Year 1 News 26.9.25

Happy Friday Team!

In our English lessons, we have been helping Ruby come up with new rules for her rule book. Together, we thought about how she could become a kind dragon. We also wrote letters to Goose, Pegasus and the Frog Prince to tell them about how Ruby has changed, and how she will be giving back all the treasure and sharing it with others. On Friday morning, we spent time writing up our letters in our neatest handwriting for our presentation books. We really enjoyed looking back at the work we had done in Reception and seeing how much we have improved.

In our maths lessons, we have been learning about blank number lines and thinking carefully about where each number needs to go. We discovered that a number line to 10 can be folded in half to find 5, and we explored which numbers are greater than or less than 5. We practised using the greater than and less than symbols, remembering that the open side of the symbol always faces the larger number. To help us, we learnt a trick: we put two dots on top of each other at the greater number, one dot at the smaller number, and then joined them together to make the symbol. We also worked on number bonds to 4 and 5, using a very greedy cup that liked to eat our counters! We had to work out how many counters the cup had eaten, and then we tried the same game using our hands to hide counters and work out how many were missing.

In our RE lesson, we continued learning about Harvest and thought about how harvest can be different in other countries. We discussed important questions, such as why some people do not have enough food, what causes a harvest to fail, what we can do to help those who have had a difficult harvest, and why it is important to help them. We also looked at a Bible quote where Jesus taught us to love one another: "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." (John 13:34-35). We then thought about how we can show love and kindness by sharing, and decorated the quote with pictures to represent these ideas.

In our Heartsmart lesson, we learnt about keeping our hearts happy. We looked at the Bible verse from Luke 6:45: "A good person has good things saved up in his heart. And so he brings good things out of his heart. But an evil person has evil things saved up in his heart. So he brings out bad things. A person speaks the things that are in his heart." We talked about how what goes in must come out, so we want to fill our hearts with happy and positive thoughts. We thought about how sad things can sometimes make our hearts feel a bit funny, but caring for others, smiling, and giving hugs can help us to keep our hearts happy.

In our Geography lesson, we recapped all the continents and labelled our class globe with the seven continents. We then looked more closely at Antarctica and how the seasons change it. We discovered that in the summer the sun never sets, which is called the midnight sun, and in the winter the sun never rises, so it stays dark all the time. To show what we had learnt, we created our own true and false questions about Antarctica, and we are planning to test Year 2 with our quiz!

In our PE lesson on Monday, we had a fun-packed session playing lots of different games. We started with Stuck in the Mud, where we had to think carefully about our speed and how to change direction quickly by pushing off one foot to avoid being caught. Next, we played Crazy Corner, earning points by being fast, and then Cops and Robbers, which helped us practise moving around the space. Everyone worked really hard and had lots of fun. With Coach Beth, we also did plenty of running games before finishing our session with a lively game of Pizza Party!

In our Music lesson this week, we listened to a song called Dancing Dinosaurs. We found the beat by imagining how dinosaurs might have moved. Some of us stomped our feet, while others used our arms to move in time with the music. Working in partners, we assessed each other's movements and gave feedback about whether we were finding and moving to the beat correctly.

In our Computing lesson, we continued practising on the laptops. We began by reminding ourselves how to use the trackpad, which we learnt last week, and then moved on to using the keyboard. Everyone created a text box and typed their name, carefully finding the right keys and buttons on the keyboard. After that, we used the trackpad to draw a picture of ourselves next to our names.

In our Art lesson, we began planning our own creativity medals. We drew our designs and then coloured them in, thinking carefully about the resources we have in school and how we can use them. We are really excited and cannot wait to start making our medals next Tuesday!

In our Science lesson, we revisited the materials we had learnt about last week. We looked at different objects and discussed what materials they were made from. Then, we went on a hunt around the school, examining objects and talking about the materials they were made of.

In our Courageous Advocacy lesson, we talked about how small actions can make a big difference and explored different ways to stand up for fairness, kindness, and care for those around us. We have all become Change Makers! This term, we are focusing on caring for our class and our local community. We discussed Harvest and how not all harvests are successful, which led us to decide on a collection for the local food bank. To get started, we began decorating shoeboxes to collect items, and we also looked into what our local food bank needs most at the moment. We are all very excited to begin our collection and to make a positive difference in our community.

I hope everyone has a lovely weekend!

Miss Willis