Year 1 Newsletter

 What a busy couple of weeks we have had in Year 1!

Seacole class loved every minute of their visit to the library and were so well behaved.  We are very proud of them and their enthusiasm for reading!  

'That's the way to do it!'

In our history lessons, we have been discovering how the Victorians entertained themselves at the seaside! We made our own Punch and Judy stick puppets and performed our own puppet shows to the class. 

We also enjoyed ice cream the way the Victorians did...in the form of Hokey Pokeys.  We found it is not easy and extremely messy eating ice-cream from baking paper, however it is just as yummy!

 

Mini tennis is the name of the game for our PE lessons this term. The children have been practising their racquet skills, rolling balls to their partner on the ground.  Next steps, in the air! 

Year 1 Newsletter

 In Year 1 we have had our geographer's hats on and having been learning about coastal areas and the things you might find there.  In groups, the children labelled pictures with the different features they could see such as sand, cliffs, sea, pier, harbour, lighthouse, dunes and much more!   

                        

We had an awesome time on our whole school Science days!  We learnt all about STEM skills and thought about which of these skills we might need in jobs that we would like to do when we're grown ups. Siddhi's mum came to visit us and taught us about the skills she uses as a pharmacist.  She uses lots of different STEM skills. 

We had great fun with a waterlily investigation, making predictions and observing what happened when we put a paper waterlily with closed up petals into a tray of water.  The petals opened! 

 Then we did our own waterlily investigation in groups, changing one thing each.  Groups chose to change the material of the waterlily, the type of liquid, the depth of the liquid or the shape of the waterlilies to see if this affected the time it took for the waterlily to open. 

The children have been amazing scientists!

Continuing on our science day learning, we went outside for a minibeast hunt, looking for all sorts of beasties! We searched high and low, looking carefully on trees, under leaves and logs and in the long grass. 

With our artist's hats on, we discovered the seascapes that the wonderful Rachel Bennett creates!  In the immersion room, we shared what we liked about the paintings.  Back in class we continued our discussion and wrote our thoughts and feelings about the paintings around images on sugar paper. 

'I like this one because it makes me feel like I'm underwater.'

'I can see seaweed and waves crashing.'

'This is my favourite because it's like a beach.  There is the sky and clouds, then the sea and the sand at the bottom.'

'I like this one because of the shades of blue that she has used.'

Paintings by Rachel Bennett

Year 1 Newsletter

 Year 1 have started the summer term with a little trip to the seaside!  For our poetry writing, we have been using our imaginations and all our senses in our seaside experience days.  Over two days, we went on imaginary visits to the seaside to help us collect vocabulary for our poetry writing. We ‘arrived’ at the seaside and took off our shoes and socks off so that we could ‘feel’ the sand beneath our feet!  We acted out different seaside activities such as walking across the sand, building a sandcastle, collecting shells and pebbles, licking delicious ice-creams and smelling the wafts of fish and chips.   We also watched a virtual seaside walk and listened to lots of different seaside sounds. We ‘paddled’ in the cold sea, shivering as we dipped our toes in the chilly water, feeling the waves splash our legs and noticed that the pebbles were really shiny in the water.  We'll use all our fantastic vocabulary to write our own seaside poems! 

    For this half terms world view lesson, we have been thinking about sounds that we like.  After doing a 'guess the sound' quiz and sharing our favourite sounds, songs and music in circle time, we explored the sounds that the different percussion instruments make.  We chose one we liked and in our groups we used symbols to create a short piece of music.  We performed them to the rest of the class!

 

In our maths lessons we have been doubling and halving and in our first topic lesson, we put our geographers hats on and thought about the question: Should we go to the seaside?

Yes we should go to the seaside because... we can swim in the sea, go surfing, relax and have some peace, have an ice cream and have fun building sand castles!

                                                     

We're not sure if we should go to the seaside because... there are dangerous things on the sand and in the water, you might drop rubbish and it might go in the sea, it is fun but you might go in the sea without an adult and get sucked in by a wave.

                                                     

No we should not go to the seaside because... you could get pinched by a crab, a gull might sweep past and snap your food up,  you might hurt your feet on a stony beach, if we leave rubbish animals can eat it and get really sick. 

                                                     

  

Year 1 Newsletter

 We've been busy, busy, busy in Year 1 in our first full week back to school after Christmas!  The children have been so excited by our new topic 'Why is Africa is special place?' especially in our art lesson, where we looked closely at African masks and did some amazing observational drawings of them using oil pastels. 

