Year 1

Year One have been looking forward to Spring Term at Christ Church - our first term has finished and now we are truly Year One pupils! Spring Term in Year 1 is full of investigation. We are building on all of our wonderful learning from the Autumn Term and reaching for the stars!

English

With Chinese New Year taking place on the 25th January, the children have been bringing the story of the great zodiac race to life through drama and writing in English. As the children’s use of descriptive language and grammar has developed, they have brought the story to life in their own words and ‘paint a picture’ of the race. All of the children are eagerly anticipating Fireflies Class Assembly which will explore these themes further!

Maths

The children’s problem-solving and reasoning skills – as well as their understanding of number – will be further stretched this term. We will move through addition and subtraction within 20 to place value and calculations within 50. The bank of visual representations built up by the children so far will aid them in these new challenges. We will have a renewed focus on children being able to explain their ideas clearly in maths lessons and solving problems with increased independence.

RE 

In RE, we have begun our new topic of ‘Baptism’ and related this to times of celebration in our own lives. The children have been reflecting on their peers’ photographs and artefacts from their own baptisms and christenings. Later in the term, we will be learning about the Easter story and the implications of this most crucial part of Jesus’s life.

DT

Design and Technology involve the children will be designing, making and evaluating their very own fruit salad. The topic will involve fruit tasting; considering tastes, textures and colours; food hygiene and more! This is always an exciting topic for the children and it encourages them to think about what they eat in a different and analytical way.

History 

In History have been thinking about toys.  We are very lucky as we have had the opportunity to look closely at a selection of really old toys borrowed from Dorking Museum & Heritage Centre, and comparing them with our own toys.  Are they made from the same materials?  What difference does that make?  Are they more/less fragile?  Do they work the same?  It was an interesting challenge to see if we could work out how to play with these toys, and we enjoyed recognising some which are still sold today, such as the Snap! Playing cards, marbles and zigzag racetrack.  We noticed that dolls and teddy bears have been popular for many years!

Science

Our History theme fits nicely with our Everyday Materials topic in Science.  We have explored what many of our familiar objects and possessions are made from and why these materials have been chosen.  Why is the absorbency of towels and kitchen roll important?   What are umbrellas made from and why?  We tried out a range of materials and decided which worked best as an umbrella.  This taught us how important being waterproof is! We have also discussed the negative impact of the use of plastic is having on our planet!  Alongside this topic we are continuing to think about the changes of the seasons over the year.  We are thinking about the current wintery weather and looking out for snow, but also eagerly looking out for signs that spring is coming!

PE

Dragonflies class are very lucky this term as we are having weekly lessons with a specialist gymnastics coach!  We have been learning to warm up correctly in creative ways and form a bridge with our bodies.  We have learnt to perform teddy bear rolls independently and in groups.  We have to concentrate on listening to each other and coordinating our bodies to work together.  We have really impressed the coach with how well we have picked up the moves!

Year 1 Dragonflies

In Year 1 Dragonflies we have had a fantastic start to Year 1 and have learnt lots already! We have been learning about the weather and seasons in Science.  We have been recognising the signs of Autumn and became meteorologists making wind streamers to investigate the direction of the wind. We have chosen focus trees around our school environment to monitor and observe the changes over the year. Starting our topic of animals including humans has been really exciting. Did you know that humans have five senses that they use to understand the world around them? We became sense detectives and investigated different sights, smells, tastes, sounds and textures…some of them weren’t very nice! In Art we have continued with the Autumn theme and made Andy Goldsworthy artwork from natural materials.

Our phonics has been lots of fun this half-term! We have been revising our phase 2 and 3 sounds…AND we even know some of our phase 5 words already! We love going on sounds hunts around our classroom and in the book corner to find words with the sounds that we are learning. Our tricky words have tried to trick us out but we use our reading eyes and our working walls to help us if we are not sure of our spellings. We are so enthusiastic, we even know that some letters can make different sounds like ‘i’ as in ‘kind’ and ‘i’ in insect. We also know that ‘f’ and ‘ph’ make the same sound. Fab phonics!

Year 1 Fireflies

In Fireflies class, we have had a wonderful start to Year One. We all have brilliant attitudes towards learning and are always keen to challenge ourselves in all of our subjects. We have settled into Year 1 life really well and are very excited to have lots of new learning opportunities!

In Mathematics, we have been challenging our problem solving and reasoning skills! We have looked at how the numbers within 10 are made and developed are understanding of number bonds. We have also looked at 2D and 3D shapes and built on our understanding of them through pattern. For the first time, the children have recorded equations in their maths books. As the term goes on, we will be looking at place value within 20.

In English, we have been linking our learning to our Science topic of ‘Animals including humans’ and ‘seasonal change’. We have been observing changes to the natural environment and have explored these changes with our different senses. We then used these ideas to create some wonderful Autumn Poetry! We also looked at the story of Diwali and discussed how people celebrate different holidays and important times throughout the year. We made mind maps of the story and characters. We then used these mind maps to help us write a descriptive ending to the Diwali story. We are learning to write sentences using capital letters, full stops and finger spaces, as well as using some of our new Year 1 sounds in our writing!