Year 1 - Archive

FRIDAY 3RD OCTOBER 2025

What a successful week we have had in Year 1 with so much learning taking place.

In English this week, we continued to use the story Billy and The Beast as inspiration for our writing. We revised our learning about how to write a list and then we used our imaginations in Drawing Club to make a list of things that Billy might keep in her hair. She has all sorts of weird and wonderful items in there such as doughnuts, masks and a sparkly feather duster! After that, we focused on the ending when Billy and the animals trapped the Beast in a pot and rolled him down the hill. We came up with some very creative ways of how we would remove the Beast from the forest - bouncing him off a trampoline, catapulting him to another country or putting him in a rocket and blasting him into space!

In Maths, our lesson have focused on the language we use when comparing quantities. We've been using the words 'more' and 'fewer', as well as 'greater than', 'less than' and 'equal to'. We had a teddy bear's picnic to talk about whether we have enough food or not enough for each bear to have a treat. We played a dice game to see whose dice had more spots and whose had fewer. And finally, we met some greedy crocodiles who helped us to learn the symbols used for 'greater than', 'less than' and 'equal to'. 

Our IPC lessons have had a Geography focus this week. We have been learning the names of the seven continents with a little bit of help from this very catchy song! We related this new learning to our own experiences by talking about which continent our home countries are on. After that, we took a look at the globe and an atlas to try to locate our home countries and continents. 

Wishing you a lovely weekend ahead.

Ms Sarah L & The Year 1 Team

FRIDAY 26TH SEPTEMBER 2025

This week was our first full week in a little while and it felt great to settle into a full week of routines and learning.

In English, we loved reading the story 'Billy and the Beast'. We used ideas from the story in Drawing Club to draw our own terrible beasts and then wrote a sentence describing it. Next we designed a setting for our terrible beast to live in and wrote a sentence describing what was there. We focused on making sure we used a capital letter at the start of the sentence, a full stop at the end of the sentence and finger spaces in between the words. 

Our Maths lessons have continued to have a focus on Place Value. We have practised counting forwards and backwards from any number within 10. We really enjoyed doing a countdown to zero like a rocket launching into space! Then we looked at how this related to finding one more than a number or finding what is one less than our number. 

In our IPC lessons, we have been learning to name the different parts of the body. We particularly focused on those parts of the body which are associated with our 5 senses. We learned about our senses of hearing, sight, taste, touch and smell and carried out some investigations to put our senses to the test. We used our eyes to try to spot animals camouflaged in their environment and our ears to try to identify different sounds. We used our sense of smell to try to guess the scent of different playdough and our sense of touch to try to guess what was hidden on the box. But our favourite experiment was using our sense of taste to guess the flavour of the crisps! 

We hope to see many of you at the Summer Fair on Saturday. Wishing you a lovely weekend ahead.

Ms Sarah L & The Year 1 Team

FRIDAY 19TH SEPTEMBER 2025

We hope you all enjoyed the long weekend and had the chance to celebrate Malaysia Day with friends or family. In just 3 days this week, Year 1 still managed to fit in lots of learning!

In English this week, we have been focusing on phonics. We have been revising the sounds we already know and learning new ones. FRED the frog has been helping us with our FRED talk - when we sound out the letters in a word and blend them together. We've also been practising our handwriting to make sure we are forming the letters correctly. 

In our Maths lessons this week, we revisited some of the skills we learned in Reception. We practised counting aloud to 20 and beyond, subitising for amounts up to 5 and using the language 'more' and 'less' to compare groups of objects. 

For our IPC topic this week, we continued our work on portraits. We've been using Picasso as inspiration for portraits in our independent learning both in our classroom art areas and in the art studio in our Shared Classroom. We also had a go at drawing portraits of our friends. 

Wishing you a lovely long weekend ahead.

Ms Sarah L & The Year 1 Team

FRIDAY 12TH SEPTEMBER 2025

What a full, busy week we've had in Year 1. In his assembly, Mr John talked about the learning habit of 'Independence', and after just 4 weeks in school, it is so clear to see how many of our Year 1 students are really developing this good habit. 

In English this week, we continued our adventures with 'Not a Box'. Alongside the main story, we have read other books with a similar theme, such as 'The Nowhere Box' and 'Bruno's Box'. All the stories had the same message - that a box is not just a box if you use a little bit of imagination. Imagination is something that our Year 1 children have plenty of! They came up with their own ideas for what their box would become and wrote sentences about it. We focused on using finger spaces between the words in our sentence. 

