Year 1

Autumn 2 2019

As  part of finding out about different faiths and promoting acceptance of those whose views may differ to our own, we visited the Open Centre in Derby where we could have mehndi patterns painted onto our hands, as well as dressing up and taking part in a pretend wedding ceremony. We also walked to a local Hindu temple, where we counted how many bells we could see and saw Rama and Sita, amongst other characters that we know from the Diwali story.

We came back to school to find boxes of jumble in our classrooms and the Shirley Hughes' book 'Dogger'. This is about a small boy called Dave and favourite toy. We found a class toy in the box, but then it disappeared!

Autumn 1 2019

The term got off to an exciting start as we discovered a burglary in our classrooms and the chief suspect was Grandma Swag from the storybook, Cops and Robbers.

To fit in with the cops and robbers theme, we were lucky to be visited by PSO Thompson, who spoke to us about the duties of police officers, as well as answering our questions.

We have enjoyed getting to know and handle Cuisenaire rods, which help us with our Maths. We made some pictures with them at first!

We found out about landmarks around Great Britain and made some models of them, a favourite  being Buckingham Palace!

Summer 5 and 6

We enjoyed a fantastic trip to the Yorkshire Wildlife Park, enjoying seeing a variety of animals and also learning more about different animals.

We took part in celebrations to say Goodbye to our Headteacher, Mrs Politowski, learning some new songs and rhymes to make her laugh!

We were fortunate to take part in regular Music workshops, singing and moving to songs and rhythms.

An RSPB workshop that we did outside focused on animals' homes. Also outside, along with the whole school, we helped to make and then decorate a huge wicker caterpillar- it can be seen outside the Reception classes.

Spring 4 Amazing Animals

This term, we have found out about all kinds of animals. We have thought about similarities and differences between animals, and have learnt about the groups that animals belong to.

We were visited by Zoolab, who brought in a variety of animals for us to see!

Spring 3 Lost and Found

Rob Bounds came during 'Healthy Me' week to make smoothies with us on this cleverly adapted bike. We were also encouraged to walk/scoot/bike to school with Rob every day that week.

Autumn 2 Fantastic Friends.

Following on from our work on the story of Diwali and learning about Rama and Sita we have been on a trip to the Hindu temple in Derby and the open centre. We were made very welcome and the children enjoyed having a good look around the temple. Back at the open centre we learnt about Asian weddings, tried on traditional clothing and had the opportunity to have a Henna pattern painted on our hand.

Autumn 1 Great Britain

This term, we started by having crime scenes in both of the classes, where some items had been taken and were found to be in swag bags- who was the criminal we wondered??

Summer 6

Our final topic this year was AUSTRALIA.

We learnt about animals unique to Australia, and had a visit by ZooLab who brought some animals into school and told us about them.

We found out about life for children, and how it differs to in Great Britain. 

We enjoyed creating our own artwork, in the style of Aboriginal art, and adding music to Aboriginal story symbols. 

Summer 5

The topic in Summer 5 was Growing. We planted seeds, read stories about growing, found out about the kinds of plants and trees that grow around school,  ooked at and drew some flowers, made our own fruit salads and did an assembly to our parents.

Spring 4

This term our topic is The Great Fire Of London.

We have made timelines about events in the past, made firey artwork, and pretended that we were Samuel Pepys keeping his diary.

We continued some artwork from last term, adding modroc to our newspaper dinosaurs!

Spring 3

Our topic this term is Dinosaurs!

As well as learning lots of facts about dinosaurs, and doing an assembly to our grown ups on the story Tyrannosaurus Drip, we have made dinosaurs in a lot of different ways.

Autumn 2

We enjoyed finding out about the story of Rama and Sita, as well as the festival of Diwali. We started off by following an exciting trail of tealights, that led to an treasure box to explore, packed full of things linked to Diwali.

Our topic this term was Castles.

We enjoyed working in many different curriculum areas finding out about castles. We made our own class castle collages, using Paul Klee's Castle and Sun picture as our inspiration.

Welcome to Year 1!

Autumn 1

This term our topic is Marvellous Me. We are enjoying finding out about our senses, and also about our bodies. We enjoyed dressing up on Superhero day, and used our strong superhero powers to help us listen, look and learn extra well that day!!

We like to use sums in different ways.

Summer 6

Our topic this half term is Australia.

Year 1 Trip to Newstead Abbey

We had an amazing time on our trip!  We used clay and natural materials to make faces on trees.  We baked bananas over a fire and we even put on camouflage for games of hide and seek! 

We enjoyed finding out about Australian animals, and also produced work following on from hearing some entertaining stories set in Australia.

Summer 5

The topic this term was Growing.

We grew beans from seeds in bottles, and checked on their progress every week. We enjoyed looking at the plants around school, and finding out about deciduous and evergreen trees.

We did a lot of writing after listening to these two lovely stories...

Spring 4

This term, we found out about the Great Fire Of London.

We worked with beebots again, putting instructions into them to get them to travel from one area on a map to another. If our directions were wrong, then we debugged them and tried again!

