Year 1 Class Moles | Sunnymede Infant School

Welcome to Year 1 Class - Moles!

Class Teacher: Mrs Robinson

TA : Mrs Kakoullis - am. (The children call her Mrs K)

1:1 TA: Mrs Chapman (AM - Mon-Fri), Mrs Bevis (PM - Mon-Weds), Mrs Dignum (PM - Thurs/Fri) and Mrs Hall (PM - Mon)

Our topics for this year are:

Autumn 1 - Houses and Homes

Autumn 2 - The Dark

Spring 1 - Toys

Spring 2 - Growing

Summer 1 - The Sea

Summer 2 - Ourselves

PE for Spring 1 will be Wednesdays and Fridays. On Wednesday the children will be undertaking multi-skills with an external coach. On Friday they will be learning net and wall skills..

PE: Please ensure that your child comes to school in their PE kit on the days stated above. If your child is unable to tie laces they should wear velcro trainers. Earrings should be removed and long hair tied back.

Library: The children will visit the school Library on a Thursday. All children will be able to choose a book from the Library to take home and share. Please do ensure this book is kept in your child's bookbag.

Reading books: It is important that all children read to an adult on a daily basis and that a parent/adult signs their child's reading records to acknowledge that they have read to them. We kindly ask that reading books and records are stored in bookbags at all times to ensure that they can be changed regularly. Please do not put water bottles in book bags.

Homework: Please continue to support your child with their math's challenges. They can access additional reading material on Reading Eggs and maths activities on Maths Seeds. These can both be accessed on the Reading Eggs site and a login should have been provided in Early Years. Please speak to the class teacher if you need a login.

Homework and ways to help your child with their learning

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Spring 2 - Growing

Science - The children dissected a daffodil to help them learn about the parts of the plants and their function.

A special delivery - Today we had some eggs delivered in an incubator. We will be watching them hatch and talking about how they change and grow.

Art - The children have been learning about different elements in art such as line, tone, texture and pattern. They learnt what the letters on pencils mean and tried out different tones using them.

Design Technology - The children have been learning about mechanisms and learnt about levers, pivots, handles and wheel mechanisms. The children made slider and lever mechanisms then applied their knowledge in making a moving card.

Outdoor Learning - Today the children had an outdoor learning session with Billericay Forest School. Activities included balancing on a rope, using a hammock, using a mud kitchen, making dens and toasting marshmallows....to name but a few. The children had a wonderful day.

World Book Day - The children looked fantastic in the costumes for World Book Day

Computing - The children have been learning about digital writing and have practised adding capital letters and full stops. They have made changes to text using bold, underline and italics. In e-safety they learnt about using an avatar to keep themselves and their identity safe and made an avatar for Purple Mash..They learnt about safe emails and sent an email to a story tale character, applying the skills learnt earlier in the week to their digital writing.

Music - The children composed some music on the glockenspiels then represented it using a graphic score.

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Music - The children have been undertaking a block called 'How does music make the world a better place? They have learnt about the musical elements of tempo and dynamics, learnt new songs thinking about these elements, played the glockenspiels and followed and composed musical scores. Here the children are singing one of their songs.'

Spring 1 - Toys

Multicultural Arts Week - We have carried out a wealth of activities this week. We have written letters to a school in Africa, learnt African songs and played instruments, took part in a drumming workshop, used wax resist for African art and had an African themed non-uniform day too.

Computing - The children have been learning how to programme a moveable floor robot - a Beebot. They learnt about instructions. how to use an algorithm to move the Beebot and that a mistake needs debugging.

Science - The children have revisited materials and their properties. They have learnt new vocabulary to describe properties, such as transparent, opaque, malleable, and rigid. They completed an investigation to answer the question 'Which is the stretchiest toy,' and investigated which toys are absorbent/not absorbent. They have classified, predicted, measured, recorded and drawn conclusions as part of their work.

Design Technology - The children have been learning how to make paper toys. They have worked on their scissor skills and been reminded about safe scissor use and how to walk around with or pass scissors. They have shaped and joined materials to make their toys.

History - The children have begun to learn about toys. Today they looked at some toys from the past; thinking about if they are similar or different to toys today. They thought about the materials they were made from and how this might be different. They described the different toys, e.g. old, rusty, chipped, etc.

RE - In this unit on Christianity the children have learnt the Creaation Story. They looked at good/bad images of the world and considered if this is how the world should be treated. They wrote rules for looking after the envronment.

Autumn 2 - The Dark

Kung Fu: We ended the term with a visit from Wing Chun Kung Fu and all of the children took part in a 30 minute workshop. The children thoroughly enjoyed this!

Reindeer Run - Today the children took part in the sponsored Reindeer Run to raise money for St Luke's Hospice. An assembly was held beforehand to explain why we were doing this. We completed it in the hall because it was wet outside. The children all had great fun for a very worthwhile cause.

Christmas Pantomime: Aladdin - The children had a fantastic time at our school panto and a few were lucky enough to be involved.

Music - The children are learning about the musical elements of rhythm, pitch and pulse as they cover the Charanga unit 'Sparkle in the Sun.' The have been introduced to playing tuned percussion using the glockenspiels and have been playing notes G, A and B. trying to keep in time to the notes played on the board.

Performing using the glockenspiels using the notes in the pattern CDECDC.

