Welcome to Class 1

Taught by Mrs Crowther with Teaching Assistants Mrs Broadhurst and Mrs Brooke

Important Information for Class 1

P.E. – Monday and Thursday
Show and Tell – Friday afternoon.
Year 1 Spellings – Spellings for Year 1 will be given out on a Monday and the children will then be tested on them the following Monday.
Wednesday – Mrs Broadhurst teaches Class 1 either Geography, D&T or Art on a Thursday afternoon.
Notices – We aim to get the children outside learning as much as possible, therefore please ensure your child comes to school in the appropriate footwear and outerwear (e.g. wellies, coats and gloves).
Notices – Please remember to label all your children’s clothing, including PE kits.
Information on home-learning can be found below.
Times Tables Rock Stars – All Year 1 parents now have login details for the website https://ttrockstars.com. What a brilliant website this is! I have carefully selected the times tables suitable for your children and the corresponding division facts.

Spring 2019

Welcome back and happy new year!

Our topic this term is ‘Farm to Fork’. The children are going to learn about where their food comes from and how it is made. In History we are going to learn about farming in the past including the types of machinery used in the past and present and how different food products were made in the past compared to how they are made now. In Science we are going to be focusing on plants, including what they are, the different parts of a plant and how they are grown. Keep checking back to see what we have been learning about!

Clay Plant Pots

Here are the children working with clay to create a plant pot each. They loved it!

Making clay plant pots.
Making clay plant pots.
Making clay plant pots.
Making clay plant pots.
Making clay plant pots.
Making clay plant pots.
Making clay plant pots.

British Science Week in Class 1.

This week was British Science Week and we linked it to our current Science topic on plants. We had a cress growing competition! The children had variables to choose from when planting. For example, they could choose to plant their seeds in sand and could feed them Lucozade. The children who did choose these variables are still waiting for their seed to germinate! However, our winner chose to plant their cress seeds in soil and fed theirs water and his seeds grew an amazing 9cm! The children then went on to write instructions ‘How to Grow Cress’ in English, as well as to measure and record their results in Maths and to then create a bar chart.

Cress Growing Competition
Cress Growing Competition
Cress Growing Competition
Cress Growing Competition
Cress Growing Competition

Comic Relief/Red Nose Day.

What an amazing sight today. Class 1’s red outfits and wacky hair was brilliant! We had great fun with the coins and also enjoyed making some of our own edible red noses! They were delicious!

Comic Relief Class 1
Comic Relief Class 1
Comic Relief Class 1
Comic Relief Class 1
Comic Relief Class 1 and 2
Comic Relief Class 1 and 2
Comic Relief Class 1 and 2
Comic Relief Class 1 and 2
Comic Relief Class 1 and 2
Comic Relief Class 1 and 2

World Book Day.

Today it was World Book Day and the children in Class 1 threw themselves into the day with great enthusiasm. Their outfits were amazing! A massive thank you to parents for their help with this. When the children first arrived in Class 1 they discovered that the classroom chairs had quit! The chairs had left a letter explaining they were fed up of being rocked on, kicked and pushed over. The children wrote some fabulous apology letters and the chairs came back. They loved this! The children also enjoyed taking part in the book swap and liked having some of the Year 5’s helping them.

World Book Day Book Swap
World Book Day
World Book Day
World Book Day
World Book Day

Pancake Day.

Today we celebrated Pancake Day in Class 1 by holding Pancake races outside. Some of the Year 1’s measured out two tracks, having decided on 6 metres being long enough. They worked really well as a team and made sure to start each new metre stick at 0 so it was measured accurately. After that we had great fun racing against each other in two teams. Finally we headed back into class and shared some delicious pancakes, choosing what topping we wanted.

Year 1’s measuring Pancake Race Track
Class 1’s Pancake Races
Class 1’s Pancake Races
Class 1’s Pancake Races
Class 1’s Pancake Races
Class 1 Pancake Tasting
Class 1 Pancake Tasting
Class 1 Pancake Tasting
Class 1 Pancake Tasting
Class 1 Pancake Tasting

Maths – 2 times tables.

