Year 1 Blog

Weekly Update

The children have been getting stuck into their new class text, ‘Traction Man’ and they have been busy writing their predictions and excellent character descriptions. Between all of our Maths, English, Topic, PE and Reading, the children have been practising for their poetry performance. The performance will give the children a chance to show off what they have learnt and to stand up and perform in front of a large audience, which is quite daunting for Year 1; we hope you can join us on Monday to see it.

Have a lovely weekend,

The Year 1 Team.

Welcome back HAPPY NEW YEAR 2020!

The children have all been keen this week to tell their teachers what they have been up to over the Christmas holidays and share with their friends tales of what Santa had left them on Christmas morning. Both classes have taken their time to write some fantastic Christmas Day recounts in a letter format for Santa to read.

On Friday, we were treated to our annual Pantomime performance, which was again truly wonderful! The children needed no further encouragement to bellow at the wicked characters and join in with the singing parts. It is safe to say that the children thoroughly enjoyed the adaptation of Snow White; they also had the chance to laugh at both Mrs Mears and Mr Law, as they were chosen to 'volunteer' their services in helping the cast to dance in once scene - the less said about this part the better!

Have a lovely weekend, 

The Year 1 Team. 

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 

On behalf of all the Year 1 staff, I would like to take this opportunity to thank all parents and guardians for their continued support this term. The build up to Christmas has been extremely busy (like every term!) and our classrooms have been full of excitement, cheer, carol singing, a mischievous elf and obviously an abundance of mathematics and English work.

The children really have been absolutely fantastic this term and our fingers are crossed that Santa will be extremely busy on Christmas Eve rewarding our amazing children for all of their endeavours across 2019.

Have a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year, from all of the Year 1 Team..... and an army of friendly snowmen. 

And one last HUGE THANK YOU must be extended to Mrs McDonald who is sadly (for us) retiring! After a 'few' years at Lostock Hall CPS, 28 years to be factually correct, Mrs McDonald is entering a new exciting chapter in her life. On behalf of all the Key Stage 1 staff, and other members of staff across school, we wish you all the very, very BEST! With big boots to follow we are excited to welcome Mrs Mears in January 2020, but until then ......

"HO, HO, HO - MERRY CHRISTMAS!"

Half Term Review 

What an amazing first half term the children have had in Year 1. It is not the easiest transition from Reception into Year 1, but all of the staff have been blown away with how well the children have settled into their new classes and routines!

Here is a little review of only a handful of things we have been getting up to in an action packed first half term:

English 

The children have produced some fantastic pieces of independent writing using their fabulous pre-cursive handwriting (which is already much better than Mr Law's); we have read many different stories and focussed on two texts in particular: 'Dan, the flying man' and 'The Meanies'. The children had a go at inventing their own fictitious Meanies and some of them were really quite ghastly. 

Spellings and Phonics

Thank you to all parents who have been helping your children at home with their weekly spellings. The children have done a fantastic job this half-term in learning their spellings and it really does help to consolidate the learning of that week's phonics focus or highlighted sound. Just to reiterate, the spelling books sent home can be used to practice in and you can use the lines on that weeks page to practice upon. Keep up the excellent effort and thank you once again!

Mathematics 

The children have been excelling with many different aspects of number and place value this half term. Using accurate number strategies, the children have been working on ordering numbers within 20 (and in some cases beyond), using terminology such as 'greater than', 'fewer than' and 'equal to' when ordering and positioning numbers and amounts. We have counted accurately, using different strategies to help with our addition and subtraction and explored using concrete resources, such as counters and number lines/grids to help us tackle these number problems. We have also enjoyed many mental maths challenges to work out plenty of tricky number problems independently in our head. We definitely have some extra talented mathematicians in Year 1!

PE and Sport 

We have been really active this term and both classes have been enjoying some fantastic PE lessons. The children have been showing off their wonderful gymnastics skills, including various balances, ways of moving, displaying different rolls and holding different shapes. The children showcased a real desire to be creative when working both on their own and also holding positions and balances with partners. In the next half term we will be looking at Multi-Skills, Throwing & Catching and Dance. 

