Year 1

As a part of our inquiry, we have looked at Christopher Columbus and his voyage to discover that the world is not “as flat as a pancake”, and that we will absolutely not fall off the edge of the Earth if we go too far. At the beginning of the term, we decided to be explorers and go on a voyage around the school to discover a variety of animals and fruits in the ‘New World’.

Within our English learning, we looked at a range of texts, such as Lost and Found. Year 1 were very happy when the Boy realised he had made a big mistake, and we decided to write our own version of the story, with a brand new animal! Linking to this, the children decided that they did not want the Penguin to get wet when he was looking for the Boy, so we tested a variety of different materials to see which would work best to keep the Penguin dry, the children found that a plastic bag or foil would be the best as they are waterproof.

In maths this term we have been very busy! We looked at weight and mass, and measured objects around our classroom, discussed volume and capacity using water jugs, guttering, and buckets to fill containers so that they were empty, nearly empty, half full, nearly full and full!

To further our learning, we decided to look at food from South America, where Columbus travelled to. We made a Mexican slaw and a fruit salad. After we made these, we decided to embrace the beautiful warm weather and have a year 1 picnic on the playground to share our learning. The children enjoyed evaluating their food, saying that they thought it was delicious!

We finished the term by looking at pirates, sharing pirate poems, dressing like them and even pretending to scrub the deck! We created our own pirate flags and learnt a pirate dance!

We have really enjoyed our learning this term and hope the children have too! We look forward to seeing what next term brings.