Year 1

Time certainly flies when you're having fun and the last two weeks have been action-packed in Y1!

In art we have been using the techniques of 'blending' and 'smudging' to enhance spiral pictures that we drew with one continuous line. Using chalk we were able to create smudged or blended effects to add colour to our spirals. This is a progressive skill we are practising, learning to enhance and use different media in our own artistic styles. 

This half term, the Amazing Person we have learned about is Louis Armstrong. He is linked to the characteristic of gratitude and we thought about when and why we have experienced gratitude in our own lives. We thought about how we show gratitude towards our friends and teachers, through acts of kindness. We were lucky enough to win best attendance and received a visit from Coco during this lesson. We were thankful for Coco bringing us joy and a smile, knowing we were showing our gratitude by looking after her and using kind hands, this resulted in lots of tail wags. We listened to some beautiful Jazz music, especially enjoying 'What a wonderful world'. We wrote about things we were grateful for, including 'Mum cooking me dinner, Dad looking after me and Coco bringing me happiness'. 

In PSHE we discovered how to express the feeling of being proud. We explored things which make us proud and where in our bodies this feeling occurs. It shows on our faces, in our hearts and brings us joy. We drew pictures of us being proud using all the colours and ideas we had. The children received notes from Miss Mitchell and Mrs Holmes, where they expressed how proud they are and how we are all special and unique in our own ways. We all have to create and make things which we are proud of, this brings us joy in our learning and in our community!

In English, we have been enjoying the story of Paddington Bear, and his sneaky voyage! We have been asking him questions about his adventures and learning about the magic of this lovely book. We will be focusing on capital letters, spelling common exception and tricky words, grammar, and using all our skills to create a booklet. 

In maths we have been learning the composition of the number 5, this has been explored through the whole part-part model. We used different objects to explore and separate the number 5 as well as recording numbers in the whole part-part model.

Our first unit of phonics has been completed. We have revisited phases 3 and 4 from last year and have now started to teach the new phase 5 graphemes. Once we have assessed the children's learning we will let you know if there is anything extra you can do to support your child and help plug any gaps. Please try to read every day with your child using the Big Cat book that has been sent home.

The Year One Team

PE days are Tuesday and Friday - (if possible remove earrings on these days)