A handful of our Year 1 children also had the opportunity to attend a Key Stage 1 sport inclusion event held at Brownedge St Mary's High School. The event saw several schools from the area engage in many fun and non-competitive games and events that we can take back to school. The morning concluded with a relaxing Yoga session, which left the children feeling calm and focussed. The children were exceptionally well behaved and a credit to their classes and the school. 

Welcome to Year 1 

Mr Law and Mrs McDonald would like to welcome you to our Year 1 blog. Here you will find information about what the children have been learning in class and keep up-to-date with all the enjoyable things they have been getting up to in school.

This term we have been looking at both fiction and non-fiction texts in English, working on our number skills in Maths and been getting super active during our PE lessons; they've explored their senses in Science, created masterpieces using different computer software in ICT and sang their hearts out during Music. It is fair to say that all of the children have settled into their new classes fantastically well and it is certainly going to be another fantastic year!

Here is a little look at some of the work that has been produced so far: 

Some excellent handwriting practice (complimented with a special Mrs Brownley sticker): 

Some excellent number skills being displayed in our Maths No Problem workbooks: 

One of the fiction texts that we have been looking at this half-term is The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson. The children made predictions about what they thought the Gruffalo might be getting up to. Take a look at this informed prediction, was her prediction correct? 

Half Term Break

Where have the last five weeks gone? It has been super busy and we have learnt so much in all of our subjects. Thank you for all of your wonderful homework contributions, we had great fun this week reading through these and showing of our wonderful work.

In PE this half term we have been honing our ball skills, preparing for sports day (first week back!) and also learning all of the moves for Dance From The Heart. The children are so excited about both.

We have spoken to lots of parents over the last couple of weeks who have enquired about the phonics screening check and asked what more they can be doing; use the sheets we have sent home with both real and nonsense words on them; practise spotting tricky sounds in our reading books and write them down; use some of the resources online (a Google search will find you a wealth of practise papers and worksheets); make phonics fun - get the children to teach you.

Phonics and homework aside, please have a wonderful and safe half term break. Thank you once again for all of your help and support this halfterm from all the staff in 1L and 1M.

Summer Term

Unbelievably we are now entering the Summer Term; it's amazing how quickly this academic year is flying by! We hope you all had a lovely relaxing half term break and that you are now fully charged for another action-packed term of learning, learning and a bit more learning. This term we will predominantly be looking at 'Animals'. In Science we will be categorising animals and looking at their habitats, which will link with our Geography work and some of our favourite stories in English (starting with - Dear Zoo ).

To get us all in the mood for an exciting term focussing on animals, we started off last week by having two visitors come into our school. We were visited by both the Dog's Trust and Animal Care, who were accompanied by Bumble, a REAL adorable border-collie puppy. With over 9 million dogs in the U.K our children were taught some fantastic strategies for caring and looking after dogs and also what they should do if they ever encounter a stray dog.

Please read this super piece of independent writing to find out more:

Last Week of the Spring Term

As we have reached the end of the Spring term, may we take this opportunity to kindly thank all parents and guardians for your support once again this term; you have kindly sent in hardboiled eggs, boxes, Wellington boots, charitable donations and a whole array of fantastic homework creations (and so many other things!). We thoroughly enjoyed learning about the Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter this term and this culminated in our performance on Thursday morning - thank you once again for being such a wonderful audience. To echo the sentiments shared on Thursday morning, thank you once again for all your support this term and have a lovely, safe and restful Easter holidays. We will see you all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (in true Peter Rabbit fashion) on Tuesday 23rd April.

