Year 1

Welcome to Year 1 Woodpeckers!

Our class teachers are Mrs Walsh and Mrs Hollas. We are supported in class every day by Miss Watson. 

We are expected to read, at home, three times a week and books will be changed at least every Friday.

In the morning we have:

Phonics, Guided Reading, Literacy and Maths.

In the afternoon after Worship, our lessons are based on the wider curriculum which includes: 

Science, Art, DT, PE, History, Geography, PSHE, Music and RE. We also have an outdooor area where we can continue our learning.  

Every Monday afternoon, parents are invited in to class to sit and read with their child. This is from 3:00 until 3:20.

Our PE lessons take place on a Thursday afternoon. Children are expected to wear a full PE kit, including pumps. If your child wears earrings please remove these in the morning before school.

On Thursday afternooons, we have Junior Jam to help us with our learning. In Junior Jam we do Computing, Music and PE.

Homework can be found on our Google Classroom, every Friday and is expected to be returned the following Wednesday.

 

Our curriculum map for 2023 - 2024 can be found below:

Year 1 Curriculum Map

 

We have started the year off by revisiting the Vine which winds it way throughout school. We remembered our 5 loving statements:

Loving God, 

Loving Ourselves,

Loving Others,

Loving Learning

Loving Life.

Our Learning Journey:

Spring 1

In Geography we have started to find out about our local area. We already knew lots of things about Nelson, such as the fact it has lots of parks, a swimming pool, churches, mosques, schools and lots of different shops. We found our school on Google Earth and looked at maps of our local area. We found lots of different places. We are all looking forward to using a map to walk around our local area. 

In Maths this week we have been using our understanding of place value to find the mass of different pieces of equipment in our classroom.  We worked in a team measuring mass using 10g and 1g.

In Year 1 we love reading, especially when we can snuggle up in a blanket with a cushion, a teddy and a good book. 

 

Autumn 2

In Geography and Science we have been learning about the weather and finding out about the different seasons. We will be going on a walk to see if we can spot the signs which tell us what season it is. We have found out about what happens to some trees during the different seasons and made our own paintings.

In art we have been Colour Detectives, finding out about primary colours and how we can mix them to make new colours. We mixed different colours of plasticine and were amazed by the colours we made. We will be using primary colours to help up paint numbers in the style of the artist, Jasper Johns.

In maths we have been finding out different 2D and 3D shapes. We have started to count in steps of 2 and 5 and noticed the patterns in the different sequences.

We have been lucky enough to have a trip to the cinema with the children from Reception. It was very dark at the beginning but then the films came on and we loved it. We watched The Snail and the Whale and Stickman by Julia Donaldson. When we got back to school we made different props that could help us retell the story.

Autumn 1

We started off our time in Year 1 by looking at our British Values. We practised democracy by voting for our house captain and found about the different faiths of people in year 1. We drew self portraits to see how we are similar and different and found out each others beliefs, likes and dislikes.

In Maths we will be looking at number and place value, addition and subtraction, measurement (length and mass/weight) and geometry.

 

Our text in Literacy this term is The Enormous Turnip. We will learn the story by heart and use it to write our own versions.

We will also learn be looking at recounts and will have a go at writing our own recount about one of our trips.

 

Our RE work is all about Harvest and how we can help those who do not have a good harvest.

We had a super time tasting different varieties of apples and deciding which ones we prefered.

In Science learning this term, we have been investigating plants. We all became scientists and looked reallly closely at some of the plants Mrs Walsh had brought in. We drew them really carefully and labelled the different parts.

In History we have started our topic on Toys - looking at those we play with now and how they have changed since we were babies. We will also look at the kinds of toys people played with in the past and how we can tell if a toy is old. We worked as a class to find out what we already know about toys and we found out we already know lots:

We had a trip to Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery to look at some toys from the past. We had the opportunity to play with them and to make out own cup and ball which we brought home to play with. 

To show our grown-ups what we had learnt, we made our own Woodpecker Toy Museum and invited them all to come and see. We showed them round the musum and helped them to make a toy to take home too. 

Mr and Mrs Walsh came into school to talk to us about the toys they used to play with in the past. We learnt a lot about how they are different to the ones we have today. 

 

In Art we looked at the work of Beatriz Milhazes and made our own versions.

We then looked at how Bridget RIley used different lines to create an image. We each made our own small piece which we put together to make a larger piece. 

Finally we worked together using different materials to make pictures of the sea. We listened to Debussy's La Mer music to help us. 

 

CERTIFICATE WINNERS

Each week we award up to 5 certificates to children that have really shown an improvement or a great attitude to learning in Reading, Writing, Maths, our Chrisitian Value of Love and to someone who has been a Behaviour Buddy. These are our certificate winners so far: