Year 1

Summer 2 - Week 3

This week in English we have continued looking at the text called Mrs Noah’s Pocket by Jackie Morris, we have enjoyed getting to know this text. This week we have been writing our own version of Mrs Noah’s Pocket.

In maths this week we have begun to look at money, we have had lots of fun looking at different coins and their values.

In science we have been looking at animals including humans and how we can group different animals.

Can you tell your adult the names of the different groups?

In PE we have been looking at our fitness and the different movements we can do to increase our heart rate. Some of our favourite movements are star jumps, high knees and running.

Hope you have a lovely weekend!

Miss Cowan

Summer 2 - Week 1

We can’t believe it is the final half term of Year 1, it has gone so quick! This half term we are preparing ourselves for Year 2!

This week in English we have started looking at a new text Called Mrs. Noah’s Pocket by Jackie Morris, we have enjoyed getting to know this text. We have looked at all the nouns and adjectives in this book and have even written our own sentences.

Can you tell your adult some of the adjectives you have used?

In maths this week we have been using different manipulatives to help us look at numbers up to 100. Using 100 number square, dice, tens frames and counters. This has really helped us understand the tens and ones in a number.

Can you tell your adult what number I am thinking of?

I am an even number.

I have 3 tens.

I have 2 ones.

One more than my number is 33.

In Geography we have started our topic ‘Our World’ this week we recapped the United Kingdom, looking at the countries that make up the UK, its capital cities and the seas surrounding us.

Can you name all four countries that make up the UK?

I hope everyone had a lovely break over the half term!

Miss Cowan

Summer 1 – Week 5

This week in English we have explored more of Grandad’s Island in preparation for the Big Write. So this week we have been looking at what makes a good introduction, with the class looking at example introductions and improving them.

Can you tell your adult what makes a good introduction?

This week in maths we have been looking at fractions, especially halves. Looking at what half means, and then halving different objects and shapes.

Can you tell your adult what a half means?

This week we’ve had lots of fun in Year 1 with the whole year taking part in Commando Joes. The pupils had to use teamwork and show resilience to help Steve Backshaw save endangered animals in the playground.  It was tricky and we had to help our friends when they got stuck. 

Have a great weekend!

Miss Cowan

Summer 1 - Week 4

This week in English we have continued looking at the book Grandad’s Island by Benji Davies, this week we have been using adjectives to describe characters and the setting.

Can you tell your adult some of the adjectives you have used?

We are busy in Year 1 preparing some artwork which will be going on display in the Discovery Museum, Newcastle. The theme of our art is 'Stronger Together' and we are working with Year 2 to produce an amazing collage on canvas. We have all drawn a self-portrait to be displayed and are cutting up small pieces of materials to make a heart, the sea and trees; this will represent all areas of the Thomas Bewick Trust (Newcastle, Northumberland and North Tyneside) and show our trust themes of love, development, aspiration, collaboration and opportunity.

It is looking fantastic so far! Stay tuned to see our finished piece and then pop along to the Discovery Museum in June to take a look for yourself. Have a lovely weekend!

Miss Cowan

Spring 2 - Week 3

This week in English we have completed our own fables, we all wrote a fable with moral; A liar will not be believed, even when they speak the truth. We created some fantastic fables!

This week Year 1 had a trip to St Charles’ Church, we looked at all the different features of a church, we had lots of fun doing this! We looked at the different stations of the cross whilst we were in the church too. We discussed what would happen at church during a baptism and which features are used during a baptism.

Thank you to the parent helpers that came along too!

This week in science we planted our own sunflower seeds for our Plants topic. We had lots of fun doing this, even though we got a little muddy. We are going to keep a diary and update it every week to see how big our sunflowers will grow!

What does our plant need to grow?

Have a lovely weekend!

Miss Cowan

Spring 2 - Week 1

This week in English we have started our new topic, looking at The Boy Who Cried Wolf. We have looked at the moral of the story and how we should all follow the moral of this story.

