Home Page

Ducks & Geese (Year 1)

Teachers: Mrs Partridge, Miss Short, Mrs Rowsell & Mrs Graydon

Teaching Assistants: Mrs Bryant, Mrs Hocking, Mrs Perryman, Mrs Mulcahy

Welcome to the year 1 pages on the school website! We are Ducks (Mrs Partridge and Mrs Rowsell) and Geese (Miss Short and Mrs Rowsell).

We have had a great start in Year One – beginning our learning about farms and farming with our topic ‘what does a farmer do?’ The children have come up with lots of questions they would like to answer and we look forward to some fantastic learning. We have thought about our focus school value for this half term – respect. The children had some great things to say about how we can respect each other, our classroom and school. We introduced the story ‘The Pig in the Pond’ which will be the basis for our learning in Literacy for the next few weeks.

We show respect by ‘playing with toys

We need to listen carefully

We show respect ‘by being kind'

Year 1 making the most of the field at lunchtime

Last half term we had a wonderful trip to West Town Farm in Ide where the children explored different aspects of autumn, saw the sheep, picked apples, helped make apple juice and drank it ! Delicious! Geese Class were also able to squeeze in a flying visit to see the pigs and give them the left over apple from the apple press. We had a lovely time. We also had a visit from Rosy’s Grandad who told us all about looking after calves on the farm. It was very interesting.

This term we had a visit from some real ducks and a goose! The goose was very noisy. We were able to touch the ducks and goose, asked lots of questions and saw a duck with her ducklings!

Last half term we learnt about the Christian story of Creation, where it is found in the bible and how God wants us to look after the Earth. We also presented our learning in the Harvest Assembly, sang to the school and produced some lovely art work with pastels, painting and some collaborative art work which is now on the wall near the hall.

We started this half term by learning about the senses and had a Teddy Bears’ Picnic. We then moved onto learning the story of Kipper’s Toybox. The children will be working on writing their own story about a missing toy over the next couple of weeks. We are enjoying our weekly Forest School sessions with Mrs Graydon where we are learning about being independent – ‘It’s up to me!’ We are thinking a lot about Integrity and doing the right thing, even when it is not easy and even when no one else knows what you chose to do! We are becoming more and more independent and responsible with our learning and now have 8 learning jobs on our Learning Trackers (last half term we called them ‘got to do jobs’).

In maths we have learnt a lot about 2d and 3d shapes – we have practised using all the mathematical vocabulary accurately and sorting shapes according to their properties. We have also been developing our understanding of the number system, calculations and solving problems. Next we will be learning about measure.

We have had some parents come in to show us toys they played with when they were children. We are looking forward to beginning to learn our Christmas songs and learning about Why Christmas is important to Christians.

Spring 1 2018

Our learning started this term with the topic ‘Starry Night’. We read and learnt a poem called The Christmas Star, about the journey of the Three Kings. The children learnt the poem with actions and performed it beautifully in class. We learnt all about rhyme and wrote our own rhyming couplets!

We also learnt about the stars and space in Science and were visited by a ‘pop-up planetarium’! It was wonderful. The children really enjoyed it and learnt so much about the sun, the moon, the stars and constellations.

Our artwork focussed on the painting ‘Starry Night’ by Van Gogh. We recreated the painting using different media. In RE as well as learning about Epiphany we asked ‘What is the Good News Jesus Brings?’

The second theme for our learning this term has been based around the Chinese zodiac story. We have had great fun recreating the story in the role play area, writing our own animal descriptions and then our own stories about an animal race. We have carefully copied Chinese symbols for the animals of the zodiac, made lucky money envelopes and counted coins. We have learnt about Chinese culture, how New Year is celebrated in China and made Chinese lanterns. We have been very busy!

Spring 2 2018

This term we began with a topic about dragons. We read the poems from the lovely book ‘Tell me a Dragon’. We then drew and described our own dragons and write our own poems. We mixed colours to create the colours for our dragons and decorated paper plate ‘scales’. We had a visit from ‘Astrid’ (Miss Katie Lee) who brought in her collection of dragons for us to see and learn about.

We began learning about grouping and sharing this term, using mathematical vocabulary and solving problems using objects and drawing pictures.

The last 3 weeks have been all about ‘Stories from Around the World’. We have read ‘The Runaway Chapatti’ and written our own versions of the story called ‘The Runaway Easter Egg.’ We have been finding out about India, making rangoli patterns, exploring Bollywood dancing and making chapattis. We have talked about Indian lifestyle and homes. We have had great fun in the Woodland, looking out for signs of Spring.

In RE we are learning all about Easter and why Easter is important to Christians. We are looking forward to the Easter Service.