Summer Term 2nd Half

A real highlight of our half term was our trip to the Yorkshire Wildlife Park. It was such a wet and windy day but the children showed such resilience and we had a great, very informative experience! In the workshop, they learned about animal variation, diet, and how to sort animals into groups. This was the focus of our Science topic.

Our fiction Talk for Writing text was ‘The Tiger Who Came to Tea’. We learned about the features of this model text and the children eventually innovated their picture maps to create their own story. We certainly had some very unusual visitors who came for tea! After that, the children learned the features of a nonchronological report and applied their knowledge of animals from our Science lessons to write their own reports of different animals.

The Phonics Screening check took place at the start of this half term and we are very proud of the progress lots of Year 1 children have made since the start of the year. Many children have completed the Redscope Reading Challenge too. This, combined with parental support and the development of the Little Wandle Phonics scheme has contributed to our screening success.

We have continued to follow the Power Maths scheme in Mathematics. Year 1 have been learning to count in multiples of 2s, 5s and 10s and and have developed methods to solve word problems involving multiplication. We also learned about halves and quarters of shapes and amounts, money, time, measurement and capacity; using the underpinning skills we have learnt from our place value and addition and subtraction.

Our children loved exploring diversity in Geography. They identified similarities and differences of our local area and a small area in a contrasting non-European country, using photographs as a stimulus. Our chosen country was Brazil, with a particular focus on the Amazon Rainforest and the Yanomami people who inhabit remote villages in the rainforest. We had some wonderful discussions about the importance of trees and deforestation, animal wildlife that inhabit the rainforest, and the locations of other rainforests around the world.

In Art, they have continued to develop basic shapes and different lines to create patterns and textures, drawing what they can see with increasing accuracy. Our stimulus was a range of animal skins they children felt first-hand on their trip to the YWP; scales, feathers and fur. They then tried to create texture and patterns by making clay tiles, using a range of clay tools. They have created some beautiful pencil studies and oil pastel pictures of animals too.

Summer Term 1st Half

This half term, we have looked at the model text “The Sword in the Stone” and used this to write our own finding tale. Lots of the children continued with the magical theme and wrote a story about a wand which had gone missing.

We continued our learning about place value in maths, with a strong focus on subtraction. At the end of the half term, we started learning how to count in 2’s and 10’s. The children picked this up really quickly and were very enthusiastic.

The children worked really hard in phonics as we recapped our previous learning of phase 3 and 5 sounds and longer, polysyllabic words from phase 4.

In history and geography, we learnt about the parts of a castle and discussed what kind of physical features would be the best for building a castle. The children were passionate about the castle being built on a hill and the proximity of water to ensure the castle was safe from invasions.

Finally, we celebrated the last day with a picnic on the field to commemorate the Queen’s platinum jubilee. The children dressed in red, white and blue and had a fabulous time learning about the queen. They were well behaved during the picnic and some even enjoyed sitting with their younger and older siblings and relatives.