Can you tell your adult what the moral of the story is?

This week in maths we have been looking at place value, looking at numbers up to 50. We have been concentrating on how these numbers are made up of tens and ones. We have used part whole models to help show how numbers can be split into tens and ones.  

How many tens are in 38?

How many ones are in 38?

This week we have had World Book Day. In Year 1 we looked at the story of Little Red Riding Hood. In the morning we went on a book hunt around the school grounds, this was a lot of fun! We wrote our own versions of Little Red Riding Hood and we made our own concertina books, they all looked fab!

Everyone’s outfits looked fantastic!

Have a lovely weekend!

Miss Cowan

Spring 1 - Week 5

This week in English we have been planning for our big write on Friday. We have up levelled an introduction, making sure we remember to use adjectives, story language and conjunctions. We have created out own baddie for our own traditional tale.

Can you tell your adult what your baddie is called for your story?

This week in maths we have been looking at subtraction, we have been using a number line to help us count backwards. We have been exploring subtraction using our tens frames and counters.

20 - 6 = _______

18 - 9 = _______

17 - 3 = _______

It was Safer Internet Day on Tuesday and in Year 1 we looked at how we can stay safe on the internet. We discussed what information should NOT be shared online and why this information should not be shared.

Can you tell your adult what information we do not share online?

Tomorrow is Women and Girls in Science day and we are looking forward to learning about Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and her impact on society.

Have a lovely weekend!

Miss Cowan

Spring 1 - Week 4

This week in English we have started our new topic, looking at Traditional Tales. We have looked at the features of a traditional tale. Some of these features include story language, characters, setting and adjectives.

What traditional tales do you know?

This week in maths we have been looking at doubles and near doubles within 20. We have been using lots of different maths manipulatives to explore doubles. This Friday we had a morning of outdoor maths lessons. We went on a doubles hunt, we had to find the matching double to our numicon.

Double 4 is _______

6 + 6 = _______

Double 10 is _______

In art we have been creating different prints in the style of Richard Long, using different objects to create a pattern. We experimented using Lego, stickle bricks, leaves and a rolling technique to create different prints. Everyone’s artwork looked great!

Can you tell your adult what kind of printing Richard Long used?

Have a lovely weekend!

Miss Cowan

Spring 1 - Week 3

Year 1 had lots of fun for their Simba and Me Commando Joe's day.  We had 6 missions we had to complete all linked to resilience and teamwork.  We had to find our number bond partner without talking, collect as much water as we could without getting eaten by crocodiles waiting in the river.  We decorated animal headbands to help us feel like we were in the Savannah.  We chose items we needed for survival and then used these to create our own obstacle course and we had to lead a blindfolded partner across the African plain using clear communication.  Our last mission was to collect bugs for the hungry animals at Pride Rock and work as a team to add up the total number as each bug was assigned an amount.  We successfully completed all missions due to our strong teamwork and resilience!

This week in English we have been preparing for our big write on Friday, we will be writing our own non- chronological reports all about a T- Rex.  We have made fantastic plans to help us write our final piece tomorrow.

Can you tell your adult what we need to include in our non-chronological report?

This week in maths we have been looking at addition, looking at our numbers from 11 -20. We have explored counting on and using our number bonds to help us.  

If I know 6 + 4 = 10

I know 16 + 4 = ____

In PE we have been working on our team building skills this week.  We had lots of fun doing this, we had to work in partners to guide each other around the playground whilst one partner was blindfolded.

Have a lovely weekend!

Miss Cowan

Spring 1 - Week 1

This week in English we started our new topic all about poems, more specifically rhyming poems. We have been looking at Walking the Dog by Julia Donaldson, we have looked at lots of rhyming words.  

Can you tell your adult what rhymes with these words?

- dog

- cat

- lake

This week in maths we have been looking at place value, looking at our numbers from 11 -20. We have explored these numbers using lots of different maths manipulatives.  We have been looking at how the tens stay the same but the ones change.

Can you fill in the blanks?

