Guiseley Primary School

Year 1 Blog

Summer 1

In Year 1, our topic this half term, has been 'Where We Live'. We have learnt a lot about our local area and spent quite a bit of time outside.

In English lessons we looked at 'On The Way Home' by Jill Murphy and wrote our own version of the story focusing on using lots of different adjectives to describe the different people Claire spoke about to her friends. We also looked at the conjunction 'because' and practised using this in our own sentences. Linking to our topic this half term, we learnt about the different types of houses and then wrote about our own homes. We ended the half term by writing poems about Spring, using our senses to describe what we can see, hear, taste, touch and smell.

Our class novel 'The 13-Storey Treehouse' by Andy Griffiths has also been a big hit with both classes (as well as the teachers!) and we are already looking forward to our next book!

Maths this half term has been full of counting in 2s, 5s and 10s. We began by recapping our prior learning on this and then incorporated it in to our work on arrays, grouping and sharing different objects. We have also enjoyed learning about position and direction, especially when we were able to use the Bee-Bots to practise moving left, right, up and down. Our final unit this half term was on fractions. The children have really enjoyed our practical approach to this, as we spent time outside drawing different shapes and then splitting them in to two equal parts, making two halves.

In Geography we have been looking at aerial photos of Guiseley and our local area and discussing different human and physical features, as well as using 'north', 'east', 'south' and 'west' to describe where something is. The children particularly enjoyed conducting a traffic survey of the three roads surrounding the school and examining which was the busiest.

Our DT topic has been all about different fruit and vegetables, being able to tell the difference between the two and also where they typically grow. The children worked on their chopping skills to help make some delicious smoothies which both classes really enjoyed.

We are all very impressed with how hard the children have worked this half term. We hope you all have a wonderful break and can't wait to see you back after the holiday!

Spring 2

What an amazing half-term Year 1 have had! Our topic this half-term was Carnival of the Animals and we have learnt so many wonderful facts about all kinds of animals. We have had fish, frogspawn, birds, a hedgehog, an axolotl, tortoises and lots more visit our classroom over this topic. We were also able to visit Tropical World and see their amazing animals, including a crocodile and a family of meerkats. The staff at Tropical World taught us a lot about the different groups of animals, including fish, birds, amphibians, reptiles and mammals.

Did you know? A shark does not have any bones, they have cartilage instead. This is what our ears and the tip of our nose are made from!

In English, we have been writing about these animals and have made booklets and leaflets about owls, sharks and snakes. In order to improve our writing even more we have been learning about exclamation and question marks, as well as headings.

In maths we looked at length, mass and volume. We have been discussing what we can use to measure and weigh different objects, as well as the difference between capacity and volume.

Science this half-term has been all about the different animal groups and we have learnt some interesting vocabulary during our lessons, including carnivore, herbivore and omnivore. We continued looking at different groups in some of our other work, including in computing. We have been sorting and grouping different objects by their characteristics, such as colour, shape and size.

We enjoyed creating cars in DT and learning about the different parts of a vehicle such as axles, axle holders, wheels and the chassis.

We hope you have a restful break and we can’t wait to see you all again next term!

Spring 1

Our topic in Year 1 this half term has been ‘Toys Old and New’. We have been looking at lots of different old and new toys, discussing the materials they are made from and how they are made, as well as which toys are still popular today.

In English, we have learnt a lot this half term. We began by writing acrostic poems about winter - the children came up with some amazing poems with great vocabulary! We have also worked on extending our sentences using ‘and’ and ‘because’, as well as making our sentences more interesting by using time connectives, such as ‘then’, ‘next’ and ‘first’. We added to our knowledge of suffixes by learning about ‘-ing’ and ‘-er’.

We continued our work with place value to 20 in maths and then moved on to addition and subtraction, up to 20. Our focus recently has been on numbers up to 50, including counting forwards and backwards and using tens and ones.

Autumn 2

This half term we began our topic on traditional tales with a visit from Tempus Fugit who, with help from children in both classes, performed ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ and ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’. In English, we read more traditional tales, including ‘The Gingerbread Man’. We then used these to draw story maps, learn about time connectives, using ‘and’ and the suffix ‘-ed’.

Mathematics first focused on 2D and 3D shapes. We then built on our knowledge of place value and looked at numbers up to 20, including breaking numbers 10 to 20 in to tens and ones, as well as counting one more and one less.

In Science, we explored everyday materials and their properties. We enjoyed looking around the classroom and outside to discover the variety of materials around us in school, using words such as ‘opaque’, ‘transparent’ and ‘waterproof’. We also carried out an experiment to find the best material for Little Red Riding Hood’s umbrella!

Finally, we hope you enjoyed watching our Christmas performance as much as we enjoyed practising it! The children all worked very hard to learn the songs and their lines, it was a great way to end the term. We hope that you all have a lovely break and we can’t wait to see everyone back in January!

Autumn 1

What a fantastic start to the school year we have had. The children have enjoyed our topic 'Marvellous Me'. We have explored body parts and senses in science and undertaken experiments to gather data to answer questions. Year 1 have used tables and sorting circles in maths to sort objects and part whole models to partition numbers up to 10 and find missing numbers. We have learnt how to use the greater than and less than symbols and have looked closely at families of numbers and their associated addition number sentences. In our English lessons, we have focused on writing sentences using capital letters to start, finger spaces and full stops. The children have completed some lovely work about their peers in class after reading the story 'Our Class is a Family'. Both classes have been very excited to visit the computer suite this half term and begin to become more familiar with the parts of a desktop computer. We have all logged in successfully and have practised typing using the keyboard. You have showed how sensible and respectful of property you can be by looking after this fantastic resource and also displaying excellent listening skills during these lessons. Well done Year 1!