2024-2025

Autumn 2

Willow Phoenix Workshops

This week,we had Willow Phoenix come in to work with us on some willow weaving. The children thoroughly enjoyed contributing to our whole school willow duck. 

Maths- Missing number addition problems 

Today in maths, we have been learning how to solve missing number problems. We talked about our success criteria. 
1. Make our whole. 
2. Split it into our two parts- by taking the part we know first.

3. Count the other part and then record our answer in our equation. 
The children used the pipe cleaners and beads to represent this amazingly during Continuous Provision Time. 

Science - Materials Hunt

As part of our science unit on materials, we learnt about the names of Everyday Materials. We then hunted around our classroom and explored the material that objects in our classroom were made out of and recorded it into our STEM books.

PE - Gymnastics

In PE, we have been learning about gymnastics. In our PE lesson, we experimented using high or low movements along different equipment. 

Art - Our amazing spiral drawings inspired by Frederich Hundertwazzer

As part of our Art focus this half term, we explored the work of the artist Frederich Hundertwazzer. We talked about his work and how he used blocks of colour and curved lines. We had a go at producing our own artwork inspired by him. The children talked about the colours they were using and some even added some curved line patterns to their work. We also talked about the technique of producing a spiral. The children said:

” You go round and round” - Rashford Class pupil 

“ You start of with your fingers and then use your whole body” - Rashford Class pupil

” You can go slow and get quicker.” - Rashford Class pupil

Ancient House Museum Trip 

On Friday 8th November, Year 1 attended a trip to the Ancient House Museum to learn about toys from the past. The children were provided with the opportunity to explore toys from the past and discovered that most toys were wooden compared to now, where they are plastic. They also were provided with the opportunity to make some toys that were used in the past and engaged fantastically in some games from the past, ensuring that that they listened to the Ancient House staff carefully on how they needed to play the game. 

The children represented Drake fantastically and it was a fantastic opportunity for the start of our History learning on toys from the past.

Art - Spirals

This half term in Art, our unit is all about drawing spirals. In our first lesson, we focused on the technique of drawing a spiral and the importance of starting off with small hand movements all the way to larger body movements. We also talked about the importance of drawing carefully to maintain the spiral shape rather than large scribbles. We built some whole class spiral drawings in response to the music.

Autumn 1

English - Instructions

Today we started our new unit in English on instructions. We started off by talking about what instructions are and how they help us to be able to do something or understand what we need to do. We started off with a COLD task, where we had to give our teacher’s instructions on how to make a jam sandwich. Whilst we came up with some good ideas,  after Miss Bush and Mrs Goff followed our instructions we soon noticed that we needed to more clear and detailed on the instructions we gave. 
The children have already started coming up with some resolutions, and with some activities throughout the week to help us understand more about instructions , they are looking forward to trying the activity again and seeing the results. 

Dissecting flowers into their parts 

Today in Rashford Class, one of our independent challenges was to dissect some flowers into their different parts. The children were able to use the tweezers to pull the flowers into the separate parts and then labelled them using our knowledge of the parts of a plant. 

Rashford Orienteering at Redcastle School

On Thursday 3rd October, Rashford Class visited Redcastle School in Thetford to take part in a KS1 cluster orienteering session. The children enjoyed running and walking around the field to find number cards in order and even impressed us with their responses to the questions on the cards. It nicely tied in with our Geography learning this term on maps as the children had to use a map of the school to identify where the cards were. The children demonstrated fantastic collaborative working in their teams. 

DT - Exploring the pumpkin 

In our DT session we enjoyed listening to story about pumpkin soup as part of our focus on soup making. We then had a go at exploring a pumpkin describing it using our 5 senses. 

Here is some pupil voice that we collected during our session: 

" It's slimy"

" There's some seeds" 

" It's quiet and the seeds shake a little" 

"Sticky and cold" 

" Lots of seeds and it's orange" 

" It's sloppy"

" It is a fruit because it has seeds in it"

" You take the seed out the pumpkin, you can put in the soil and give it water and the sun and then it might grow into lots of more pumpkins." 

Building our freeze frames

In our English lesson, we worked in small groups to build a freeze frame to represent the key events of the Enormous Turnip. We were given a card and had to work as a group to work out how we would act out the story and then as soon as our teachers said “ Freeze!”  we had to hold into our positions. We did an amazing job! 

English

Our Talk for Writing text for this half term is ‘The Enormous Turnip’. The children enjoyed taking part in our ‘hook’ activity where they found a mysterious container in our outdoor area. Inside was something buried in soil with a rope attached. Despite the efforts of the Year 1 adults, and a lot of encouragement from the children, we were unable to pull the mystery item from the container. The children then challenged themselves to make predictions about what could be buried.

Maths

This half term so far in maths we have been learning about numbers to 10. This includes place value of numbers to 10, writing numbers in words and counting across 10 forwards and backwards. The children have worked fantastically hard on their independent challenges in provision and have used the IPads to take pictures of the fantastic maths learning they have been doing so far this term. 

DT - Fruit and Vegetables 

For our DT project this half term, we are going to be making vegetable soup. In our first session, we learnt about fruit and vegetables. We had a go at classifying fruit and vegetables and discussed the differences between the two. We had a fun time doing food tasting. The children held fantastic discussions using vocabulary to describe texture, smell and taste.

Values Day - Hope

Our first day back was Values Day. This half term our value is “ Hope”. We started off by discussing our hopes and then created some fantastic hope clouds by writing a sentence about our hopes and then decorating the clouds with tissue paper. We talked about how our class inspirational person shows hope. We also enjoyed acting out the Parable of the mustard seed in RE using props and the hopes for the tiny seed to grow into a large mustard bush.

High Lodge Trip- Wednesday 4th September 2024

On Wednesday 4th September, Year 1 enjoyed our whole school trip to High Lodge. We had a fun packed day with a wide range of activities including the Gruffalo Trail, Music Trail, Wild Play Park, stories and plant observations.