Welcome to Year One
2023-2024
Adults in Year One : Mrs Sunderland & Miss Richardson
Teaching Tuesday PM : Mr Fellender
Please find below important information regarding Year One -
Here is our class mission statement, a set of 'rules' the children chose, to ensure we all have a fantastic year!
Year One Curriculum for 2023-2024
Here are our School Councillors. These were voted for by the class to represent Year One in School Council meetings and ensure that their voices are heard.
School Council have been involved previously in many important decisions, such as our homework reward scheme, the new playground markers and the dinner menu choices.
The final topic for this half-term is :
The Circus is coming to town!
(June-July)
In Computing we are learning all about Digital Imagery.
Over the past few sessions, we firstly looked at a range of photographs and discussed what a good one looks like,
and then have taken some of our own using I-pads.
This week's lesson involved learning how to edit a photograph.
The children really enjoyed experimenting with the colour, draw and crop tools to alter their photographs.
Maths this week is all about the money!!
The children have been learning to recognise UK coins and notes, and then also how to count selections of coins.
KS1 Sports Day was a bit of a 'wet' affair this year, however, the weather did not
stop the children trying their very best and having a good time too!
They all showed great resilience and sportsmanship throughout!
Today we have visited the Hepworth Gallery and took part in an artist-led workshop, learning about how to draw sculptures using different mediums.
This trip has links with both our Art and History topics.
The children were absolutely enthralled with every part of our day; from the coach trip, to meeting an artist, learning how to draw different sculptures,
lunch (always an important part of the school trip!) and then exploring the Gallery in the afternoon, choosing our own pieces to draw.
Their behaviour was exemplary and their enthusiasm and interest in the artworks was a pleasure to witness!
It's Outdoor learning Week!
Today the children have had the fantastic opportunity to attend a session of our Forest School and
learn about the activities that take place there!
They absolutely loved it! They fully embraced all the activities and loved the freedom to explore the environment.
Another part of 'Outdoor learning Week' has been several sessions of PE with '5* Sports' .
The children have loved having PE outside with Danny & Jake, learning lots of new sports, such as hockey and dodgeball.
They have shown great sporting skill and also excellent teamwork!
In Music this half-term the children have been learning all about how music can be used to represent things, such as animals.
They have also learned a song about animals.
Here they are practising how to perform their newly learned song as a choir, giving actions to the piece to make it interesting.
In Science today the children were set the challenge of conducting independent research about an animal of their choice.
They all used I-pads to find out the habitat, diet and an interesting fact, to write in their report.
Here are just a few of the children's reports.
In Literacy we have been learning about acrostic poetry.
Here are a few examples of the super independent poems that the children wrote about the Circus.
In History this half-term we are learning about Barbara Hepworth, as she is a significant person from our locality.
This week we began to learn a little about her, as a person. The children were hooked once they realised that she was born in Wakefield and studied in Leeds.
Then when they also realised we are going to a gallery named after her too, they were fascinated to hear more information about her!
We looked at some of her sculpture and discussed these.
Below are a few examples of the fact-files the children completed to show what they had learned.
In PE we are working on our 'team-building' skills.
We have played lots of challenging games so far, including working with a partner to stop a ball from falling using only selected body parts, passing a hula-hoop around the class circle without breaking the circle and several 'parachute' games, which involve everyone working together to achieve the goal!
We are learning that successful teamwork involves good communication - giving clear instructions and also listening as well as talking!
In Science we are returning to the 'Animals including Humans' topic.
This week, after re- visiting what we previously learned about 'animal classes' - fish, amphibians, mammals etc we then moved on to look at how animals also fall into certain dietary groups - carnivore, herbivore or omnivore.
To embed this knowledge, the children had to read some facts about chosen animals, then decide if this information meant that the animal was a carnivore, herbivore or omnivore. They then had to draw that animal in the correct section of a Venn diagram.
The new topic this half-term is :
Our World
(Apr-May)
In Literacy this half-term we have been doing lots of work around the book 'Going on a Bear Hunt' by Michael Rosen.
Today we were all authors, as we wrote our own independent adventure stories based loosely on this class text.
