Welcome to Year 1

This year in Year 1 the staff who will be working with your children are Mrs Oliver (Class Teacher) and Mrs Valentine (Teaching Assistant).

Reading

Reading at home plays an important part in developing the skills of a young reader and we encourage you to help in the progression of your child's reading skills by hearing them read at home daily if possible, but if not at least three times a week.  We aim to change books in class on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday.  Occasionally there may be changes to our routine that makes it difficult for that to happen; don't worry about this as it builds up fluency to reread books at this age. 

When you have listened to your child read, if you could record it in their reading diaries, along with any comments on how they read, this will help us when changing reading books. Reading books should be brought into school daily in a school book bag.  Other bags are not allowed in school, as we haven't space to keep them. 

Homework

Homework will be given on a Friday to be completed by the following Wednesday.  It will be just one piece of Maths or Literacy work, practicing skills learned that week, or a simple piece of research.  We encourage you to become involved in supporting your child with their homework, while at the same time allowing them to complete it. 

Uniform 

Just a reminder at the start of the school year, that all items of uniform must be labelled with your child's full name in order to avoid misplaced items.  Children do, at times, need to take their jumpers off in class, and then change fully for P.E. and swimming sessions, and clothing can quickly become lost or mixed up if it isn't labelled.

P.E.

P.E.  will be taught on a Friday afternoon.  Each child needs their own, clearly labelled P.E. kit to be left in school in a P.E. bag.

Swimming

Your child will swim at Johnsons on alternate Tuesday mornings, beginning after Christmas. One half of the class will swim on the first week, and the other half on the second week.  Your child will need appropriate swimwear and a towel.  If your child has long hair he / she will also need a swimming hat.  They need to be brought into school on the morning that your child swims (we don't have much corridor space so we can't keep them in the days running up to your child's swimming session).  

We will send out reminders at the beginning of a new term / half term via Dojo to let you know which group will swim, however we won't send out weekly reminders of which group it is.  If you can't remember when your child's swimming week is, please feel free to Dojo us to check.

Year 1 children really enjoy the swimming sessions.  It would really help them if they can practice fully drying and dressing themselves at home, in order to make the process as easy as possible for them after swimming.

Class Dojo 

We will continue to use Class Dojo into Year 1 this year.  Your child's Dojo account will be passed up from Reception to Year 1.  We will send a letter home at the beginning of term to invite those parents that haven't yet signed up.  This will allow your child to send home photographs of their work throughout the year.  If you haven't already, you will be able to download the app to your digital device, and like and comment on your child's work.

Dojo has is also a valuable tool for communicating with parents as well as sharing work.  There are occasions when Dojo can be used to send reminder messages about things such as swimming, non-uniform days or certificates and badge assemblies.  These messages may only be relayed this way, so it is important that all parents can access the app.  If is a problem for anybody, please let us know and we can try to help.

Science

We have been learning about ourselves this half term. Having practiced naming our body parts, we began to look at our senses. 

We investigated sight, by looking at things in the dark, and then adding light to highlight that we need some light to see.

We investigated smell by guessing what given hidden smells were. 

We investigated hearing by playing sound games and finding the best material to make sound defenders to block out loud noises.

We investigated touch by feeling and describing different textures.

We investigated the taste of a number of foods and identified them as sweet, salty, bitter or sour.  Here are some photos of our taste investigation.

Elmer

We have spent a number of weeks looking at the book Elmer. Elmer is a patchwork elephant who becomes fed up of being different to all of his friends. His plan to make himself look like the rest of the elephants doesn't work, and the results make his friends laugh and they quickly show him just how much they love him. 

We heard from Elmer the following day. We received a video clip from him, telling us that we had taught him that it was good to be different and that our friends will like us just as we are. Elmer returned to his friends in the jungle. Having been to visit his cousin Wilber, he went to help a young elephant called Rose find her herd.

We wrote stories about what happened to Elmer.

Whole School Reading Week

We shared in a whole school reading week. We enjoyed reading stories and being read to with different year groups and different teachers.  We enjoyed a story teller

coming in to tell us stories. We shared stories with our parents. Our favourite event was reading stories around the camp fire in our Forest School. 

Art

We recreated animals prints using pastels and paint. We took our finished prints and made a new animal, giving us elephants with zebra stripes or giraffes with tiger stripes or crocodiles with giraffe patterns.

Hinduism

Our R.E. topic over the last of term, and first half of this half term has been Hinduism.  We looked at stories relating to Krishna, and then read about Rama and Sita, to prepare for some learning around Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Light.

Lancashire Day

We celebrated Lancashire Day on Tuesday 27th November.  Some of us dressed up in Lancashire themed clothes.

Christingle

We enjoyed learning about the Christingle and how it helps us in our celebration of the birth of Jesus at Christmas time. We looked at what each part of the Christingle represented and made some links between the significance of light in Christianity and the importance of light to Hindus. 

We have started our Primary Engineering car making project.  We designed our cars before the half term holiday, and we are now trying to follow our design plans.

Here are some of our designs....

World Book Day

Our World Book Day saw us making gingerbread men, following on from reading the story of The Gingerbread Man. We made one giant gingerbread man which we entered into The Great Bookish Bake Off competition. We won first prize of a £50 voucher to buy new books for our class.

Life Cycles

As part of our Science work, we have been learning about life cycles. We looked at the life cycle of the frog and butterfly, and then we planted sunflower seeds and looked at the life cycle of the sunflower. 

Instructions

Having read the story of The Enormous Turnip, we followed some picture instructions to make turnip soup. We had already looked at verbs and ‘bossy verbs’, and after making and tasting the soup, we chose ‘bossy verbs’ to accompany the picture instructions and wrote our own set of instructions for making turnip soup.

Here are some pictures of us washing, peeling, chopping,  slicing, dicing, pouring, mixing, stirring and cooking. 

Primary Engineering Car Making

We have continued our Primary Engineering work on our cars. We learned to use saws safely, in order to saw dowel to make the axels.  We cut plastic spacers so that when we attached our wheels, the spacers could prevent the wheels rubbing on the side of the car.