Spring 3

This term saw us hunting for, and finding, some dinosaur eggs on the playground! These hatched in the Year 1 classrooms, while we found out about dinosaurs, and made lots of exciting models using different things. We even made new dinosaurs using playdough,  and named them, which helped us with work about plurals.

Autumn 2

This term saw many of us visit Derby, where we found out about Hindu customs and traditions, such as marriage. We were made welcome when we visited the Hindu Mandir, which was decorated to celebrate the festival of Diwali.

Alison and Jo visited us from Tesco, bringing a selection of food for us to try, which is eaten during Diwali celebrations, as well as during many other occasions. Lots of us tried new food for the first time, and really liked it!

Autumn 1

Autumn 1 was a a very busy term. As we got to know each other in our new classes and the new year group, we enjoyed a Marvellous Us topic. During the topic, we went out into Riddings on a local walk, to explore the features around school.

We enjoyed using beebots, putting instructions into them to try to make them go where we wanted!

We learned about the Hindu festival of Diwali, and made some of our own diva lamps.

September 2016

Welcome to a new term, and a new school year! In Year 1, we are looking forward to working together to learn about lots of exciting things, developing our talents, and using our British Values skills to make sure that everyone has opportunities to achieve.

2015-2016

Have a look down the page to see what we got up to in Year 1 last year. 

Marvellous Me

Our first topic in Year 1, was Marvellous Me! During this topic we learnt all about ourselves. We talked about the things that we are good at, and the things that we’d like to get better at. We made a friendship garden in our classrooms to show all of the nice things that people have said about us. We created self portraits in the style of Paul Klee. 

We also had lots of fun learning about the Hindu festival of Diwali! We retold the story of Rama and the Demon King and we acted it out with puppets and masks! We then made our own Diva lamps out of clay - they were very beautiful but very delicate!

Castles

During our Castles topic, we learnt about William the Conqueror! We learnt a super catchy song and read stories that had castles in them – we even recited some poetry!

After we had learnt about the Bayeux Tapestry, we practised the skill of weaving! We made our own calendars using different materials to represent the 4 seasons of the year – weaving is quite tricky, but we really liked the end result!

At Christmastime our role-play turned into a Frozen winter wonderland! We had fun playing in the snow and singing with Sven and Olaf!

Dinosaurs

When we came back after the Christmas holidays, we were extremely excited as we discovered DINOSAURS had been in our playground! It all started when we discovered some strange looking bones, some huge footprints and 2 eggs! We looked after the eggs carefully and they hatched into (thankfully) two herbivore dinosaurs!

We learnt about the different dinosaurs that used to roam the Earth with lots of songs and stories and we now know the difference between carnivores, omnivores and herbivores! We even used our super science skills to identify which dinosaurs may have left some dinosaur poo! 

We then designed our own type of dinosaur and used recyclable materials to make them.

In January, we went to the Mandir and Open Centre in Derby to learn more about the Hindu faith. We looked at the beautiful statues and learnt about a Hindu wedding – we were allowed to try on the different outfits, most of them were very sparkly! Some of us then had beautiful patterns drawn onto our hands with henna. 

The Great Fire of London

In our Great Fire of London topic, we learnt all about the events in 1666 and how the fire started. We even had a visit from Samuel Pepys who told us about writing in his diary and burying his cheese and wine! He was very silly and funny! He taught us how the water chain worked and we sang the song, ‘London’s Burning’.

We wrote our own onomatopoeia fire poems and performed them to our classes, we also made our own London cityscapes using printing ink and rollers.

We also had a storytelling week, where we read the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. We read lots of different versions of this story and we even wrote our own alternative endings! We then made our own yucky porridge to trick Goldilocks – it had some very yucky ingredients including ‘blood’, ‘ants’, ‘bugs’, ‘snot’ and ‘earwax’! Some children were really brave and tasted it! We wrote instructions for how to make this porridge using our time conjunctions. 

Growing

In our Growing topic, we learned about all of the things plants need to live. We looked around the school grounds for evergreen and deciduous trees. We experimented with different planting methods including compost for sunflower seeds, cotton wool for cress seeds and ‘window watchers’ for broad beans! We were very excited to see how these different methods affect each seed and bean! 

We also learnt about the weather and how weather and seasons can affect plants. We know that weather can change throughout the seasons and we made our own weather diaries. We learnt that the weather can be very unpredictable – in fact we had rain, sunshine, hail, snow and lots of wind all in one day!

We enjoyed learning and retelling the story of 'Jack and the Beanstalk' and we created our own versions of the story. 

Australia

In the final term of Y1 we are looking forward to learning about Australia. We will be learning about what the country is like and we will write to someone living in Australia to see what it is like to live there. We will be learning about Australian animals and sorting them into different types. We are very excited about a special visitor who will bring some Australian animals to show us. We will also look at Australian artefacts and learn about Aboriginal art. later in the term we will be preparing to visit our new Y2 classes and having Sports day. The term will end with a school trip to 'The Butterfly House' to learn more about minibeasts! 

Alongside our topics we have learned lots of new things in Maths. Have a look at the photos of us having fun and learning maths skills!