Here are just a few of our fantastic pieces of work.
We are now looking at Net& Wall game skills in PE.
Today we handled a tennis racket for the first time!
We did lots of activities to practise holding, moving and controlling our racket, as well as how to travel safely with it in a crowded space!
We then moved on to developing our balancing skills with a sponge ball on the racket - firstly standing still, then progressing to moving around in different ways.
We ended with some team games, which the children loved, quickly passing the ball down the team line without (hopefully) dropping it, using only our rackets!
To prepare for the transition into Year Two, we have introduced 'Morning Challenges' in our class.
These are a 10 minute task done independently when children first come into class every morning.
They may consist of a few maths questions to re-visit topics or a discussion with a friend about previous learning, as a re-cap before that day's new learning. They might also be a art task.
Today's was indeed an art activity.
The instruction was to draw an object with your non-dominant hand, which surprisingly, lots of the children found easy, and fun!
This morning we went outside to be 'Tree Detectives' for our Science lesson!
Armed with a clipboard, containing a tree spotter guide and also a leaf spotter leaflet, we headed into our school grounds to see if we could work in teams to identify some of the trees surrounding our setting.
The children really enjoyed looking at the tree shape, shade of green and leaf shapes to try and match them to the ones on our guides.
Today we learned all about acrostic poetry.
The children all wrote their own poem based upon PLANTS (our Science topic)
There were some absolutely lovely pieces of writing.
As we have been discussing 'why we write' a lot in Year One recently, I asked a selection of children to read their poems to an audience - to entertain them. (Year Two were happy to be our audience.)
Here they are presenting their work -
Today has been 'ART DAY'!
We have spent all day doing some fantastic art, where we have turned 2D drawings into 3D sculptures!
Our day began by looking closely at some videos of birds, and talking about their features - what's the same and what's different?
The children then chose from a variety of resources to sketch different birds in their sketch books.
We then moved on the looking more closely at feathers. Again, the children completed some observational drawings of these copying the patterns and colours they observed.
The next stage of our day was the create our own wings and tail feathers for our planned sculptures.
We learned about what sculpture is, and learned how to make a piece of 2D paper look like it had texture and shape, so it could appear feather-like.
Then we created 'bird bodies' from foam and began assembling our birds!
The children worked incredibly hard and were very proud of their finished sculptures.
We had a lovely morning today, conducting fieldwork as part of our Geography topic, Our Local Area.
We went for a walk around the nearby streets, using our street maps to check our location.
We also looked at the symbols used on our maps (such as small blue buses and crosses) and figured out what they referred to, and why symbols are used on maps.
We also used our observational skills to look for physical and human geographical features in our locality, and the children recorded these as we explored the area.
We are looking at PLANTS in Science this half-term.
In the introductory lesson we learned some of the vocabulary for the names of the parts of a plant and looked closely at some hyacinths, to see if we could recognise those parts.
We also learned about what an important role every part of the plant or flower has.
In Science this week we began a comparative experiment to observe, over time, which substance is better for growing a broad bean seed in.
We looked closely at the seeds before then planting one seed in different pots of bark, pebbles, sand and soil.
We made our predictions, and will watch for any changes over the next few weeks.
A few of our predictions -
Maths so far this half-term has been all about multiplication and division!
The children are doing an amazing job of grasping the basic concepts behind this very complicated but fundamental aspect of Maths.
We have been learning this in a more practical style, using all of our lovely resources from our Maths area.
We have been skip counting in 2s, 5s and 10s. We even learned a song to help us with 5s, as these are definitely the trickiest to learn!
We then moved onto recognising equal groups, creating them and adding them!
Here are a few photos of some proud faces, as the children begin to realise that they understand the concepts and why we need them.
In PE this half-term we are working on developing our athletic skills.
In today' s lesson we talked about how control and balance are important factors when moving our bodies in a range of sporting activities.
We all rotated through a selection of 'activity stations' where we practised our balance and control.
We talked about how we could develop these, perhaps by moving slower or using other body parts to help us maintain our pose.
In Geography this half-term we are looking closely at our local area.
We have also been learning about what the terms 'human and physical geographical features' mean.