Please see some of the wonderful pictures from our Year 1 Creative Arts performance:

The Wheelbarrows (pinched/'borrowed' from grumpy Mr McGregor's garden)

The children in 1L and 1M had great fun last week designing and making their custom wheelbarrows. Most of them withstood the challenge of ferrying their hardboiled eggs and navigating through our garden creations. A lot of tin foil, blue tack, glue and patience later, here are some of our fantastic results (starting with the prototype):

Creative Arts  (Design & Technology) Wheelbarrows & Mr McGregor's Garden

Continuing with our Peter Rabbit topic, Year 1 were very fortunate to have a wonderful local artist come and visit their classes and help them create a real life version of Mr McGregor's garden . With the help of the excellent Sarah Hicks, both classes painted, chopped, stuck, drew, cut, prodded and poked their way to their own individual masterpieces.

Please keep your eyes peeled for the wheelbarrow photos next week ............

Meanwhile, here's some of the 'action' from this week.

Creative Arts Week

The first exciting activity of our 'Creative Arts Week' started with both Year 1 classes engaging with a drama and dance class on Monday morning. Using games and activities, accompanied by music, our specialist coach brought our class text - Peter Rabbit - to life. The children loved escaping Mr McGregor's garden.

Spring.

We have been looking for signs of Spring in our school area. When we went outside we saw lots of lovely daffodils which we had grown ourselves. Last Autumn we planted bulbs in pots of soil. The sun, light. rain and warmer weather has helped them to grow. Not all of our daffodils are the same. Some have big flowers and some have yellow buds that haven't opened yet.

Our Busy Week!

Year 1 have been busy all week learning about what worship means to Buddhists. We have carried on practicing our meditation and this has helped us to make the most of our busy week.

In our English work we have been using adjectives to describe some of the giant leaves left by Jack after he climbed the magic beanstalk. The giants friend phoned our class to see if we could describe the giant on a 'Wanted' poster.

Here are some of the adjectives we used for both:

gigantic      huge     big      really big       awesome     scary      giant      wide      long      drowsy  mean    shiny     

smooth      green       holey        grumpy        nasty      hairy.

Can you guess which adjectives were used to describe the giant?

Year 1 Visit To a Buddhist Temple.

As part of our RE topic on Buddhism we went on a bus to visit a Buddhist Temple in Preston.

The monk chanted to us and helped us to meditate. We felt very calm.

There were lots of statues of the Buddha and temple offerings. We made our own offering of Lotus flowers to place on the shrine.     We looked at Buddha statues.

         We looked at a huge statue of Buddha dressed in Orange robes.

Afterwards we made our own observational drawings.

Hubble Bubble Double Lubble Year 1 Are Out Of Trouble!

Year 1 have had trouble learning some of the tricky lines from their class poems. However we have given it lots of practice and we now feel ready to perform to the rest of the school and parents on Monday.

Year 1 have looked at toys (some of them very old toys) and used them to make up their own versions of familiar poems. We have had lots of fun and even included some actions to go with our poems. 

Ho ho ho we have been thinking of adjectives to describe our festive decorations!

Year One Writing.

In our English we have joined words and sentences with the conjunction 'and.' After that we went on to include adjectives. Here are some of our examples.

Year 1 have been learning about Buddhism and Christianity.

Year 1 Christmas Party!

year 1 had a great time at their christmas party playing games such as Musical Corners, statues and Pass The Parcel.

A special visitor arrived and gave all the children a present. He told all the teachers that they had been really good and assured Mrs Brownley that he knew where she lived even though she had changed her name. Phew!

Year One

Year 1 had a visit from one of Santa's helpers. Luckily all the children had been really good and enjoyed reading letters from both Santa and Sparkles one of our Elves. The children learnt how to write letters and wrote letters to Santa and Sparkles. 

Each morning the children had to spot their Elf and letter in school. Our Elf has now gone back to help Santa and told him that all the children in Year 1 have been great at school. 

We are hoping for a quick visit from Santa and we have been practising some lovely songs to sing for him.

Looking For Seasonal Changes.

Year 1 have been searching for signs of Autumn in our school grounds. We have spotted squirrels scampering across the grass storing food for winter. Some of the trees have leaves which have turned into yellow, gold and red. The fruit on the apple and pear trees has been harvested.

We will continue to look at the changes in our environment and record the changes we see.