Term 1 - What is it like where we live?

Hello, and welcome to the first term in Year 1. We hope you all had a fantastic summer holiday and got plenty of family time. The adults in the Owl Class are very excited to get to know everyone. We have lots of fun and engaging learning opportunities planned for this term so keep a look out on our class page to see what we have been getting up to. 

Our first Enquiry this year has a Geography driver and we will be learning all about our school and local area. We will be learning to read and use maps as well as record a simple journey. In our Science lessons we will be observing and learning about the trees, flowers and plants that grow in our area, as well as growing our own plants. 

Our newsletter below also provides an outline of all our subjects and and a brief description of what we will be covering this term. 

For each Enquiry your child will be sent home an Enquiry mat with key vocabulary and concepts related to that terms Enquiry. Please take some time to look at these with your child to help them to embed and support their learning. This terms Enquiry mat is below.

Enquiry

In our enquiry this term we are learning about our local area. We will learn what is near and far to us, where we visit often and rarely and learn to read and create our own maps. 
 

In our enquiry lesson today we discussed where our local area is and located it on a UK map. We then discussed the types of places we go to often and rarely. We thought about our journey to school and what human and physical features we might see such as a tree, house, road, park etc. 
 

In today’s enquiry we discussed the places that are near and far to us. We then applied this to thinking which places we go to often that are near and far to us.
 

Today we learnt that maps help us find places and see what is near and far. We used a map of our classroom to help us locate and place objects such as numbered toys, our seat and the route from our seat to the door. We applied our learning to a problem solving activity where we needed to use our original classroom map and our knowledge of our classroom to find 5 items that was wrong or missing on a second map. 
 

Maths

In Maths this week we have been learning about greater than, less than and equal to. We have been using this vocabulary to compare groups of objects and numbers and have just started to apply this to helping us order numbers and objects from smallest to greatest and greatest to smallest. 
 

English 

In English this week we have been focusing on the beginning of our story ‘The town mouse and country mouse’. We first acted out the beginning with a group, we then sequence it and orally retold it, used our phonics to build a sentence and finally we had a go at writing it.  

PE - Football 

In our PE lessons with Elite we have been learning the importance on keeping the ball close to our feet and dribbling with accuracy. 
 

PE-  Basket ball. 
In basketball, we have been learning the importance of bouncing the ball to dribble and how if we pass the ball accurately we can stop the defenders and the other team from getting the ball. 
 

PSHE

In our PSHE lessons this term we are learning all about ourselves and the relationships we have. This will include rules to keep us safe, feelings and adults we can talk to. 
 

In our PSHE lesson today we discussed the different feelings we might feel in different places, how our bodies might look showing each feeling and the adults we can talk to about our feelings.

Computing

This term in computing we are learning to programme a robot. First we will learn how to give precise instructions and make predictions where the robot will go. 
 

Today’s lesson we were giving instructions (forward, backwards, turn left and turn right) to our partner in order to find treasure. We then discussed how we might record our instructions and had a go ourselves. 
  

Art

This term in art we are studying the artist Mark Quinn. We will learn the skills we need to create our own clay sculptures and then apply this when making our own. 
 

In our first art lesson we learnt about our new artist and analysed some of his work. 

We then sorted images of Mark Quinn’s artwork into artwork we liked and artwork we didn’t like.