We talked about what features we knew about in our local area.
The reservoir caused quite a debate, as to whether it was man-made or caused by nature!
Here are a few examples of the children's work, as they begin to understand the terms 'human and physical geographical features' from our locality.
Our Topic for this half-term is
All Dressed Up!
(Feb-Mar)
We have enjoyed another DT day today!
Out task today was to design and create a hand puppet, based upon a character from the traditional tale Red Riding Hood.
Before we could make our chosen character, we learned some fabric joining techniques using staples, safety pins and glue.
Then we designed our puppets.
After that, we began the tricky task of pinning a template to the chosen fabrics to cut out two identical shaped pieces of fabric!
Once that was done, we could use staples or glue to attach our two pieces together and begin decorating our puppets!
Here are our fantastic designs and finished creations!
In Maths this half-term we have gone 'measuring mad'!
We began by learning how to accurately measure length using objects and then centimetres.
The children loved exploring the classroom looking for objects to measure!
We have then moved on to measuring and comparing mass.
Again, the children are thoroughly enjoying weighing different classroom objects!
In Art this half-term we are exploring printing.
Today we began our topic by making large pieces of artwork in teams, using our hands as the printing plate.
We thought about how the impression changed dependent upon the volume of paint we applied and also the amount of pressure.
we had lots of fun getting messy!
Our completed artwork -
In PE we have now moved on to 'Invasion Games' and talking about how certain sports have attackers and defenders.
We are learning how to control a ball and also how to successfully pass & receive the ball.
In Science this half-term we have returned to the topic Everyday Materials and have learned about the invention of waterproof fabric by Charles Mackintosh.
Today we conducted a comparative experiment to see which of a sample of fabrics were waterproof.
We firstly all examined the fabrics, making our own predictions. Then we attached these to transparent cups and added the same amount of water to each piece using a pipette.
We then looked closely to see what had happened.
After we had finished the experiment, we put the cups to one side, and went back to them later in the day, to see if there were any further changes over time.
In PSHE this week we have been talking about 'strong emotions' and how our actions can impact others, without us even realising.
With this in mind, we read the story 'Fill A Bucket' all about how we can all very easily make a positive impact on someone's day.
Below are the children's ideas for 'how to fill someone's bucket'!
We have also enjoyed this story this week and had a lovely discussion about it's message.
The children enjoyed talking about their unique traits and also what traits they share.
We talked about how diversity is so important within the World.
In Computing this week we made instruction videos with a partner, to demonstrate how to use and control a Beebot.
Here are a few of our films -
This week we have been doing lots of different activities all around The Elves & The Shoemaker.
We had different challenges to do...
We read and watched different versions of this traditional tale and discussed the similarities and differences.
We also wrote the story in our own words, to help to develop our sentence writing skills.
In PE this week we began our Yoga module.
The children are absolutely loving it!
In this session we learned some new poses - the butterfly, fox, stick insect, snake and deer.
Below are the children holding their own favourite pose from this selection - can you guess which one they have chosen?
January 26th 2024 -
BLAST FROM THE PAST DAY!
Year One enjoyed a day of learning about special events from the decade 2010-2019
Our day began by learning about the first World Cup to be hosted in Africa in 2010.
We watched a clip of the crowds playing the vuvuzela!
We then went on the watch some clips of the opening ceremony & torch procession for the London Olympics 2012
We learned about the origins of the Olympics and the sports events that happen.
We designed our own medals to wear throughout the day, depicting something we felt we were good at!
The next important event of our decade was the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.
We watched the firework display from the end of the celebrations and noticed that there were a lot of union jacks being waved and displayed.
We created our own union jacks to wave!
We learned that Happy by Pharrell Williams was the most played song of the decade. Here we are learning the words!
We learned that lots of technology we use today was released in our decade, such as the game Minecraft in 2014, the first Alexa devices in 2014
& the first Nintendo Switch in 2017.
We also learned that the dance move 'The Floss' began in 2017.
Here we are attempting to'floss'!
Finally we talked about Greta Thunberg. In 2018 she began her campaign to give children a voice regarding Climate Change.
We talked about how we can all help to contribute to protecting our planet.