In our Maths lessons this week, we continued our unit on Place Value. First we practised representing a number of objects by using counters on a tens frame. We also matched digit cards to our representations. Then we looked at the numbers to ten represented as words. We practised reading and recognising the number words and talked about which words are green words that we can sound out and which are tricky red words that we can't. Finally, we practised counting on from any number, ensuring that we said the numbers in the correct order and spotting mistakes in patterns that were in the wrong order. 

For our IPC topic this week, we continued to learn about portraits with a focus on the artist Pablo Picasso. We particularly enjoyed studying some of his abstract portraits and discussing what we noticed. We used his work to inspire our own Picasso style abstract portraits using paint and collage. I think you'll agree we have some very talented artists in Year 1! 

Wishing you a lovely long weekend ahead.

Ms Sarah L & The Year 1 Team

THURSDAY 4TH SEPTEMBER 2025

Year 1 has managed to cram so much into such a short week! We've been reading 'Not a Box' and creating our own story characters and settings. In Maths, we've been practising counting accurately and working with a partner to check. In IPC lessons, we learned about portraits and we tried to complete a photo of our faces that had been cut in half. We tried hard to remember all the different features that we needed to include in our own self-portraits. We even had a very successful Fire Drill today when we practised evacuating the building very sensibly indeed.

A huge thank you to all the parents who came along to the Settling-In conferences this week. It was wonderful to hear about your children and learn more about them. If you were unable to attend this week, please contact your class teacher to arrange an alternative appointment. We look forward to getting to know you all much better as the term progresses.

Wishing you a lovely long weekend ahead.

Ms Sarah L & The Year 1 Team

FRIDAY 29TH AUGUST 2025

At the end of our second week, we can easily say that this Year 1 cohort are amazing! They have adapted so well to the new routines and are already developing their skills of independence. New friendships are being formed as we get to know one another and find common interests. 

In classes this week, each teacher has chosen a 'Story We Treasure'. This is one of the class teacher's favourite books; a treasured story that they wanted to share with their new class. 1SL have been reading 'The Bog Baby', 1TL have been reading 'The Koala Who Could', 1JK have been reading 'I Can/Can't Fly', 1AB have been reading 'The Girl and the Dinosaur', 1GV have been reading 'Amy Wu and the Perfect Bao', and 1RP have been reading 'Peace at Last'. 

The children have been taking part in a range of different activities to engage with their text. In 1SL the children had to listen to clues about what a Bog Baby is and then drew pictures of what they imagined a Bog Baby to look like. They also loved painting Bog Babies and creating their own Bog Baby out of clay. 1AB had so much fun bringing their imagination to life as they went on a magical adventure with their best friend, the Dinosaur. 1RP became authors and wrote their own version of the story. From scary monsters to noisy race tracks, lots of things were keeping them awake at night! 

1JK created stunning Antartica landscapes using paint and collage materials. They added their own emperor penguins into their masterpieces and wrote all about the things that they can do, just like Little Penguin! 1GV made some beautiful family portraits using loose parts. They looked at Amy Wu’s family from the story, and talked about our different family structures. We celebrated our similarities and differences in our class family. 1TL enjoyed reading The Koala Who Could. Kevin the Koala dreamt of playing with his friends on the ground. 1TL used their fingers to twist, thread, stretch and stick, making their very own dreamcatchers to catch their dreams.

Wishing you a lovely long weekend ahead.

Ms Sarah L & The Year 1 Team

FRIDAY 22ND AUGUST 2025

What a wonderful start to the new school year we have had in Year 1. It was so lovely to welcome both familiar and new faces into school on Monday. This year we welcomed 32 new students and their families. The teachers have been incredibly impressed with how quickly all children are settling in.

This week we have been learning about Year 1 and getting to know one another. We are learning all about our new routines as well as finding our way around the different spaces in the primary building. We've met many new teachers this week as we have begun our specialist lessons. There are lots of names to learn!

In class we have been concentrating on learning each other's names and making new friends. We have had lots of time to explore the continuous provision in our own classrooms as well as our Shared Classroom space with Ms Apson and Ms Indra. We've talked a lot about how, at school, each class is like a family. We read the story 'Our Class is a Family' and talked about how important it is that at school we look after each other just like a real family.

The children have already made us so proud with their wonderful attitudes, positivity and kindness. We can't wait to see these children grow and flourish over the coming year. We know that we will have a wonderful year together and we are so excited to see what they will achieve.

Wishing you a lovely weekend ahead.

Ms Sarah L & The Year 1 Team