Daily Poem
This week, we’ve enjoyed reading our daily poem I swept the dog by Ken Nesbitt.
Each week, we have a new poem that we read together each day. Reading poetry is a wonderful activity that offers a ton of benefits—both educational and emotional, such as:
- language development
- listening and comprehension skills
- imagination and creativity
- emotional expression
- bonding time
- cultural awareness and empathy.
Help at home: Take some time to enjoy our weekly poem together as part of your child’s homework routine. Do you have any favorite poems you love reading at home? We’d love to hear them—feel free to bring them in and share with the class!
History Topic – Heroes
We’ve begun our exciting new History topic: Heroes. Over the next five weeks, we’ll be learning about two inspirational figures: Nelson Mandela and Leonora Cohen.
To kick things off, we explored the big question:
What is a hero?
Here are some of the lovely ideas the children shared:
“Somebody who’s done something very good.”
“Somebody who helps or saves people.”
“Someone who protects you from danger.”
We also discussed the qualities of a hero and how these connect to our school rules and Christian values. These included:
empathy, passion, caring, kindness, honesty, bravery, respect, helpfulness
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be using and exploring this vocabulary in class.
Help at home: Look at the key vocabulary together to support your child’s understanding.
Welcome back!
We hope you all had a wonderful Easter break. The children have returned full of energy and enthusiasm and they’ve made a fantastic start to the summer term!
Phonics
We’ve now learnt all of the Phase 5 sounds, so we’ll be revisiting them to prepare for the upcoming Phonics Screening Check in early June. We’ll be practising reading both real and ‘alien’ (nonsense) words to build confidence and fluency. To help us, we always use our decoding mantra:
Maths
In Maths, we’re continuing to work on counting forwards and backwards to 50. We’re using number lines and a 50 grid to help us find:
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1 more and 1 less
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10 more and 10 less
These are key skills that help build number sense and mental maths fluency.
Help at home:
Phonics: play phonics games and practise reading real and alien words together.
Maths: Use the 50 grid to practise counting forwards and backwards. Try finding 1 more/less or 10 more/less from different numbers.
Planting Sunflowers and Writing a Recount
This week, Year One completed an amazing independent write all about their science learning! The children wrote a recount about planting their very own sunflower seeds and showed off what they’ve learned about the life cycle of a plant. They carefully planted their seeds and made thoughtful predictions about how much they would grow over the Easter break. They also explored what plants need to grow healthy and strong – like sunlight, water, and care.
We are so impressed with how fantastic their writing has become. The children are becoming much more independent and confident, especially when using verbs and adjectives to make their writing exciting and detailed.
I’m looking forward to investigating how much our sunflower seeds have grown over the Easter break and comparing this to our predictions!
What a fantastic end to the Spring term – thank you Year One!
Help at home idea: Encourage your child to keep a plant diary or describe what they see in the garden using adjectives and verbs!
Grammar in Year One – Verbs and Tenses
This week, Year One has been learning about verbs and how they change with tense. We found out that adding ‘-ed’ turns some verbs into the past tense. We talked about how not all verbs follow this rule and had fun exploring tricky examples.
We have also been spotting verbs in sentences from our current class novel, How to Wash a Woolly Mammoth by Michelle Robinson.
We also played Verb Charades, acting out actions while friends guessed the verb. It was a fun way to learn and helped us remember how verbs work.
Help at Home
- Verb Hunt: Spot action words in daily life. Are they past or present?
- Story Time: Change story verbs to past or present.
- Charades: Act out verbs and guess the action.
Sunshine and Rugby!
This week in PE, Year One had a fantastic time outside in the sunshine, practising their rugby skills! The children have been working on their dodging, throwing and catching. All skills that will help them in many different sports!
They also focused on how to hold the ball correctly and the importance of a wide stance when trying to block an opponent. Everyone showed great determination and teamwork—well done Year One!
Circle Time
During circle time, we reflected on our personal experiences of perseverance—those moments when we kept going even when things felt difficult. We thought about times when we were learning something new and how it made us feel. As we shared our experiences with our peers, we realised that many of us had similar emotions.
- “I felt shy and nervous when I had to perform on stage but afterward, I was really proud of myself because I did it!”
- “Moving up to Stage 5 in swimming was scary because the big pool was so deep. But I kept trying and in the end, I felt really happy with myself.”
- “At the park, I wanted to go down the big slide but I needed some help from my grown-up. I felt excited but also a little nervous.”
- “When I first started learning to read in Reception I felt frustrated but I kept going and now I love reading!”
We then explored our Christian values and discussed how the emotions we experience when learning something new link to perseverance and courage.
Help at home: Talk about a time when you learned something new. How did it make you feel?
Why is Easter important to Christians?
This term, Year One have been learning about the Easter story and why it is so important to Christians. They explored the events of Holy Week, discussing why Good Friday is called ‘good’ despite something sad happening.
The Last Supper
Good Friday
Easter Sunday
Cian – “I think that Christian’s call it Good Friday because Jesus forgave those who punished him.”
Isaac – “He showed courage because he died for us.”
Elsie – “Jesus showed compassion because he loved all of his friends.”
Through freeze frames, the children acted out key moments. Thinking about the emotions of those involved. They also linked Easter to our Christian values of perseverance, forgiveness and compassion, reflecting on how they show these in their own lives.
Maths in Year 1
Wow! In Year 1 we’ve been diving into some fantastic Maths! We’ve been using our number bond facts to master subtraction with confidence. Take a look at our amazing learning below!
Help at home: practise your number bonds within ten. Find all the ways of making numbers 1 to 10.
e.g. Here are all the ways we can make 7 by adding two parts:
1 + 6 = 7 6 + 1 = 7
2 + 5 = 7 5 + 2 = 7
3 + 4 = 7 4 + 3 = 7
World Book Day in Year 1!
Year One had a fantastic time celebrating World Book Day!
We started with a Love of Reading assembly, where we shared The Storm Whale by Benji Davies and performed our daily poem, There’s a Bear in There by Michael Rosen. The children were also so proud to present their own wonderful versions of The Storm Whale!
Next, we were lucky enough to listen to a seminar by Laura Baker, the author of The Full Stop that Got Away. The children loved hearing about how stories come to life and were inspired by her journey as a writer.
We then spent time in our very own reading café, exploring and sharing a variety of books with our friends. It was wonderful to see the children so engaged and excited about reading.
To finish the day, we designed front covers for the stories we wrote last half-term, using our imaginations to bring our ideas to life. What a fabulous day celebrating our love of books and stories!
Help at home:
- Read together every day and talk about the story.
- Ask your child to predict what might happen next in a book.
- Encourage them to create their own stories and illustrations.
- Visit the local library to discover new and exciting books!