Welcome to Kingfishers (Year 1)

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Mrs Purcell teaches the Kingfishers on a Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

Mrs Mountain teaches the Kingfishers on a Thursday and Friday.

  The Kingfishers have made a fabulous return back to school life. We love to learn through interactive play, using materials and talking with our class mates. In maths, we regularly use multi link, bead strings and counters. These help us to visualise numbers to work with them in context. Recently, we have started to use equipment to help show addition and subtraction calculations. In English, we regularly use phonics cards to help use remember any phonemes we have learnt and should be using. We also use alphabet mats to help us write capital and lower case letters. During phonics, magnetic letters and picture cards help us to spell words. Phonics includes reading through fun games and activities. We are still engaging in play activities to help with the transition from reception to keystage 1, but these games and play areas are designed to assist the learning that is already put in place during teacher led learning. A firm favourite of our class in Number Blocks and we often request to watch this whilst eating our lunch!

  Literacy

This half term, in literacy, we have been learning about stories with familiar settings and instructions. We began the year by reading the story ‘Dogger’ by Shirley Hughes. We thought about how the story started, how there was a problem and then what happened in the end. We thought about our own favourite toys that we like to play with and wrote our own story, where we lost our toy, just like Dave did in the story Dogger. We learnt how to use sequencing words to help order our ideas and began to use capitals letters and full stops for our sentences. 

During our instruction writing, we have learnt about what a set of instructions are by following some to make our very own slime! We thought again about our sequencing words and used these to help us order our steps. Next, we thought about how an equipment list and ingredients are helpful in instructions. We then made our very own bird feeder and wrote a set of instructions to follow when making it. We continued to practise our use of full stops and capital letters, and began to show how our phonics learning helped us to spell words.

This half term, we have been revising some of our phonic sounds from last year and thought about some new sounds that we would need to help with our reading and writing. We have learnt the sounds: th,ng,ai, ee, igh,oa, oo, ar, or,ur, ow. We have been working hard in reading, working our way through our phonic reader books. The children have made some fantastic progress in reading since starting back at school. Well done Kingfishers!

Maths

In Maths, the children have been exploring number in a variety of ways, using apparatus such as blocks, counters, bead-strings, tens and ones blocks, tens frames and numicon. The children have read and wrote numerals to 20 and beyond, comparing values of different numbers. They have found one more than and one less numbers, using apparatus and number-lines to explore this. Using apparatus and their own drawings, the children have been exploring addition and subtraction within 20 and beyond, also solving puzzles and problems involving addition and subtraction. They have been learning number bonds to 5 and 10, using rhymes to aid recall. The children will soon be investigating halves and quarters, using practical contexts and apparatus. Over the second half term, they will learn about a variety of 2D and 3D shapes. They will begin to group and share objects, counting in 2s, 5s and 10s.

Science

This half term, we have been learning about materials and their properties. Our learning has all been linked into our history topic of ‘Time Detectives’, where we have looked at olden day toys and objects. The children have learnt about different materials such as: glass, wood, metal, plastic and ceramic. We have been finding these materials in our school environment and then thinking about their properties. Were they soft, hard, see-though, waterproof, scratch proof? In our investigations, we have grouped and classified these materials and even buried different paper materials to see what would happen to them.

History

In History, we started our topic as archaeologists, digging up old items to explore. We have researched and investigated toys from different times. We have considered how our toys are similar and different to toys which our parents played with and toys which our grandparents played with. We explored and described a range of old wooden and tin toys, which was lots of fun! This has linked to our Science learning about materials.

PE: 

Through a variety of games and activities, Kingfishers have developed their ball control skills, considered how we keep fit and have worked as a team to create their own simple ball games. This linked into our Literacy learning, through the children giving clear instructions to others on how to play their games.

Religious Education

Over the past few weeks, we have been learning about Christianity and the beliefs that Christians have. We have learnt about what objects are special to Christians and why, who Christians believe God is and what role he fulfils, as well as how the stories of the bible help Christians to live their everyday lives.

Art

Over the last few weeks, we have begun our art topic on Joan Miro. We have learnt a little bit about who he was and how his early life has influenced his art. We have looked at his painting, ‘The Farm’, and then mimicked his style to draw our own houses. We have learnt how to use bold colour to bring our paintings to life and thought about how border lines add some texture to a drawing.

Music:

Music this term is about exploring beats and rhythms, including clapping rhythms and using percussion instruments, as well as using glockenspiels to follow and create music. In addition, the children have been listening to classical music, discussing how the music makes them feel and the stories might be linked to the music.