Welcome to our Year 1 page!

Here you can find out about all the exciting things we have been learning.

Autumn term – 

Our topic for the Autumn term is “This is London.”

In maths, we have been learning about place value to 20. We have represented amounts using lots of different manipulatives. We have also been using part–whole models to help develop our understanding of addition and subtraction. From these models, we have been able to generate fact families.

In English, we have been exploring the story Paddington Bear. We thoroughly enjoyed reading about Paddington’s adventures. We have been focusing on the components of simple sentences and have learnt about nouns and verbs. We have also worked really hard to include adjectives in our writing and even wrote a character description about Paddington.

In science, we have been learning all about the weather and how it changes throughout the day and across the seasons. Each morning, we have recorded the weather and observed the daily temperature, talking about how it feels outside and what clues we can spot in the sky.

As part of our investigations, we made our own rain gauges and placed them outside to measure how much rain fell over the week. The children loved checking them each day and comparing the levels. We also created colourful wind socks, which helped us learn about wind direction.

Another exciting part of our learning was exploring shadows. We went outside at different times of the day to draw around our shadows and record how they moved and changed length. The children were fascinated to discover that their shadows in the afternoon looked very different from the ones they had drawn around in the morning.

Here are some wonderful pictures of the Pablo Picasso–inspired self‑portraits we created. We really enjoyed experimenting with colour and shape to make our artwork bold and unique.

To end the Autumn term, we celebrated with a Christmas jumper and Christmas dinner day. The children performed wonderfully in the nativity and sang so beautifully. Thank you to all the parents who practised the songs with their children at home—your support made a real difference.

Spring term – 

This term in English, we explored factual writing by reading different animal fact files and researching tigers to create our own. We then moved on to the story The Tiger Who Came to Tea, sequencing the events and practising sentence skills such as using adjectives and exclamation marks. To finish, the children invented their own character and rewrote the story with a new animal visiting their house for tea. 

This term, we have been focusing on place value within 10 and 20, learning how to count, compare and order numbers. We have used a range of manipulatives such as ten frames, counters, cubes and number lines to help us represent amounts in different ways.  

In history, we have been learning about Mary Anning and her incredible fossil discoveries. The children loved finding out how her work helped scientists understand the past and why she is remembered as one of the most important fossil hunters in history.

Spring 2-  

This term in English, we learnt about Mary Anning and used facts about her life to help us write clear information texts. We also planned and wrote our own dinosaur stories, practising our skills in description, character, and setting. 

We have also begun looking at tens and ones and learning how to partition numbers all the way up to 50. The children have been using dienes and tens frames to help them see how numbers are made. They are becoming confident at recognising how many tens and how many ones are in a number, and have enjoyed building numbers practically before recording them in different ways.

This term, the children have explored colour mixing, creating their own secondary colours and experimenting with different shades. They then used their new skills to recreate artwork inspired by Kandinsky’s bold, abstract style. 

We have really enjoyed our science unit on plants. We learnt to name the different parts of a plant and talked about what each part does. We went on wild plant hunts around the school grounds and were excited to spot a range of common wild plants. We also identified some cultivated plants and discussed how they are grown and cared for. We planted our own sunflowers and cared for them in class. We explored the difference between evergreen and deciduous trees and enjoyed finding examples of each during our outdoor investigations. 

We had a fantastic time at Colchester Zoo! After learning and writing about tigers this term, it was so exciting to see them in real life. The children loved spotting the animals they had been studying. We also discovered some dinosaurs on our adventure, which made the day even more fun.  

Summer term –