St James CofE Primary School
Year 1
Welcome to Year 1
Year 1 is the time where children are nurtured and given the opportunity to spark their love of learning. Through more structured learning, and our exciting curriculum, children can develop their understanding of the world, and be inspired, laying the foundations for a positive and happy time at school.
Staff In Year 1
Year 1 Class Teacher - Miss Hunt
Year 1 Teaching Assistant - Miss Rose, Mrs Cheng and Mrs Hlushko
Learning In Year 1
Click here to view the Year 1 Curriculum Map.
Click here to view the Year 1 Timetable.
Click here to view the Year 1 Topic Web for Autumn 1.
Click here to view the Year 1 Topic Web for Autumn 2.
Click here to view the Year 1 Topic Web for Spring 1.
Click here to view the Year 1 Topic Web for Spring 2.
Click here to view the Year 1 Topic Web for Summer 1.
Click here to view the Year 1 Topic Web for Summer 2.
Year 1 Class Blog
Spring 2
We were very busy in Spring 2 in Year 1! We were happy with the weather improving meaning that we could do much more of our learning outdoors.
In geography, we were learning about maps and how we can create maps of our local environments. We used arial maps of our playground to search for different features and then used chalk to draw our own arial maps of the playground from scratch. We then finished our topic by creating questionnaires to ask our classmates what they liked about our playground and why.
In English this term we got very creative! Our story was Where the Wild Things are, and we considered this story through different creative mediums. We listened to soundscapes of the wild forest and used craft materials to create artistic interpretations of what the music inspired us to think of. Alongside writing poems, character descriptions and setting descriptions we also created our own musical compositions! Inspired by the wild rumpus, we use different instruments to create our own music inspired by the story (which we hope you enjoyed at our class assembly!)
Finally, a highlight of the half term was international week. We learnt all about Australia! Thea’s mum came and read us Wombat Soup, and shared her knowledge on different Australian animals! We then made fairy bread with Mr Flannagan – it was so yummy! We ended the week creating Aboriginal inspired dot artwork, using the Great Barrier Reef as inspiration. We loved using this new technique to create vibrant versions of the beautiful sea life.
Spring 1
This half term was a very busy one in year 1! We got straight into our story for the half term which was ‘A day in the life of Bob: The man on the Moon’ and learnt all about astronauts and how they survive in space. We created poems, fact files, character descriptions and finally rewrote the beginning, middle, and end of the story with our own twists! We even junk modelled some of the souvenirs that Bob would sell to the tourists on the moon.
A highlight of the half term was our first class trip in year 1, where we went to watch Room on the Broom! We loved travelling on the bus and our seats were so high up in the auditorium, so we felt very special. We loved how funny the performance was and how they used puppets to create more characters.
In DT, we learnt all about different fruits and vegetables, cutting up some fruits we liked and some new ones we hadn’t tried before to make fruit kebabs. We then designed and made our very own smoothies – we think they were delicious!
Finally, we loved our history topic for the half term, learning all about the first ever airplane flight and all about historically significant figures that took to the skies. We learnt how to sequence events onto a timeline, role played interviewing eyewitnesses of Amelia Earhart’s flight across the Atlantic and asked questions to students in character as Neil Armstrong.
Autumn 2
Year 1 have been very busy in Autumn term 2! We read new books in English, with our favourite being Halibut Jackson by David Lucas. We loved the book because of its beautiful illustrations of the main character Halibut and all of his suits, but also because it was about Halibut following his dreams.
Our history topic was also very interesting, we explored monarchy in Britain in the present day and in the past. We began to learn about timelines and thought about what is in the past and what is in the present. Through our lessons we discovered how William the Conqueror became King of England through winning the Battle of Hastings in 1066. We learnt about the kinds of castles he built and some of us even built our own castles for our half termly homework project!
We also wore blue to celebrate World Children’s Day on Wednesday the 20th of November, and learnt about what it means to be a Rights Respecting school. We completed a treasure hunt around the school to remind ourselves how our school supports our rights as children. Then, we designed posters of our ‘perfect world’ that respects a chosen right that is very important to us.
Our DT project this half term was to make a moving picture book inspired by a story we had been reading, Leaf, which we were very proud of! We used lots of different materials, creating a watercolour background, clouds sketched in pastel and a polar bear character designed with coloured leaves.
Finally, we spent a lot of time learning our songs for the Nativity performance supporting Year 2 with their show! We loved learning all of our songs and performing them to all of our parents before Christmas.
Autumn 1
The first half term of year 1 was a very busy one but we’ve made such a brilliant start to the new year! We absorbed ourselves in so many new subjects and have already learnt so much across our topics in science, RE, geography and computing just to name a few.
We took advantage of the sunny weather back in September and did a lot of our learning outside. Our science topic was all about different plants and trees, so we had a lot of fun exploring our playground to identify trees, wildflowers, garden flowers and investigating what the rings in tree trunks mean! We then continued our study of nature in art and foraged natural recourses to create mandala patterns inspired by the artist Anthony Goldsworthy.
Our work so far in English has taken many different forms, including freeze frames and character descriptions. We thought tracked the emotions of our character in our book Grace and Family as she travelled to meet her dad in the Gambia. We then applied all our hard work on freeze frames to recreating the entire story of How the Leopard got his Spots as part of our Black history month work.
In RE we also spent time thinking about what makes us all special and unique, and decorated pegs for a classmate to celebrate all the ways in which they are brilliant for being themselves. This helped us to understand how Christian’s belief that they are made in God’s image helps them to look after the world and their community and celebrate our individuality.
We can’t wait for the rest of Autumn term – we are already looking forward to supporting year 2 in their nativity and of course finishing the half term with our first-class assembly in year 1!
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