Welcome to Life at KPS for Year 1

Miss Owoaje and Mrs Richardson warmly welcome you to Year 1.

The aim of this page is to highlight some of the fantastic learning that has been happening in Year 1, this page will be updated monthly, with photographs and information about the learning we have completed during the month.

We hope you enjoy looking through these updates and do discuss your child’s learning with them to celebrate their success. We look forward to any suggestions you may have to make your child’s learning a pleasant experience.

January 2022

Art

In Art, we have been learning about our new artist – Chuck Close. He is a photo-realist painter, who uses lots of bright colours within his work. After researching about Chuck Close and discussing his artwork, we have been focusing on developing our painting skills. We started by looking at the colour wheel and learnt about primary colours and how they mix together to create secondary colours. It was quite exciting to see a new colour be created before our eyes! Next, we will be learning how to mix tints and shades by adding white or black to our hue.

English

In English, we have started our new story – Handa’s Surprise! We love the pattern of the story with the animals stealing Handa’s fruits and find it funny at the end when Handa gets surprised! After writing our book talk to discuss our likes, dislikes and patterns, we learnt a new Alan Peat sentence. We learnt how to write ‘All the Ws’ sentences by using a question word at the beginning and ending with a question mark. We have also been tasting the fruits from the story, which helped us to use adjectives to describe them. We learnt how to write ‘1A’ sentences to add more detail to our writing.

Food Technology

In Food Technology this month, we have been inspired by all of the fruits in the story of Handa’s Surprise. We made a fruit salad! We used many skills and worked together to peel, scoop, squeeze and chop the different fruits. Once we had combined all of our delicious fruits into a bowl, we added freshly squeezed orange juice to the mixture and gave it a good mix! We loved the aroma of the sweet fruits and enjoyed taking it home for our pudding. We can’t wait for our next session in the food tech room.

Geography

In Geography, we have been doing lots of mapping work! We are learning to locate the seven continents and five oceans on a world map. To help us remember all of the different names, we have been learning two songs – they are so catchy! We have also learnt about the hot and cold areas. We learnt that the equator is always the closest part of the Earth to the sun, so countries there are typically warm and do not have much seasonal change like we do in the United Kingdom. We had a lovely discussion about the north and south pole! We identified the hot and cold areas on our world maps using red and blue colours.

Maths

In Maths, we have been focusing on addition and subtraction within 20. We have been looking closely at teens numbers and we represented them in different ways to show the 10 and the 1s. We used cube towers and also ten frames to order and compare numbers within 20. We also saw the relationship between doubling and halving. We have had to get good at our number bonds within 10 to help us to use the ‘make 10 strategy’. This is where we first go to 10 – either when adding or subtracting – and then add or subtract the remaining amounts. We used cubes to support our understanding of this concept, but then also moved onto representing this strategy pictorially too.

Music

In Music, the children have been linking their music learning to their topic ‘Khalsa to Kenya’, where they are learning the story of Handa’s Surprise. They have learnt how to follow rhythms using body percussion and write their own rhythms to follow using different fruits from the story. For example, ‘pineapple – mango – pineapple – guava’. The children used a pulse beat stomp and clapped their rhythm with their hands. In addition, we have played musical games to learn and consolidate difference in tempo, pitch, dynamics, duration and mood.

Physical Education

In PE, children in Year 1 have been learning to play Dodgeball! They have been practising the skills needed to play the sport by taking part in target practice games and drills designed to improve awareness. Dodgeball is a team sport in which you have to move out of the way of balls being thrown at you from the opposition team. If a ball hits your body you are out and your team wins the game when all the players on the opposition team are out. Children will be working on quick footwork skills and teamwork to improve on their game play.  These skills are transferable to many other team and individual sports and we will be discussing this in our lessons.

PSHE

In PSHE, we have been discussing friendship. Inspired by our story, we listed all of the different things that make Handa a good friend to Akeyo. We then taught our PSHE mascot – Jigsaw Jack – how to be a good friend by sharing our ideas in circle time. We thought of some fantastic ideas of how to make others feel welcomed and appreciated.

‘You could ask someone if they want to join in your game.’

‘Always smile at others and help them to feel included.’

Science

In Science, we have been learning to classify vertebrates – animals with a backbone – into their five groups. This fits in nicely with our story about the animals in Handa’s surprise. We have first been learning ‘who’s who’ in the animal world and focused on identifiable features of different animals. For example, we know a zebra is a zebra because it has four legs and black and white stripes. We learnt that all animals come from a particular family and are grouped into; reptiles, fish, birds, amphibians and mammals. We learnt that we can identify and group them by their specific features and characteristics, although some animals are more obvious than others!

Religious Studies

In RE, we are continuing to learn about Christianity. After learning about the Creation story and Christmas story, we have now focused our learning on other stories about Jesus. We discussed and compared three stories where Jesus showed friendship. One was about Jesus calming the storm, one was about Jesus and Zacchaeus and the other was about Jesus visiting his friends Mary and Martha. We identified how Jesus showed friendship and compassion in each scenario and then reflected on our own behaviours with our friends. We learnt that relationships are important and we need friendships to be happy.