Guiseley Primary School

Year 1 - Green Class and Yellow Class

Year 1 Welcome Booklets

Curriculum overview

Spring 2

What an amazing half-term Year 1 have had! Our topic this half-term was Carnival of the Animals and we have learnt so many wonderful facts about all kinds of animals. A vet came into school to talk to the children about the types of animals they work with and the injuries they see. She showed X-rays to the children and let them have a go at wrapping a bandage around a dog's foot. They also listened to the dog’s heartbeat with a stethoscope. We have been very creative this half-term, the children have had fun drawing owls, painting birds and making animal masks.

Did you know? A shark does not have any bones, they have cartilage instead. This is what our ears and the tip of our nose are made from!

In English, we have been writing about these animals and have made booklets and leaflets about owls, sharks and snakes. In order to improve our writing even more we have been learning about exclamation and question marks, as well as headings.

In maths we looked at length, mass and volume. We have been discussing what we can use to measure and weigh different objects, as well as the difference between capacity and volume.

Science this half-term has been all about the different animal groups and we have learnt some interesting vocabulary during our lessons, including carnivore, herbivore and omnivore. We continued looking at different groups in some of our other work, including in computing. We have been sorting and grouping different objects by their characteristics, such as colour, shape and size.

We enjoyed creating cars in DT and learning about the different parts of a vehicle such as axles, axle holders, wheels and the chassis.

We hope you have a restful break and we can’t wait to see you all again next term.

Spring 1

The children have been very interested in our history lessons about 'Toys through Time'. They have enjoyed handling the different toys in our class toy shop and practising improving their skills, especially for the cup and ball game. We had some very patient children who persevered until they caught the ball in the cup. In DT, we designed our own puppets and the children chose their favourite method to join the front and back. I think you will agree they made some fantastic puppets, carefully looking at their designs as they worked.

One night a couple of weeks ago our toys went on an adventure round school and the cameras picked up their movements. Year 1 were extremely excited to find out what had happened and planned their own adventures stories. We tried extremely hard to write using capital letters and full stops and to extend our sentences using the conjunction 'and'. The children from green class made missing posters in the computer suite to try to find the missing toy cow that had not returned to class. They using the different keys on the keyboard they have learnt including shift, back space, space bar and the arrow keys to navigate a word document.

In mathematics we have completed our work on place value to 20 and have practised using our number bonds to help us when adding and subtracting within 20. The children have used number lines and practised how to find the missing number in number sentences. We have used our knowledge of number bonds to 10 to recognise number bonds to 20 and the related subtraction facts.

In science we have focused on how the weather has changed and how the hours of daylight change throughout the seasons. This last week we have collected rainfall and what a surprise it has been for the children to see the difference day by day.

During our art lessons we have been inspired by Wassily Kandinsky and have enjoyed looking at his artwork. We have practised the skills of tearing and cutting paper, choosing colours and textures ready to create our own abstract art. We hope you like our finished collages!

Autumn 2

This half term we began our topic on traditional tales with a visit from Tempus Fugit who, with help from children in both classes, performed ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ and ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’. In English, we read more traditional tales, including ‘The Gingerbread Man’. We then used these to draw story maps, learn about time connectives, using ‘and’ and the suffix ‘-ed’.

In DT, we designed and created moving storybooks based on the story of ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’. We learnt how to make objects move from side to side by using slider mechanisms which we used in our storybooks to show Jack climbing the beanstalk.

Mathematics first focused on 2D and 3D shapes. We then built on our knowledge of place value and looked at numbers up to 20, including breaking numbers 10 to 20 in to tens and ones, as well as counting one more and one less.

In Science, we explored everyday materials and their properties. We enjoyed looking around the classroom and outside to discover the variety of materials around us in school, using words such as ‘opaque’, ‘transparent’ and ‘waterproof’. We also carried out an experiment to find the best material for Little Red Riding Hood’s umbrella.

Finally, we hope you enjoyed watching our Christmas performance as much as we enjoyed practising it! The children all worked very hard to learn the songs and their lines, it was a great way to end the term. We hope that you all have a lovely break and we can’t wait to see everyone back in January!

Autumn 1

The Year 1 children have settled into their new classes very well and have enthusiastically taken part in all aspects of their learning. We have been extremely proud of their attitudes and efforts.

We have been very busy during our 'Marvellous Me' topic. We have created our own portraits in the style of Pablo Picasso after looking at his art work that had an emphasis on cubism. We all thoroughly enjoyed art week and learning about the very talented Japanese artist, Yayoi Kusama. The children have practised their counting and sorting skills in mathematics and have begun to calculate their own addition sentences by filling in part whole models. We have identified fact families and learnt that the answer to a calculation can sometimes be found at the start of a number sentence. Green and yellow classes have produced some lovely poems about their senses and have written instructions using bossy verbs on how to make their own sandwiches. We will finish off the half term by following our instructions and making our own healthy sandwiches. During science lessons, the children have learnt the different body parts and how important our senses are to find out about the world. We have carried out some experiments to find out answers to questions, such as "Are two eyes better than one?" In geography we have enjoyed learning about the different countries in the United Kingdom and looking at maps closer to home. The children have navigated maps and created their own aerial maps of the classroom using keys. They have learnt about and identified human and physical features on local maps of Guiseley, Yeadon and Ilkley. Through our history lessons we have learnt how to put events in chronological order on a time line and we were lucky to have a visit from a child's grandparent to answer our questions about what was life like for her at school when she was five. Both classes were excited to visit the computer suite and have all been taught to login using their own usernames and passwords. They can now navigate a word document to type, delete and edit text. Perhaps they could show you what they have learnt over the holidays.