Year 1 Summer Term 1

Date: 24th May 2024 @ 10:06am

It is hard to believe that another half term is already over, and we only have one more half term together before the long summer holiday and the transition to Year 2!  The children continue to blossom and grow in their learning and in their enthusiasm and are soaking up everything we teach them in our Oceans and Seas topic.

Their reading is amazing, and the classes have become very proficient at partner and shared reading lessons, developing lovely expression, great vocabulary and good comprehension skills.  The children are brilliant at answering questions in full sentences!  They are building up their stamina for writing too, and we have been very impressed with the quality and quantity of work they can produce.

In maths we have been doing lots of work on number, counting in 2s, 5s, 10s (using coins and objects) and 100s as well as counting in 1s forwards and backwards.  Skills in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division are always a focus.  We have also been getting to grips with telling the time to o’clock and half past on analogue clocks and have linked this to digital clocks too – it would be great if you could keep practising this at home because it is such an important skill.

Our topic this term is Oceans and Seas.  In science the children have been learning about different habitats with a focus on oceans, classification of animals into mammals, insects, reptiles, birds, fish and amphibians, classification into carnivores, omnivores and herbivores and finally an introduction to food chains.

The focus in geography for this first half term was oceans, and particularly the Atlantic Ocean due to the UK’s proximity.  We have linked this to our history, following the life and voyages of Christopher Columbus from Italy and then Spain over to the Bahamas.  Columbus arrived there by mistake over 500 years ago – see if the children can remember where he meant to sail to and what he brought back from the islands that changed people’s lives!

To bring all our work on oceans together, the children have had great fun making their ocean dioramas, learning about colour mixing, tinting, shading, working with clay and collage.  They have also learned what goes wrong if their clay models are too delicate!

Added to all that, they have learned about keeping money safe (PSHE), have had hands-on lessons using laptops for word processing, had skipping and games lessons, and in RE they have learned about Ramadan and Eid as well as stories Jesus told.  Phew!  We can all have a well-deserved rest!

Have a great break next week.  Thanks everyone!