16 has ____ ten and ____ ones.

In Science this week, we started our new topic Animals including Humans, we looked at the different parts of the body and even labelled a diagram of a human body. Some of the labels included hands, feet, arms and legs.

Can you think of any more body parts?

In PE we have been working on our team building skills this week. We had lots of fun doing this, we had to work in partners to transport a beanbag from one line to another. Sounds easy, but there was a twist, we had to use different body parts to transport the beanbag, for example we had to place the beanbag in-between our hands and work as a team to go from one line to another.

Have a lovely weekend!

Miss Cowan

Autumn 2 - Week 6

This week in English we had our big write where we wrote a character description about George the Smartest Giant in town. We loved using our adjectives to describe how George looked and felt in the story.

Can you tell your adult some adjectives we used to describe George?

This week in maths we have been coming to the end of our shapes topic. We have explored 3D and 2D shapes, we even looked at shapes in a pattern. We created lots of patterns that included all of the shapes we have been learning about.

Can you create a pattern using a square, triangle and circle?

In Science this week, we carried out a science experiment, to test how waterproof materials are. We investigated which material would be best to use to make an umbrella. We had lots of fun doing this!  

Can you tell your adult what material is best for an umbrella?

We have been very busy with our nativity this week, we had a dress rehearsal and all of our costumes are looking fantastic!

We are super excited for you all to come and watch next week!

Have a lovely weekend!

Miss Cowan

Autumn 2 Week 3

We have been up to lots in Year 1 this week.

This week is Anti – Bullying Week with the theme Reach Out. On Monday we all came in with odd socks, it was great to see everyone’s bright, colourful crazy socks! We looked at who we could reach out to if we were being bullied or if we know someone who is being bullied. We created lovely posters with the names of the people who we can reach out to if we need to talk to someone. There are lots of people we can talk to at home and at school.

Who can we reach out to?

In English, we have focused on a Tale of Fear, looking at Scaredy Squirrel. We have worked hard on using lots of adjectives in our writing and we looked at lots of other words that mean the same as scared.

Can you think of another word for scared?

In RE, we came to the end of sacrament Baptism and we focused on the different symbols used. We have created our own wonderful prayers during our class liturgical prayer.

This week we have started to look at our chosen Nativity, ‘Angel Express’. We have begun practicing the songs and we will be finding out our parts this week ready for our performance in a few weeks… we can’t wait!

Well done for all your hard work, have a lovely weekend!

Miss Cowan

Autumn 2 - Week 5

This week in Year 1 we have started a new book focus in English – The Smartest Giant in Town. We have been reading the story everyday to become familiar with it, ready for our descriptive writing. We loved thinking of adjectives for how George the Giant felt and how the other characters felt about George.

Can you describe George the Giant to your grown up?

We have also started a new focus in maths all about shapes. We started the week looking at 3D shapes in our classroom. We have been practicing describing 3D shapes such as My Shape has 3 faces and rolls.

Can you guess my shape?

In Geography this week we went on our first field work task of the year, we walked around school looking for human and physical features. We found this slightly tricky at first because we were thinking about our science topic about materials but we were very resilient and impressed Miss Nealings with our knowledge.

Can you name a physical and a human feature we found around our school?

We have been busy little elves practicing our nativity and we are so excited for you all to come and watch!!

Have a lovely weekend!

Miss Cowan and Miss Salter

Autumn 2 Week 1

We have had a very fun week in Year 1 this week.

In English we have been looking at a Poem all about fireworks called Crackle! Spit! By Marie Thom.

We thought about all of our senses and came up with lots of adjectives to describe fireworks. A lot of us think they are bright, sparkly and beautiful. We came up with actions for the poem to help us remember it.

Can you show your adult the actions we created for the Poem?

This week we have started our Geography topic, we started to look at our local area. We have begun looking at what aerial views and aerial plans are. We created some lovely maps of our classrooms, using symbols and a key.

Can you tell your adult what an aerial view is?