Christmas Lunch - The children really enjoyed their Christmas lunch and looked very festive in their Christmas jumpers.

The children all enjoyed taking part in the school Christmas performance and were amazing at singing and acting on stage!

Computing - The children have started this block familiarising themselves with the layout of the keys by playing 'Falling Letters'. This will help them with the e-safety aspect of copywrite and learning to name their own work. They will then learn to use some tools on a drawing programme and will apply what they have learnt to a digital piece of artwork of Van Gogh's 'Starry Night.'

Art - In art the children learnt about the colour wheel and primary and secondary colours. They then learnt to colour mix the secondary colours. They discussed which colours were warm and which were cool.

Art - The children learnt about Vincent Van Gogh and looked at his painting 'Starry Night' to identify some features of his art. They then created mood boards, trying out some of his techniques before applying what they had learnt, first in a step-by-step tutorial using pastels and then in an independent painting.

Geography - The children have been learning about the weather and seasons. They learnt how the weather varies according to the seasons and thought about how to dress appropriately for different seasons/weather conditions. The learnt which months fall in which season.

Maths - Subtraction: The children have been learning about addition and subtraction. Here they are learning how to subtract using a number line to count back.

Winter Art Morning - The children took part in a morning of art today, learning how to use charcoal to to create lines, shade and depth. Following an introductory assembly where they learnt about cool colours and looked at example pictures, they then followed step by step instructions to create their own art work. It was a messy but fun morning and the children produced some great workl!

Science - The children have been learning about animal classification and grouped animals in different ways saying why they belonged to this group. They also learnt about carnivores, herbivores and omnivores,and nocturnal amimals..

A visit from the owls - Today the children had a visit from three owls from Barleylands to get our topic of 'The Dark' off to a flying start! They learnt lots of facts about the owls and were amazed at how quietly 'Majesty' the Barn Owl flew over their heads. 'Elvis' the Southern White Faced Owl was really cute and the children laughed at 'Chaos' the Burrowing Owl as he an around the hall floor.

Autumn 1 - Houses and Homes

Computing - The children have been using the Chrome Books and have been learning how to log on with a username and password. They have focused on basic skills of dragging and dropping and how to use simple tools on a drawing program. They also learnt SMART rules for staying safe on the internet and made a SMART bookmark.

Instruction Writing - The children are learning about writing instructions. They began by thinking about the purpose of instructions and when they might use them (e.g. in Lego packs, recipes, putting furniture together, etc). They then had to give/follow instructions to make a Multilink snake to understand that the instructions need to be in order, accurate and a little bit bossy (e.g. 'Put the yellow cube on the red cube.' - this helps them to understand imperative verbs).

DT - The children have used the text 'The Three Little Pigs' in several areas this half term (Science, DT, Geography and DT). In DT they have been learning how walls need to be strong, before commencing making a house later this week. Here they built walls and tested them using the hairdryer to represent the big bad wolf huffing and puffing.

DT (Continued) - The children have been learning about materials and how to join them. They then applied this knowledge when designing and building a house with a partner. Here are some pictures of them working.

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This is the song we performed for the Harvest Festival. It is called 'The Harvest Samba'.

Maths - The children have been learning to use part-part-whole models for addition. They have recorded their number sentences and realised that addition can be done in any order, e.g. 3+4=7 and 4+3=7.

Science - We have been learning about materials. The children have identified a variety of different materials and named them (e.g. wood, metal, glass, etc). They classified different materials (shown below) and have learnt about the properties of materials, hard, soft, rough, smooth, etc.They thought about why some materials are more suited to a particular purpose, such as glass for windows.

Science investigation - Oh no...there is a hole in the roof of the Little Pig's house. The children had to investigate different materials to see which would be most suitable to make a patch until it could be repaired.

Geography - We have been learning about our local area. We looked at a map and learnt what the symbols represent, how a key is used and about the compass points. We drew maps of our own.

PSHE - Being Me in my world: The children have begun by learning about their rights and responsibilities as learners in class. One of these is the right to feel safe. We talked about what makes them feel safe and where and how we could bring this into the classroom. We looked at the PSHE Charter (rules) and the children have signed their agreement of them.

RE - This week the children have focused on the meaning of friendship. They have discussed ways of demonstrating friendship and what makes their friends important to them. We read some Bible stories and discussed Jesus as a friend and thought about when Jesus may have found it hard to show friendship and how he may have been feeling.

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A special treat - On what was the hottest day off the year so far, the children were delighted to have a visit from the ice-cream van.

Junk Orchestra - Today we took part in 'Junk Orchestra' and made music using instruments made from repurposed materials. It's quite amazing what you can make with items that people classify as 'junk.' If you would like to make some instruments there are some links to videos under 'Special Events.'

Forest School - The children undertook a wide variety of different activities, from making dens and a mud kitchen to toasting and eating marsh mellows (vegan).They all had a fantastic time!

An Important Visitor

Today we had a very important visitor in Year 1. Michael Almond is an ambassador for the Queen and he came to share a book and to talk to us about the Queen and her Platinum Jubilee. He shared the book 'Little Elizabeth' with us and asked/answered questions about the Queen. Mr Almond looked very important in his uniform and had lots of medals which he told us about. We loved sharing the story and talking with him about the Queen. Mr Arnold later sent an email commending us on our behaviour and attentiveness.