The children designed a poster to encourage others to make positive changes to make our world a better place.
Happy New Year !
Our new topic this half-term (Jan-Feb) is FREEZE IT!
Our final day of our Freeze It! Topic has been all about DT!
We were given the task of designing a windmill for a mouse!
We learned all about different styles of windmill & wind turbine, and that they all had something in common - they all have
three parts - the structure, turbine & axle.
We began our day by designing our structure, turbine and roof.
We then had the tricky job of assembling all the parts.
The children did an amazing job at attempting this independently!
Finally we had to evaluate our windmills against the original design criteria.
Here are our finished creations.
In Maths this half-term we are learning lots of different skills to allow us to be able to complete addition and subtraction within 20.
One of these skills has involved learning all about DOUBLES.
We had lots of fun playing a game with dice, to train our brains to spot a double. We had to spot it quicker than our partner and each team got a point for every double rolled!
In Computing we continue to develop our understanding the importance of clear and correctly ordered instructions to create successful algorithms.
(Please ask the children about 'the jam sandwich' video we have watched several times!)
We are also now looking at which equipment are classed as input or output devices.
Today we worked with a partner to try and sort pictures of these.
In PE we have continued to develop our gymnastic skills over the past few weeks, and have learned 6 fundamental poses.
Here are a selection of photographs showing the children demonstrating these for 'a count of 5' on the apparatus.
This week we were very lucky to have a visitor from the Northern Ballet.
There were two sessions with half of the class in each and the children learned all about the story of the Tortoise & the Hare.
They looked at photographs of the dancers portraying the different roles within Northern Ballet's version of the fable,
and then did a variety of activities to imagine themselves as the hare & the tortoise in the story!
As you can see from the photos below, the children absolutely loved it and were very enthusiastic to participate!
We were very fortunate to have D-Side visit us this morning.
Hazel came to talk to us all about how we can stay safe and healthy.
We talked about how our bodies work and what they need to keep them healthy. We discussed how we need food, water and air to stay alive.
We talked about keeping ourselves clean, and about what foods are good for us.
We also talked about when we are poorly, how sleep is a really good way to let our bodies heal, and who we can trust to give us medicines.
The children were fully engaged and participated enthusiastically, as we explained to 'Q the Alien' how we can look after ourselves.
In PE we have started learning Gymnastics.
This week we have been exploring how to move/use our whole bodies to become wild animals such as cheetahs, elephants and giraffes! We even thought about being flamingoes!
We then moved safely around the apparatus, pretending we were travelling through the jungle - moving through watering holes and over tree logs.
In Computing this week we began to learn all about ALGORITHMS!
To try to understand the importance of giving precise instructions when creating an algorithm, we played a game.
The children worked in pairs to write a list of instructions for dressing a doll, then another team had to try and follow their instructions.
We talked about how simply writing ' 1.top' was not a good instruction, as it didn't tell us what to do with the top or where to place it.
The children quickly realised what they needed to include, to write a successful algorithm!
In Geography this week we began our new theme - Our Wonderful World
This week's lesson involved learning all about the United Kingdom. We learned how to use an Atlas & an index to find the UK. We 'trained our brains' to be able to spot the UK on a range of maps.
We then went on the learn some UK facts, such as the location of the 4 countries, their capital cities and what their flags look like!
Christmas has well and truly arrived in Year One!
As well as lots of Nativity rehearsals, we found time today to put our class Christmas tree up.
We all took turns to hang an ornament - remembering those special rules - only one thing on one branch & no two things the same next to each other!!
We all wrote our letter to Santa today.
Today we all took part in a sponsored 'Reindeer Run' around our playground, chasing Santa himself!
The proceeds went a very worthy local cause, Wakefield Hospice.
Christmas festivities continued today, we enjoyed our Key Stage One party, where we played lots of games and then enjoyed chocolate cake & juice!
When we returned to our classroom we had been visited by someone special!
Santa had secretly come and left us all presents!
We had an exciting morning today!
We all walked to West Ardsley Methodist Church, with Year Two.
We learned all about Christingles and then made our own!