The children in Year 1 have been learning their 2 times tables. Here are some of them using counters to make the ‘groups of 2’ before counting in 2’s to solve the answer. They worked very hard, keeping on trying even when they found it tricky!

Year 1’s learning their 2xtables.
Year 1’s learning their 2xtables.

English

The children in Year 1 have been reading the book ‘Jim and the Beanstalk’ by Raymond Briggs. They thought of questions to ask the Giant or Jim and then the next day had a go at ‘hot-seating’. The children loved pretending to be one of the characters and answering the questions.

Year 1’s ‘hot-seating’ in English and asking the Jim and Giant questions.
Year 1’s ‘hot-seating’ in English and asking the Jim and Giant questions.

Reception and ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’.

The children in Reception have been reading ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’. They’ve made a giant story map together, ordered the magic beans from 1 to 20 and have even been measuring some giant footprints they found! They enjoyed drawing round their own feet, cutting out their footprints and measuring them too!

Reception measuring the Giant’s foot and their own.
Reception measuring the Giant’s foot and their own.
Reception ordering the magic beans.

D&T

As part of their art and D&T work with Mrs Broadhurst the children drew pictures and then used different types of pasta to fill them. Great pictures everyone!

D&T Pasta pictures.
D&T Pasta pictures.
D&T Pasta pictures.
D&T Pasta pictures.

‘Oliver’s Vegetables’ by Vivian French

‘Oliver’s Vegetables’ has been our focus in English and the children have enjoyed learning about the different vegetables. As their reward for earning all their ‘Ready to Learn’ tokens the children chose to make cupcakes. They chose to make carrot cupcakes. They loved measuring the ingredients and mixing them and worked well as a team.

Class 1 baking Carrot Cupcakes.
Class 1 baking Carrot Cupcakes.

History – How butter was made.

As part of our ‘Farm to Fork’ topic the children in Class 1 have been looking at where butter comes from and how it was made before machines were invented. They couldn’t believe it was all done by hand. They loved having a go at shaking cream until it became butter. They were really surprised that it worked and how hard it was to make!

Class 1 making butter by hand.
Class 1 making butter by hand.

Morrisons School Visit

Children in Year 1 and 2 had a wonderful day visiting Morrisons, Foss Island Road, York. This was an educational visit linked to our current topic ‘Farm to Fork’. The children learnt an incredible amount and can recite so many facts from our action packed day spent with Wendy and Sara from the Morrison’s team. Did you know? Morrison’s bananas come from Brazil and take one month from being picked to ending up on our shelves!

Farm to Fork

As part of the children’s topic on ‘Farm to Fork’ they sorted the role-play food into two groups, whether it comes from a Plant or an Animal. They then sorted pictures of foods as well.

Sowerby Music – Music for Life

The Year 1’s had a fantastic time in the workshop with Music for Life, they learned about pulse, rhythm, the tuba and the cello, among lots of other things. They ended the day with a fantastic performance to the rest of the school. Well done everyone!

Year 1’s performing with Music for Life.

Science – Plants

During the first week the children in Class 1 enjoyed exploring the wildlife area to see what different plants they could find. We learned that even grass and weeds are plants!

Autumn Term 2018

Welcome to Class 1! This is a mixed Reception and Year 1 class and we have fun everyday exploring and learning new things.

Since October Half Term we have been learning about Florence Nightingale in History and the Year 1’s have written a fantastic report on her life, that is now oup on display. Reception have been learning all about nurses and what they do and have been looking after the poorly toy babies and teddies really well.

Children in Need

Class 1 really enjoyed Children in Need day on 16th November. They really enjoyed coming to school in their pyjamas and with ‘bed hair’. They all looked fantastic! They also enjoyed the ‘Bake Off’ competition where the children brought in decorated cupcakes, with the best ones winning a prize.

