Year 1

Both classrooms  have views of the school pond and our vibrant Nature garden to view while we work. In Year 1 we are also lucky in that both our classrooms lead to our own secure playground, which we use in all weather for work and play!

In Year 1 we start learning about Ourselves in Science and this links nicely with writing poetry about our senses in Literacy. We also find out about different Festivals and Celebrations including ‘Festivals of Light’ and Bonfire Night, before discovering more about Christmas.

During the Spring term we look at the history of toys old and new, viewing the changes that have happened over time and the similarities that have remained with today's toys. We also visit the local toy museum and play games from Victorian times   before then holding our very own Toy fair in our classroom and playground.

During the Spring term we focus on the local area, visiting the town centre, looking at different buildings and their use. We also go to the library and visit the church. We look at local maps and write ourselves a postcard and post it via the Royal Mail to await its return to understand the importance of writing our address! We also investigate materials and explore their properties as part of our work in Science. 

In Art and Design we create our own puppets for traditional and fairy tales. We also design and make moving pictures for a class pop-up book.

In the Summer term, we will be learning about how plants grow and explore our nature area to find out what lives there. We also find out about different animal groups and their lifecycles. In Geography, we focus on a contrasting locality of Brazil where we hope to learn lots of interesting facts about the culture, food and way of life this country has to offer. This learning will then all lead to having our very own Rio Carnival complete with head-dresses and costumes.

Throughout the year in Year 1 we use the laptop trolley for our ICT.  We focus in particular on teaching the children the core skills needed within ICT and show the children how these skills can be used in a variety of ways such as word processing, graphs and importing and manipulating graphics. We also have two computers in each Year 1 classroom that we use during all areas of learning. These computers provide an ideal opportunity for the children to continue using the core skills that have been taught and have internet access for research and learning.