Geography – Where in the world am I?
We are geographers.
Over the coming weeks, the children will develop their knowledge of location when locating and identifying the four countries that make up the UK and their capital cities. They also learn which seas surround the UK.
The class will be exploring both human and physical features in their own locality using maps, photographs and fieldwork.
To begin with, we used Google Earth to explore our continent, country, city and town. The children were amazed as we zoomed into planet Earth gradually and finally arrived at our school gates.
Help at home by discussing these images with your child. Can they recall which country, city and town they live in?
Next, the children thought about the size of each locality.
The continent is very big! – Woody
Wetherby looks a lot smaller than Europe! – Daisy
Using concentric circles the class were able to compare the sizes of each location giving them a sense of scale.
Below is the geographical vocabulary that the children will be learning throughout this topic.
atlas: a collection of maps, usually in a book
• city: a large town
• capital city: a city where the government of a country is located
• compass: a tool for finding direction
• locality: an area or neighbourhood
• landmark: an object or feature of a locality that has importance and can be used to help you find your way
• physical geography: physical geography looks at the natural things in our environment
• human geography: human geography looks at changes in the environment by humans
• fieldwork: observing and collecting data in a locality
• map: a drawing of a place, usually from above
• map key: a little box on a map which explains what the
different lines and symbols on a map mean
Important days and dates/ Help at home
Important days and dates
PE – Tuesday and Friday
Spelling test – Friday
Library – Friday (books returned each Thursday)
Water bottles
These should be brought to school daily and they will be brought home every day for refreshing and cleaning.
Homework/Spellings
Whole school homework is set every Friday (along with new spellings). Homework and spellings can also be accessed from the website.
Reading
In Year 1, we will continue using e-books for our reading practice. Your child will bring home a log-in for the e-book website. Please log out of last year’s account and log in with the new account. This will ensure any new books are in the account.
Numbots
We will begin to use Numbots in Year 1. Your child has been sent home with all the necessary log in details.
What is Numbots? 
NumBots is all about every child achieving the “triple win” of understanding, recall and fluency in mental addition and subtraction, so that they move from counting to calculating. NumBots focuses on automatic recall of number facts as well as developing conceptual understanding.
Certificates will be awarded every Friday for children who complete the different stages.
Help at home
For spelling practice, reading and Numbots, little and often (10/15 minutes a day) is recommended.
Uniform
Please do check the uniform policy https://www.stjameswetherby.leeds.sch.uk/find-out/policies/ to ensure your child is wearing the correct items including for PE days. Earrings must be removed on PE days.
Finally, please do ask if there are any queries and keep checking back on class news to find out more about your child’s learning!
The adults in Year 1 are:
Mrs Freeman – Class Teacher (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday)
Miss Gledhill – Class Teacher (Thursday)
Mrs Cairnes – Teaching Assistant
Miss Rigley – Teaching Assistant
The Human Body
This half term, we have started our science learning. We are going to be finding out more about these parts of the human body .
For our first lesson we made sure we were certain what a human is. We know that we are animals just like our pets. Unlike our pets, we are humans!
We played Simon Says to hep us find parts of our body and then looked closely at out feet. After comparing our feet to our partners, we thought about if the oldest children have the longest feet.
To hep us think about this, we took a drawing of our foot and put them in order of our ages.
What a great start we’ve had!
We have been really impressed with how the Year 1 children have settled into their new classroom. Changes can be tricky to manage and we are always here to help if your child struggles to cope with this. Reception Class to Year 1 is a big leap but we do find that the children adjust well to the new staff, routines and environments.
We have started to read our class novel ‘Flat Stanley‘ and this inspired us to create a flat version of ourselves. Check out some flat children below! 
Help at home
Ask your child to retell the first part of the story and discuss the main character.
We are ready….
We hope you have all enjoyed the summer break and that the children are looking forward to returning to school. The classroom has been refreshed and is ready for the children to begin their Year One learning.
Below is the timetable for the first half term (apologies for the blurriness). It may help to look at this with your child as it may help to ease any anxieties concerning the day to day routine.
Here are a few things to note:
- Mrs Freeman – class teacher – Mon, Tues, Wed and Fri
- Miss Gledhill – class teacher – Thursday
- Miss Cairnes and Miss Rigley – Teaching assistants
- PE – Tuesday and Friday mornings
- Library – Friday
Please ensure your child brings a water bottle to school every day and healthy snacks for playtime (if required).
During PE, the children are not permitted to wear earrings. Please can you ensure these have been removed prior to attending school on PE days.
The office will issue a milk list so that we are aware who can have it and also a medication update will be given to the Year 1 staff.
Homework and spellings will go home every Friday and the children will be tested on their spellings the following Friday.
The children will read daily in school and we encourage you to read with your child daily at home.
If you have any concerns or questions please either catch us at home time or make an appointment via the school office.
We look forward to welcoming you and your child into Year 1 on Tuesday 5th September at 8.45am.
Sports Day!
A massive thank you to everyone who came and supported yesterday at Sports Day.
We kicked off in the morning with EYFS and then carried on with years 1-6 in the afternoon.
A huge well done to all the children who took part and showed courage, resilience and lots of determination. The signs made in the classes looked fantastic as well.
Congratulations to the blue team who scored the highest amount of points!!!
L & L: Health week
This week, we listened to #Goldilocks A Hashtag Cautionary Tale (This is a YouTube link. Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog along the play bar and turn off autoplay – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip after clip). After listening to the story we talked about how she wanted to get 50,000 likes but that didn’t mean she had 50.000 friends and how she shared pictures without consent of her family and the impact that might have had on them. We shared our ideas on some advice we would give to Goldilocks to aim for a healthy balance between her online and offline activity.
Help at home: listen to the story again with your child. Can they remember any of the key points discussed in class?
- Never take and share photographs without consent/permission.
- Don’t share photographs with strangers.
- It’s not important to get 50,000 likes by people you don’t know
- Once you post online, it can never really be deleted.
- Don’t spend all day on your phone, spend time with your family and friends.
Personal Best Challenge
As part of our health and fitness week, we have been completing some personal best challenges and recording our score. Each day we’ve been trying to improve our score.
We have done a 20 second speed bounce and a stork balance.
“Yesterday I did the stork balance for 7 seconds and today I got 18 seconds,” said Carter.
“Today I did 56 jumps and yesterday I got 36,” said Florence.
Well done Year 1 on working hard to improve your scores!
Transition Morning
Year 1 had a lovely time in their new Year 2 classroom. They had a creative morning designing their name label for their desk tray and designing a birthday card for a friend for our birthday display for next year.
Well done Year 1!
DT: Making baby bears chair
Over the half term, we have been looking at what creates a stable structure. We found that a stable structure has a wide base, low height and a flat surface. First we tested 3 different shapes (cuboid, triangular prism and a cylinder). We found that the cylinder was the most stable and could hold the most weight. This is because it doesn’t have any corners. The children were set a challenge to plan and design a chair for Baby Bear from the story Goldilocks and the three bears.
Next, we made a plan by designing our chair thinking carefully about the chairs for baby bear will look like. How many legs will it have? What shape will the seat be? What will the back look like? What materials/resources will you need?
When we had made our chairs, we tested the stability by placing different weighted bears onto the chairs.
Well done Year 1 and 2. You worked well together to create your own chairs for baby bear.
Help at home:
What 3 things make a stable structure?
Would you do anything differently if you were to make the chair again?