Mr Skippy

On Tuesday 6th November Mr Skippy came into the school. The Year 1’s from Class 1 joined Class 2 and they had a fantastic time learning new skipping techniques. Reception went later on in the day and they had great fun with Mr Skippy. Every single one of them could skip by the end of the session and they didn’t stop laughing. Thank you Mr Skippy!

Year 1 with Mr Skippy
Reception with Mr Skippy
Reception with Mr Skippy

In History we have looked at “The Great Fire of London”. The children have enjoyed finding out facts and in English they have written some fabulous adventure stories and Newspaper Reports.

Both Year 1 and Reception children have enjoyed exploring different everyday materials in Science looking at their different properties and undertaking an experiment to discover which materials would be waterproof to make Winnie-the-Pooh a new umbrella.

Class 1 working together to find out which materials were waterproof.

In Maths we started the term looking at Place Value and explored grouping and sorting objects according to different criteria. We were then able to apply this in Science to sort and group everyday materials.

Sorting and grouping in Maths.
Sorting materials in Science according to their properties.

Reception are focusing on recognising their numbers, as well as ordering them from smallest to largest and counting accurately. Whereas Year 1’s have moved onto addition and have even solved some addition problems. We have really focused on using different concrete resources, which the children will confidently access themselves. We are now looking at subtraction and the children are looking forward to some new problems to solve.

Writing numbers with counters.
Counting the spots on the Ladybirds and ordering in sequence.
Counting spots on Ladybirds.

On Wednesday 10th October the Year 1’s in both Class 1 and 2 went on a trip to Ripon Cathedral as part of their RE topic Religious Buildings. The children absolutely loved the visit and came back full of information about what they had learnt, including what a Crypt is and what it was/is used for and watching a doll being baptised so they could understand why Christians believe it to be an important ceremony.

Learning about the key features of a Cathedral.
Learning about religious buildings at Ripon Cathedral.
Year 1’s and 2’s at Ripon Cathedral.

The whole class has been enjoying preparing for Harvest Festival and are really looking forward to the walk to All Hallow’s Church. The Year 1’s from Class 1 have enjoyed going into Class 2 to work with their friends to create their piece for the festival, whilst Reception have been throwing themselves enthusiastically into learning their song for the festival. As part of our preparation for Harvest Festival. We have been learning about growing plants and what Harvest means. The children have been weeding the planters in our garden area as well as planting bushes and some vegetables. They have also used oil pastels to do some drawings of some vegetables.

Weeding the flower beds.
Playing in the Garden Centre Role-play
Playing in the Garden Centre Role-play

Home Learning – Reception

If your child achieves a task at home, please let us know, you can simply note it down on a post it and send it in with them and we will include it in their Learning Journey’s. Over the years we have had all sorts including:

Riding a bike with no stabilisers for the first time
Helping a parent/adult with a job around the house
Being really polite at a wedding/christening/party
Climbing up the stairs one foot to one step at a time
Building a model
Cooking/baking
Gardening
Drawings/work done at home

We believe that continuing your learning at home is extremely important. In Class 1, we strongly suggest little and often. Once the children have received their reading books, we encourage them to read to an adult four times a week, even if it’s just for 5 minutes – it doesn’t need to be the whole book.

The children also have a maths target, which are called SMIRFs (Space Mission Instant Recall Facts) and the children will need to practise these throughout the week, we will then check them on a Friday and if they know them we move them onto a new target. The children love being turned into little astronauts and are keen to move up the planets already! We have been doing SMIRFs for several years now and we have found they have helped to improve children’s knowledge and that it has in turn helped their arithmetic and speed in answering questions.

We thank you for your continued support! If you have any questions, please contact us.

Phonics

Articulation of the 44 phonemes is really important as the correct pronunciation enables your child to blend sounds together more easily. Click the link to hear the pronunciation of the sounds: