Welcome to Year 1!

2021- 22

We are so excited for the coming year.

The class teachers in year 1 will be Mrs Carrie and Mrs Cha.

The TA’s working with you, will be Mrs Edwards and Mrs Richards.

It will be a time of preparation in many different ways. Hopefully, there will be little disruption and we can get on and enjoy the year together.

Year 1 can seem daunting at first as children make the transition from the Early Years Foundation Stage to the National Curriculum. Initially, our focus is to ensure children feel safe and secure in their new learning environment and can confidently recognise which 5 adults they can approach if they feel worried. Whilst this remains a focus, once established we can then get to know the children and build relationships through play and informal tasks. This then enables us to plan for the children effectively by maximising opportunity the children to develop and learn new skills.

Throughout the year, we develop the children’s phonetic knowledge and teach the children how to apply these skills to reading and writing, enabling the children to develop fundamental life skills.

We know that we need to learn more about being independent and how to look after our world. To prepare for this we have lots of jobs and responsibilities within the classroom and around school, giving the children an opportunity to act as a role model to their peers. As always, positive behaviour is always noticed and rewarded with house points.

We will also be preparing for our Phonics Screening tests which will take place in the Summer term.

We know this year is going to be brilliant!

Vocations Day

Sunday 25th April was Vocations Sunday. We marked the occasion by dressing up as what we want to be when we are older as a way of thinking about what God is calling us to be.

ONLONE PHONICS Resources for pupils/ parents Reception and Year One from Monday 27^th April.

We hope that parents and pupils find this useful.

As part of our Art topic, Narratives in Art, Year 1 went to Barber Institute located in the University of Birmingham. First we had a guided tour in the gallery. Among lots of old paintings, we looked at paintings and sculptures telling us interesting stories. After that, we had an art workshop responding to the theme which we explored in the gallery. We made our own armours using golden and silver papers and colouring pencils.

As part of our topic, ‘Bright lights and big city’, we went to Barber Institute located in our local area, Birmingham. First we had a guided tour in the gallery. Among lots of old paintings, we looked at some landscapes and seascapes learning special words such as foreground, middle ground and background. After that we had an art workshop responding to the theme which we explored in the gallery. We made our own cityscapes using colour paints and some different kinds of paper.

What a fabulous day had by all. We looked at homes from times gone by, open fires, chamber pots, lots of young children sleeping in one small bed, babies sleeping in a drawer and an OUTSIDE toilet!  Children had horrible jobs to do like climbing inside bakery ovens in order to clean them!

We went to the cinema and watched a black and white silent movie. We saw the barges on the canal moving cargo to local towns.

We saw trams, horse and carriages, vintage cars and motorbikes and a big red bus.

Our favourite shop was the Victorian sweet shop. However we didn’t think that adding beetle blood, arsenic and coal dust as a sweet colouring was a very good idea.

We have decided that we are glad to be children NOW! 

Year 1 have had great fun learning about the artist, William Morris.  Today they created their own patterns in the style of Morris using a variety of printing stamps. Take a closer look at some of their wonderful creations.

One Snowy Night

As part of our English focus this term, we have been reading ‘One Snowy Night’ by Nick Butterworth.

This week we concentrated on the characters and how they were feeling in the story. In working groups we acted out different scenes from the story and tried to show how each of the characters was feeling. We had a lot of fun making up our story scenes.

Year 1 Maths

As the children settle into Year 1, they work enthusiastically to tackle problems with objects and numbers and the ‘Greater Than & Less Than’ symbols.

Year 1

Bright Lights, Big City

As we begin our topic this week we looked at globes and maps to locate the British Isles and were amazed to find how small it was compared to other places in the world that some of us have visited. Gilbert has travelled from Great Britain to Texas in America!  Isabel has travelled from GB to India to visit some of her family, and many of us have been to Spain and Italy.