Summer 1

What an amazing project 'WE ARE Toy makers' was!

We have been so super busy researching, discussing, experimenting,  comparing, designing, drafting, re-drafting, creating and performing! Year 1 had a visit from parents and grandparents who very kindly brought in their own old toys for us to have a look at and play with. We compared the differences to the toys we play with now and found quite a few! We decided to create our own toy and agreed that a sock puppet would be a great idea! We spent time creating, and designing our puppets, finding out which materials would be best to use. Then we planned our own puppet shows and performed them behind our little pop up stage. We had so much fun!

We have been super busy in Maths this half term! Throughout the weeks, we have been solving lots of tricky addition and subtraction word problems. We have also learnt how to count in 2s, 5s and 10s. This has helped us solve multiplication sums - and saves us lots of time! We have also spent time learning about division, and that things are shared equally in order to get the correct answer! To do this, we have used cubes, pencils, counting bears etc. We have become so good at multiplication and division! We have also learnt about Time by practising reading and making times on real clocks! We have learnt how to read o'clock, half past, quarter to and quarter past! We know when certain things happen in the day e.g. 9 o'clock school starts, 12 o'clock is lunch time etc. 

Spring 2

In Spring 2 we have been diving into a range of different stories and adventures and have explored what it takes to be both a good friend and a good person. Exploring books such as ‘Beegu’ and ‘The Bear and the Piano’ has enabled us to think deeply about how we can be a good friend and make everyone feel included, loved and safe. We got creative by designing our own alien friend for Beegu the lonely alien who crash landed onto Earth and explored our own wonderful talents with the help of the bear from ‘The Bear and the Piano’. We even got to become poets when reading ‘The Snail and the Whale’ and created a range of rhyming sentences and poems for the book.

We also explored different measurements such as using a ruler to measure different lengths and heights around the school, reading weighing scales and reading and measuring the volume of liquid a container is holding. We then moved on to time. We ordered different times of the day, investigated the length of completing different activities, explored how many times we could complete an activity in a minute and learnt how to read the time on an analogue clock. We are now superstars at telling the time at o’clock and half past.

In PBL, we thoroughly enjoyed learning about a range of animals all around the planet. We learnt about the different animal groups as well as how to identify them, we explored the diets of these different animal groups and what all animals (including us!) need to survive. One of our highlights was getting to meet and explore some exotic animals from different animal groups with the help of some experts to answer all of our vivid questions! We loved meeting the incredible animals virtually, which included an albino skunk, and having the opportunity to discuss their features with experts.

Spring 1

This half term, we have loved developing our Maths skills and knowledge! We have been adding and subtracting using number lines, and have been using this knowledge to solve word problems! We have learnt how to multiply two numbers using a range of strategies such as grouping, arrays and counting on. We have even learnt how to divide using grouping and counting strategies! We have had so much fun learning these new skills! We have recapped 3D shapes and had lots of fun working together as a team to sort shapes into different groups and categories. We even got to make our own shape patterns using paint!

In English, we have been reading lots of interesting books such as ‘The Lonely Beast’ and ‘One day on our blue planet… in the Savannah.’ We have made lists, written captions, created contrasting posters, and learnt all about different animals in the Savannah! The facts we have learnt have been interesting. We loved learning about endangered animals and thought of ways we could help them, what we could say to people and how the animals are treated. We have also focused on nouns, verbs and adjectives. We have been on a ‘noun hunt,’ used verbs in our writing and have used lots of fun adjectives in our descriptive writing.

Autumn 2

Wow, what a busy end to the year - Year 1 have been up to so much! 

In English we have been reading traditional tales. Throughout this, we have been thinking of ways to change the endings, described the different characters and have thought about the different settings. We have also focused on Autumnal poems. We have learnt about the features of a poem, rhyme and alliteration. 

In Maths we have been focusing on capacity, weight, fractions and coins! We have role played with money, looked into different coin combinations, practised showing different capacities and have used scales to measure the weight of different objects!

Our Project this term was 'We Are Ainslie Wood.' This was so much fun! We went on a trip to Chingford Mount and had a look at places that have been around for so many years! We walked past a bank, park, cafe, leisure centre, church and post office. We also found out about the four different countries in the UK and the surrounding seas. We have learned about their capital cities and more facts about each one. 

English this half term

Year 1 have had an amazing start to the year and have settled into Year 1 with great ease. We started off the year reading ‘Where the Wild Things are’, a book about a mischievous boy called Max who likes to go on wild adventures. This particular adventure took him to an amazing island full of Wild Things with ‘terrible eyes and terrible claws’, where Max became king of all Wild Things. Year 1 dove into this book, receiving a letter from Max telling us how lonely he felt and asking for our help on what he can do to feel less lonely. We wrote exciting descriptions of the Wild Things and even got to design and describe our very own Wild Thing!

Maths this half term

Over the last few weeks, we have been super busy in Maths! We have been adding and subtracting using concrete objects and number lines. We also solved addition and subtraction word problems! We have also recapped 2D and 3D shapes by going on shape hunts around the school, creating our own 3D junk models and making shape patterns! This week we have been measuring the lengths of different objects. First, we started with cubes and then we moved on to measuring objects in cm – which we used rulers for.