots, corks and finger prints to create our poppy design. We copied the repeating patterns that Gustav Klimt used in his painting ‘The Lady’. 

On Monday 11th November we wrote a special note on a poppy and added this to our artwork. The children listened to the last stand and said ‘We will remember them’. The children were proud to show their artwork to the school and posed for group pictures in remembrance of those that gave their today for our tomorrow. 

1LC We Will Remember Them

We are an anti-bullying school and to celebrate anti-bullying week we attended a special assembly with Miss Hazlewood. We talked about what bullying is and how it makes people feel. The children talked about anti-bullying week and how we can support the awareness of anti-bullying by participating in ‘odd sock day’ next Tuesday.

We hope to see lots of colourful ‘odd socks’ next week. 

1LC Bonfire Night Art!

Being a Reader and a Writer.

The children have enjoyed retelling the story of The Three Little Pigs. We have concentrated on sentence structure, capital letters, full stops and making sure we read our work back to check it makes sense. We have used actions and story maps to help us recall the story. 

We also looked at describing the characters in the story. The children added adjectives to construct their character descriptions and thought of synonyms to make theirs different. 

Being a Scientist.

The children have learnt how to use their scientific mind and scientist skills to classify and categorise animals. They have enjoyed learning about vertebrates and invertebrates, omnivores, herbivores and carnivores and also the structure of different animals such as mammals, reptiles and birds. 

Being an Artist.

The children created autumnal pictures using lines and dots to create a textured piece of art. They learned how to make thin and thick lines by using different pressure or moving the angle of the pencil. We looked at some textured art work on the internet and created our own version using autumn colours. 

Autumn Leaves Artwork in 1JW

We sang our seasons song and looked at autumnal colours before creating our artwork.

In our outside learning zone the children have been putting their skills to the test. The children have been accessing independent challenge areas that consolidate their learning and allow us to assess their independent application. These areas allow the children to explore, test, discuss and make sense of the learning that has taken place in the classroom with a hands on approach. The children have been busy working with their friends and recording their activities in their challenge books. They have been so proud to show us what they have done. 

The outdoor learning zone allows us to put out activities that compliment the learning foci. This term our outside zone is helping to develop number bonds, 2D and 3D shape properties, reading and understanding high frequency words and sentence structure. 

Harvest Festival 🥫🍞🥕🥦🍂🍁

Today the children celebrated Harvest Festival with a special assembly with Father Nick. The children proudly sang their harvest song ‘Cauliflowers fluffy’ and listened to a story about the importance of ‘thankfulness’. The children built up boxes with special words on them that spelt out HARVEST. When thankfulness was removed from the bottom of the stack it all came tumbling down. What a lovely assembly - the children were left with the question ‘what are you thankful for?’

Thank you once again for all of your kind donations for such a worthy cause. 

The children showed us how they were going to follow our school expectations by making a ‘mini me’. They used their cutting skills to cut out a photo of their face, cut coloured paper for their smart school uniform and even added a school logo on their jumpers and cardigans. Don’t they look fabulous!

The children then wrote on a speech bubble the school expectations they were going to follow. What a great display this is going to make ... and a great commitment from the children too.

Roald Dahl Day 

What a great day we have had celebrating the work of Roald Dahl. Thank you to all the parents/guardians for making the children look fantastic. We had a fashion parade in the hall and the children stood up and told everyone which character they were dressed as and which book they were from. We then wrote about our character and enjoyed colouring in some of his famous characters too.

We ended the day by watching some of the BFG. The children have been talking about dream catchers and we are going to look at these in more detail next week during art.

Carousel Learning in Year 1

This week we have started our carousel learning in preparation for starting our exciting new curriculum next week. Carousel learning allows us to have more than one learning experience or subject running along side each other. This benefits the children immensely as the learning takes place over a number of sessions/ or days. They are able to learn new concepts before they begin to apply their knowledge to new tasks.

The carousel provides all children with the opportunity to have a subject based session with an adult in a smaller group, enabling us to develop confidence and a deeper understanding. The also provides children with a learning opportunity which promotes independence and partner work, helping each other without adult interaction. (Sometimes the children are better at thinking outside the box and can often solve their own problems in ways adults would not even consider). The third rotation is accessing outdoor provision. This is a more hands on practical approach with access to large construction blocks, sand and water, this enables the children to apply their skills to non classroom based activities.

The children are really enjoying the carousel rotation, as are we! Please enjoy browsing through our photos.

Being a Writer!

This week we have been reading 'Monkey Puzzle' by Julia Donaldson. As a class we created a story map and have made up some actions to help us retell the story. We will use these tools to help us write our own version. 

Being an Artist!

We have been looking at the work of Leonardo Da Vinci (said in an Italian accent). The children enjoyed re-creating the famous 'Mona Lisa' printing, even the adults had a go! 

Next week we are going to improve our sketches by adding some colour.

Being a Designer!

Over the past two weeks our children have become designers. They designed their own dreamcatcher and are in the process of making them. We have used our scissor skills, threaded wool and pipe cleaners and added some decoration.

Next week, we will complete our and compare them with our plan.

Design and Technology - Cookery.

Year 1 enjoyed their first cookery lesson as part of our Design and Technology curriculum. We talked about how to keep ourselves safe from harm and from germs. The children looked at a picture of a kitchen and discussed possible risks to health and safety. We heard some fantastic vocabulary as the children spotted the hazards. We discussed hand washing and the children ordered pictures to show their understanding of how we need to wash our hands to wash away the germs. 

The children were very excited to make their own food.We talked about likes and dislikes and how we all like different foods. We looked at the main ingredients for coleslaw and used our ‘bossy verbs’ to create instructions. The children enjoyed shouting ‘peel’, ‘grate’ and ‘chop’ as we thought about our instructions. We put this weeks spelling rule into practise as we made our coleslaw ‘I am peeling the carrot’ - ‘I have peeled the carrot’ and ‘I am a good peeler’.

We made coleslaw 3 different ways, plain, with mayonnaise and with salad cream. The children tried each one and voted on their favourite. The children then thought of ways they could improve their recipe ... adding more mayonnaise, adding cheese, adding sultanas or apple were some of the suggestions.

Maybe the children could try making their improved version at home and let us know how it tastes x

ICT

Year 1 have continued developing their skills of being a Designer by making front covers for their books. The children used the laptops to create a word document, adding their name using word art and decorating it by adding shapes. They also used pic collage on the iPads to make a decorative and colourful cover that included a ‘selfie’. The children learned lots of different skills to create some amazing front covers (the selfies are hilarious) and we can’t wait for you to see them at parents evening.

Welcome back to all our pupils and their families. The children have been sharing all their holiday news and writing about what they did in the summer holidays ... WOW you have all been busy!

The children have settled in really well to Year 1 life.

The children have been busy getting to know their talking partners and new class mates. We have established our classroom rules and school expectations. We are super proud of how the children have got back into their routines and they have really impressed us with remembering how to line up in alphabetical order.

We have focused on reviewing our skills and are looking forward to learning all about becoming a Reader and Writer, a Mathematician, a Historian, a Geographer, a Scientist, an Artist and Designer in our new and exciting curriculum. 

I hope the children have been telling you all about their days at school.