We sang a few Christmas songs and enjoyed juice and biscuits too, before walking back to school for lunch!
Anti-Bullying Week - 13-17th November
This week was National Anti-Bullying Week.
There have been whole school assemblies and lots of discussions around this subject all week throughout classes.
In Year One we had our first attempt at drama.
We read the story 'The Wolf's Colourful Coat' and discussed the events and how all the characters felt.
We then got into groups to act out the story.
Although some of the children were less confident to 'perform', they all enjoyed the experience and showed empathy
and understanding of the characters and their actions within the story.
Autumn 2 (Nov - Dec)
Our topic this half-term is
THE MAGIC TOYMAKER
In PE we have now moved on to our Dance module.
We have been considering body movement and actions linked to the weather.
We have also learnt that dance is done to a beat, and we have been using a beat of 8 to create dance routines with our friends.
Here are a few videos of our independent creations.
Can you guess the different types of weather we are displaying?
In Computing we have been working hard on improving our mouse skills.
We looked at Kandinsky's artwork 'Circles' and then created our own digital artwork on Paint3D, by clicking and dragging 2D shapes, then filling them!
This week we completed our first'big' independent writing task.
We began by listening to the story 'Lost In the Toy Museum' .
Then we drew story maps and discussed how these are a very helpful tool to help us remember story events.
Next, we wrote the story in our own words, doing it is two halves, to make it easier.
The children did an amazing job & here are just a few examples!
In Science this half-term we are looking at everyday materials.
In our first lesson we learned the names and properties of a variety of different materials.
The children then completed worksheets to show their understanding of what materials items were made of.
In our next Science lesson, we looked at a variety of toys from around our classroom and sorted them by the materials they were made from.
Here are a few examples of the children's work after the activity.
In History this week we talked about how we can find out about toys from the past, and learned the term ' sources'.
Our homework task was to talk to our parents/carers and grandparents about their favourite toys and why they liked them.
In class we talked about what a valuable source this was, being able to talk to people who had first-hand experiences of toys in the recent past.
The children absolutely loved sharing what they had learned from family members with their friends.
We then went on the learn about another source - non-fiction books. We talked about how we can use these to find out lots of interesting facts and see photos and drawings of historic toys.
The children again were very excited to look through the books and were fascinated with 'golden trains' 'china tea-sets' ' Old fashioned baby dolls' and 'Etch-a-sketches that only drew straight lines!'
In Music the children have been reading The Three Little Pigs and thinking about how using character voices makes a story more interesting.
This week they have been learning about how to give rhythm to lines from the story to enhance it.
They worked in groups to clap to the words, in order to hear the rhythm of the statement.
In Maths we have been exploring 2D and 3D shapes.
We have learned that 2D shapes are flat & 3D shapes are fat!
We have made patterns with them, talked about their properties and looked at which ones are good for stacking!
In History this half-term we are learning all about how toys have altered over time.
We started this topic by sharing details of our own favourite toys.
We talked about how we all like different toys and also how we play differently with these toys and games, how some are technology based whilst others we use our imaginations with.
We then looked at a selection of toys from our classroom and discussed a range of questions about these toys with a partner.
Finally, we drew a picture of our own favourite toy and wrote a few sentences about it. Here are just a few examples -
In our Reading lessons, we are currently looking at the poetry of A A Milne - 'Now We Are Six'.
During these lessons children are learning comprehension skills, such as inference and retrieval.
After we have read the text several times together and discussed the vocabulary, the children then work with a partner to answer a few questions about the text we have read.
They are learning to spot the 'clue' words within questions and then locate information by scanning or skimming the text for the answers.
The children are particularly enjoying this book and are eager to hear other poems from it.
We have begun our Computing lessons this week.
We have been practising how to log on and off with a partner.
We all have our own unique username and password, so learning how to enter these successfully,navigating the keyboard, is a fundamental step!
In PE we are currently developing our ball skills to progress onto successfully sending and receiving with partners. We are learning how to watch the ball and think about it's pace, in order for us to do things like clap before catching it. We are realising that to perfect this skill,it takes a lot of concentration!
This half-term one of our class books is Pinocchio.