In our writing lessons, we started a story writing unit and began by investigating tortoises!  We went into the immersion room to watch a video and looked closely at pictures on the walls.  We worked together to think of lots of words to describe how they look and how they move, wrote them on post its and stuck them on the walls!  Following that we began to learn the traditional African story 'How the tortoise got its shell', using a story map and actions.  It was great fun!

 

Finding the difference between 2 numbers has been our focus for maths this week.  The children have worked so hard at this tricky concept and we are so proud of them!

In our first ever World Views lesson we focused on bullying.  We acted out some bullying scenarios and thought about why people might bully others.  In RE we are exploring friendship and what makes a good friend.  We have learnt some stories from the Bible where Jesus was a good friend, such as when Jesus met Zacchaeus. 

 

Year 1 Newsletter

 Our finished clay hedgehogs! 

We are so so proud of our clay hedgehogs and think they all look amazingly cute!  Our hard work, perseverance and new art skills have paid off.  We hope you all agree!

With our scientists 'hats' on, we have been exploring the school grounds for signs of the seasons changing.  We discovered the leaves are falling from the trees and are all different shades of red, yellow, green, orange and brown.  Some trees have lost more leaves than others which we found very interesting.  We also found seed pods on the ground too as well as berries, lots of twigs and some buddleia flowers that have dried up and died. We collected as much as we could to take back to the classroom to look at closely with magnifiers.  

We are going to observe the changes in the seasons throughout the year and will take a class photo by a tree each time.  Here is our first!  There are lots of green leaves on the tree.  We are excited to see how it will change throughout our time in Year 1. 

We got Spiky the hedgehog home!

We have also been busy in our geography lessons and, now that we are map experts, decided to help Spiky the hedgehog find his way to a more suitable habitat.  The forest!

On a simple map of the school grounds, we drew the best route from our classroom to our forest, walking along the route as we worked.  We thought very carefully about which direction we had to take as we went.  We have really enjoyed learning about directions and using a compass.  

                           

West along the path, past Year 2                  North across the playground

              

                               Turning east to go past Year 6                    Which way to go?  

Through the playground or along the path?  We took a vote and decided the safest way for Spiky is...

        

                                        North, along the path!                 Then east across the grass 

 ... and finally Spiky is in the best habitat with all the slugs and worms he can eat!  Hooray for Year 1!

Year 1 Newsletter

 Fun at Frinton!

We were all so excited that we could go on our school trip to Frinton beach, and despite a few drizzles of rain, we had an incredible day.  The children were wowed by their first sight of the sea, were so good at finding all the things on their scavenger hunt and built superb castles!  Having a paddle seemed to be the favourite activity though, jumping over the waves and enjoying see their teachers getting rather wet, brought huge smiles to their faces.  We are so so proud of their fantastic behaviour throughout the day too. 

Amazing Art!

In our art lessons we have been looking at seascapes by Rachet Bennett.  In order to create our own, we have been practising our colour mixing and creating sea and sandy coloured backgrounds to print on.  We used string, scrunched up tin foil and bubble wrap to print onto our painted paper.  We will then tear these papers into strips and pick out ones we like to create our own seascape printed paper collages. 

There has been so much else going on in Year one over the past couple of weeks too!  Pattern making and measuring in maths, learning about the bravery of Grace Darling and writing her story in English, investigating the best material for a lifeboat in science and to top it all off, an awesome sports day!  The children were amazing sportspeople, cheering others on, persevering even when they were worn out and giving every event their absolute best.  We couldn't be more proud!

Year 1 Newsletter

Year 1 have discovered a passion for poetry since the whole school poetry fortnight began!  We have enjoyed listening to and watching a range of different types of poems alongside immersing ourselves in an imaginary seaside visit last week!  We did this so that we could collect lots of different vocabulary to help us write our own seaside poems this week.  It was a lot of fun and the children amazed us with their word choices.   We have been busy learning our class poems for the Poetry Slam in a couple of weeks too, trying hard to use clear expressive voices. We can't wait to perform them!

 

In our topic lesson we continued our learning about the Victorian seaside entertainment of Punch and Judy shows.  We discovered that they are still part of seaside entertainment today!  We made our own Punch and Judy characters lolly stick puppets and made up our own little shows in trios. Then we performed them to the class. 

'That's the way to do it!'

In our last science lesson before half term, we revisited our learning about seasonal change.  The last time we made seasonal observations was at the end of autumn and we noticed that our school grounds have changed so much since then!  This time, the trees were full of green leaves instead of brown, red, yellow and orange leaves on the ground, and it was so warm we didn't even need our coats!

We completed a scavenger hunt in pairs and found flower buds, blossom, new leaves growing, insects being more active, feathers, lichen on twigs, leaves that had been munched on and the field was covered in daisies!