Year 1
Rights Respecting Articles in Child Friendly Language
Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.
- Nelson Mandela
At Penwortham, we are dedicated to making your child's transition into Year 1 as easy and happy as possible. In Year 1, children move away from child initiated, play-based learning and are taught from the National Curriculum. The timetable and structure of the day is different to Reception as discrete subjects such as Science, History and Geography are introduced. We have developed a transition program for your child to support their adjustment to Year 1.
In English, we are practicing writing simple sentences using capital letters, full stops and finger spaces correctly. We will be learning about how to add adjectives to make our sentences more interesting. We will be using various writing mediums such as retelling a story, non-chronological reports, poetry and writing instructions.
In Maths, we will be adding and subtracting numbers within twenty. There is a heavy focus on number bonds to 10 and counting forwards and backwards.
Each half term we will be alternating between Geography and History. In Science we will be practicing various scientific skills such as classifying, observing, experimenting and predicting. Each half term we will be alternating between DT and Art.
In Wellbeing, we are focusing on Being Me in my World, Celebrating Differences, Dreams and Goals, Healthy Me, Relationships and Changing Me. Each half term we will have an RE Day and an Online Safety Afternoon.
Meet the team
Miss Andrews - Year Lead
Miss Tester - Class Teacher
Mrs Khan - Class Teacher
Support Staff - Ms Attia and Ms Seher
Autumn Newsletters
Spring Newsletters
Summer Newsletters
What we do and when
Curriculum maps will be uploaded each half term.
Our learning
Autumn Term
In Year 1 the children move away from a free choice play based curriculum and are taught from the National Curriculum. To ease our children into the new academic year, we will have an extended transition period within Year 1 during the first half of the Autumn term. We have set up our classrooms to look and feel like the reception classrooms which will allow the children free choice alongside the teaching of the Year 1 curriculum.
We are enjoying free choice and play based learning as well as learning to write in our new books this half term.
As part of our diverse curriculum we focused on Ella Fitzgerald for Black History Month. We learnt about her life and how she used our core values of courage and resilience to overcome obstacles and succeed. We created art work inspired by her quote, "It isn't where you came from, but where you are going that counts."
In science we are learning about labelling basic parts of the human body.
In computing we explored line and shape on paintz.app to create digital pictures.
In history we went on a walk around our local area and compared photographs of the past and present of streets surrounding our school.
We answered the question “How has our local area changed over time? and visited Graveney School where we learnt some interesting facts about Furzedown House. We sat in the orangery where the Seely family used to grow oranges and pineapples. We enjoyed seeing the large doors at the front of the house. Sir Charles Seely had larger doors installed because he liked to ride his horse all the way to the main staircase.
Previously...
We celebrated International Mother Language day and loved sharing our culture with our friends. Year 1 looked at the Spanish language. We invited Ms Diaz to read to us the bi-lingual book, “We laugh alike”. The book is about friendship and how small gestures can make someone who is new to school feel welcome. Like the children in the story who learnt to count to 12 in Spanish. Our Spanish speaking children taught us how to count to 12 in Spanish
In RE we learnt about Islam. It was lovely that both our staff and pupils could share with us their experiences of Islamic celebrations. On Wednesday, we had Imam Zahir visit us at school to teach us about Ramadan and the festival of Eid which was then followed by our Eid Bazaar.
As part of our learning in science we had a wonderful time at an allotment, finding different plants we have learnt about during this term such as leeks, potatoes, strawberries, daffodils, tulips and brussels sprouts. We had the opportunity to plant a sunflower seed and we will observe it grow over time.
In maths we learnt how to subtract this half term. We first learnt to subtract by crossing out a given amount as well as finding the difference. We also learnt to read a word problem and write the correct subtraction equation.
We learnt about the Great Fire of London in history. As an introduction to the topic we used the VR headsets to explore what London was like in the past. We noticed how narrow the streets were and how quickly the fire spread.
We created a timeline using pictures of London in the past and present to help us understand the past and present. We also discussed how people in 1666 put out the fire and acted out a few of the scenes. We also learnt about firefighters through the ages and we discussed how firefighting has changed and improved over the centuries.
This half term we have learnt about the changes in the different seasons. We studied the cycle of the seasons and learnt about weather patterns. We watched time lapse videos of the different seasons and we were amazed at the changes to the seasons over time. We enjoyed a visit to our Wellbeing Garden whereby we looked for signs of winter.
We have linked the two whole school books to our English and wellbeing lessons. We have discussed where we enjoy reading and which are our favourite books. We have been learning the core values of our school and this week we focused on aspiration. We shared what our hopes for the school year are. Our main target this term will be to focus on writing sentences with capital letters and full stops.
At our art table we created a paint splat and just like the character Vashti in “The Dot” we used our creativity to design our own image from our paint splat. We then wrote about what we had created. Well done to the Year 1 children for the imaginative pictures and writing.
How can you help at home?
Please read with your child 5 times a week. Children will take home a phonics reading book and a class book. Please record any reading at home in your child’s reading diary. Reading books will be changed on Mondays and Thursdays.
Useful websites:
- ICT Games - Fun and exciting maths and literacy games available.
- BBC Maths - A BBC website with all maths topics covered.
- Mad 4 Maths - Fun maths games for children and advice section for parents - good for higher ability KS1 children and times tables practice!
- Maths Zone
- BBC Literacy
Join our community
Do you have skills, knowledge and have lived experiences that could be beneficial to our pupils at Penwortham? For example, you may be a practising Buddhist or be of the Windrush generation. Your line of work may involve promoting sustainable living (for example) or you may have links to people who would be happy to run professional development sessions for members of Penwortham Primary School.
If so, please sign up to the Penwortham community!
Thank you