On Tuesday this week we had Commando Joe’s Day, we had a super fun day. As a class we completed 2 missions all about Jack and the Beanstalk. Our first mission of the day was to find the equipment we would need to grow our magic beanstalk. We had to use our teamwork and work together to find the correct equipment. Our second mission of the day was to help Jack get the treasure from the sleeping giant. Year 1 had to complete an obstacle course to sneak up on the giant and get the treasure. But if the giant woke, the treasure had to be returned and we had to escape. Throughout the day we used our teamwork, resilience, empathy and communication to successfully complete the challenges. Well done Year 1!

Have a lovely weekend!

Miss Cowan

Autumn 2 Week 2

Year 1 have enjoyed looking at our new DT topic all about structures. We had a look at different structures and their features. We had a go at planning our own design for a windmill.

In maths we have started looking at subtraction, using a part part whole model to help us. Looking at how do we find the missing part if we know the whole number and one part, can you show your adult how to write a subtraction number sentence?

In English we have carried on looking at poems, planning our own senses poem. Today we wrote our final version of our sense’s poem, all about fireworks. Everyone has done a great job with their poems.

In PE we have been playing some invasion games, taking turns to be attackers and defenders. We have been practicing our passing skills. Learning how to kick the ball with the inside of our foot to pass to our friends accurately.

Can you explain to your adult what a defender does?

Hope everyone has a lovely weekend!

Miss Cowan

Thursday 20 October 2022

Year 1 have been up to lots in the final week of half term.

At the end of last week, we had our Take One Picture art days. We had been looking at this year's chosen picture from the National Gallery and learning about the artist - Claude-Joseph Vernet and his painting “Shipwreck”. We even learnt a sea shanty and we completed our final pieces, they all looked lovely.

In English we have been looking at instructions this week, looking at the features of them and understanding why we use them.

Can you tell your grown up a feature of instructions?

After half term we are going to be writing our own instructions, to help the Gingerbread Man escape the old lady.

We have been using addition facts within 10 to help us write number sentences and looking at patterns such as if we know 6 + 4 = 10 then we know 4 + 6 = 10, we will also know that 10 = 6 + 4 and 10 = 4 + 6.

Today we had a lovely visit from Mrs. Nealings today, sharing some of her favourite toys from when she was a child to finish off our Old and New Toys history focus.

It was so nice to speak to everyone at Parents' Evening. I hope you have a wonderful half term!

See you on Monday 31st!

Miss Cowan 

On Monday, we were disturbed by a mess left in our role play area! 
There were crumbs and the caretaker had cordoned off the area. We had great discussions around why they were there and who may have left the crumbs behind.
Can you tell a grown up who you predicted it was? 
We then found a sign in our class room telling us to head to forest school, we were all very excited to find the clues!  We discovered many different clues but, we decided that it must have been the gingerbread man as the clues were all different parts of his story.
We have been writing instructions with time conjunctions to help him this week as he wrote us a letter asking for our help in escaping the old lady trying to eat him! 
Hopefully, next week he writes to us again to let us know if he managed to get away! 

We also had a special visit from the Teddy Bear Hospital this week. Where we learnt all about how to look after ourselves and our teddies, including brushing our teddies teeth.

Also, a big thank you for all the questionnaires we have received for our History lesson.  

Miss Cowan :)

What a busy week we have had! 

On Monday, we looked at the story of Little Red Riding Hood. We imagined we were in the deep dark woods. We described what we could see, hear, smell and feel. Some of us could hear the wolf and others could smell the brussel sprout soup Little Red Riding Hood was taking to Grandma’s house.

In art we became colour detectives, looking at our primary colours, and what colours we can create when we mix them.

Can you tell a grown up what are the primary colours?

Can you tell a grown up what colours you created?

In science we became weather reporters, reporting on this week’s weather… everyone was fantastic at this. We used the class rain gauge to see how much rain had fallen over the last couple of days… it was pretty full.

Have a great weekend!

Miss Cowan :)