Year 1 News 7.11.25

Happy Friday Team!

In our English lesson, we began writing our own versions of the Old Bear story. First, we listened carefully to the example text to get ideas and understand the style. Then, we planned our “Octopus Opening,” where we created three characters and thought about how they would fit into our stories. We also had to come up with a missing character and describe what they were like, including their personality and appearance. After planning how we would start each paragraph, we spent time writing up our Octopus Openings, editing as we went along. We made sure to check our work carefully, focusing on capital letters, punctuation, and spelling to make our writing the best it could be.

In our math lessons, we have been learning about balancing equations and understanding that the equals sign means "the same as." We explored how to find number equations that have the same answer to make them balanced. After that, we started working on counting on, learning that addition can be turned around, but it’s most effective to start with the larger number. We have been using tens frames and counters to help us count on, moving the counters to find the answer. We also used number tracks by placing the counters on the larger number and then counting on. When we looked at number lines, we talked about how we don’t count the start number, we only count the jumps. To help us remember, we said “zero” when we began counting our jumps.

In our PE lesson, we started our new topic of netball. We began by playing the traffic light game, where we had to remember to scan the spaces and stay safe as we moved around. We learned the best ways to catch a ball and discussed how different shaped balls require different types of catches. We discovered that we use a "W" shape with our hands to catch bigger balls. We spent some time practising our throwing and catching skills, thinking carefully about how hard to throw the ball and how to track it to catch it successfully. We then played a fun game called Robin Hood, where we had to steal treasure from the rich and give it back to the poor by throwing it to our teammates, but we had to be quick, because the grumpy sheriff could steal it back if we didn’t throw in time! We had lots of fun and can’t wait to see what we do in next week’s lesson.

In our RE lesson, we continued learning about Jesus’ world and how it compares to ours today. We read the Bible stories Jesus Heals a Paralyzed Man and Jesus Goes to the Temple. We explored how houses in Jesus’ time were very different from the ones we live in now. We also talked about what would be missing from our classroom if we didn’t have electricity and realised just how much we rely on it! We had the chance to make flat paper houses and arrange them to look like a village from Jesus’ time. It was a tricky task, but we really enjoyed making them while talking about the Bible stories. We also looked at how people travelled then and now. We shared our favourite places to travel and discussed how we would get there using planes, cars, and other transport. In Jesus’ world, people would have walked or ridden donkeys instead, such a big difference from today!

In our History lesson, we started our new topic on the history of toys. We looked at some of the toys that we play with today and sorted them into different groups. We discovered that modern toys are often made in factories, usually from plastic, and many are electrical. We also examined a range of toys and thought about what materials they are made from and why they are considered modern. It was very interesting, and we can’t wait to find out about the toys our parents played with next week!

In our Computing lesson, we started our new topic on making digital pictures. We used the app Paintz and explored all the different tools it offers. We enjoyed experimenting with the tools to see how they made different marks and effects on the screen. Everyone had a turn at drawing a picture of themselves, and we had lots of fun creating our own digital artwork!

In our DT lesson, we started our new topic on stable structures. We explored the idea of stability by balancing and thought about the question, What is a structure? We looked at photos of different structures and discovered that we will be making our own pencil pots. To do this, we will need to work out how to make them stable so they don’t topple over. We explored stability and instability using our bodies, getting into different positions to see which were more balanced. Our challenge was to balance beanbags on our heads for 20 seconds, it was tricky but great fun!

In our Music lesson, as part of our Let’s Start Singing unit, we focused on body and vocal warm-ups. We learned how important it is to think about our breathing and how to control it while singing. We also explored how we say words clearly and carefully. To help with this, we had a go at singing a tongue twister, which got faster and trickier as we went along! We then practised our class worship song and can’t wait to share it very soon.

I hope everyone has a lovely weekend.

Miss Willis