We have talked about adjectives previously in our SPAG lessons, and how they make sentences more exciting and help the reader to get a better picture in their head of what is being described.
With this in mind, we have been 'getting comfy' during story time, closing our eyes and visualising story events, rather than looking at the pictures within the text.
We then talk about what we have imagined and discuss which words within the story helped us to create those thoughts.
The children all looked amazing for our Halloween Disco!
We had lots of fun.
All Around The World Day
16th October 2023
Year One have been learning all about France today!
We began our day by learning some facts about France, such as it's capital city, population and it's currency.
We looked at some famous landmarks too.
We did a quiz to see what we could remember!
After that, we watched a video on how croissants were made and we all tasted some.
They were a big success!
We then had a 'virtual tour' of Le Louvre and learned all about the Mona Lisa.
Did you know she is painted on a wooden panel?
We all drew her ourselves!
We have learned lots of french language today.
We have learned to count to 10 in French.
Then we learned how to introduce ourselves & tell people our name.
Finally we learned the names of some colours in french and coloured in an 'L'arc-en-ciel' (rainbow).
We also all created our own french flags!
Finally, the children were tasked with filming each other as they talked about something they had learned, or enjoyed from our French Day.
Here are a few...
Autumn 1
Our topic this half-term is
Marvellous Me!
In Science this week we have been conducting our own research into an animal of our choice.
We used the I-pads to find out the diet, habitat and class of animal of our chosen animal.
We then recorded our findings on a fact-file.
Below are a few examples of the completed research.
In PE we have now moved on to the topic of 'Ball Skills'.
Today we practised keeping control of our ball, by carefully 'dribbling' it around cones.
There are some potentially talented footballers amongst the class!
Monday was DT Day!
The topic this half-term was 'Fruit & Vegetables'.
We began by looking closely at a selection of fruit & vegetables and seeing if we could identify which group the foods belonged to.
We learned that fruit has seeds, whilst vegetables do not.
We then went on to learn all about where fruit and vegetables grow.
We spotted the pattern that fruit grows on trees and vines, whilst vegetables grow just above the ground, or below the ground.
Our next task was to sample a range of fruit and vegetables, to see which ingredients we would like in our smoothies!
Once we had chosen which ingredients we liked, then we began working in small groups to make our smoothies, carefully chopping the food & loading the blender - making sure that the lid was on before we pressed Go!
Finally we evaluated our creations!
Some were successful, others...not so much!
In Art this half-term we are looking at spirals and continuous line drawing.
We talked about how we can use our whole bodies to create spirals, then practised this with firstly art pencils, then chalks in the playground.
As you can see, the children were fantastic at this!
We then went on to create 'Rainbow Snails' using oil pastels.
Here are our finished masterpieces!
In Science we have been learning about our 5 senses.
Today we did some experiments to find out how hard it is to only use one sense!
We visited the 'Senses Stations' and had to record what we could hear, see, smell, taste & touch.
Here are a few photos & some examples of our findings!
In Music we are exploring pulse & rhythm.
This week we listened to a song and tried to hear the pulse (or heartbeat) in the music.
We learned that this is often the beat that we nod, clap or tap our feet to.
We then tried to join in with the pulse using a selection of music instruments.
In RE this half-term the children are learning all about special books and stories.
They have looked closely at a selection of children's bibles and Mrs. Bulbulia shared her Qur'an with us.
The children enjoyed learning about the differences between these special religious books.
In PE today we were practising our jumping skills.
We began by moving around the hall in the style of different animals, such as frogs, lions and snakes.
Then we moved on to see if we could jump higher and/or further than our partner.
Finally we had a whole class jumping competition.
In Science today we were all scientists investigating how many of our class had which eye colour and hair colour.
We conducted surveys to record our findings and then looked at our data to make conclusions!
The children loved completing these tasks and some even began investigating whether boys or girls in our class had the longest arms/feet/ heads etc by measuring them with pegs!
Today in PSHE we talked about how we are all unique.
We watched the story of Elmer, and talked about how he didn't initially like being different from his friends, but he learned that his differences were an important part of him.
We then worked with a partner to talk about what was the same as them, and what was different.
Here are our ideas.
