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.

June 2022

Design and Technology

In D&T, we have completed our commemorative seed packets for the Queen! We learnt that it is very important to cut and stick carefully when constructing – lots of us had holes in our seed packets!

We have now moved onto an Art unit and we have begun by looking at a Japanese artist called Yayoi Kusama. She is a very eccentric lady, who mainly uses dots in her artwork. We are focusing on sculpture this term, so we will be looking at her for inspiration for our own mixed media sculptures.

English

In English, we have been learning our new story ‘The Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch’. This funny story follows an industrious lighthouse keeper – Mr Grinling – who keeps getting his lunch stolen by pesky seagulls! To familiarise ourselves with the characters in the story, we did small group performances in front of the class. Many of us also made props to add to our show and it was a real treat to watch! This helped us to understand the characters’ feelings, which will help us to write our first-person recount.

Food Technology

In Food Technology, we have been busy using our chopping skills. We are getting very confident in the kitchen now and we are starting to follow simple recipes with minimal help. Inspired by our story, we have most recently made a ‘Peach Surprise’! This was a delicious treat of ice cream, tinned peaches, crushed digestive biscuit and whipped cream. Just what we needed in the hot weather we’ve had! We worked in teams to prepare our ingredients and then we individually built our sundaes in our own cup.

Geography

In Geography, we have been revisiting our knowledge of the United Kingdom. We practised labelling the countries, capital cities and surrounding seas, which we are pretty good at now! In History, we have been learning about a hero from the past called Grace Darling, who like Mr Grinling, was a lighthouse keeper too! We located her lighthouse on the United Kingdom map and then thought about the location of other lighthouses. We learnt the word ‘coast’ and identified the coasts of different countries.

Maths

In Maths this month, we started our new topic learning to recognise, read and write numbers within 100. We consolidated knowledge of the ten times table and this helped us to count grouped objects much quicker. Using Dienes, we have been representing our numbers into tens and ones. After this we applied this place value to find one more or less within 100. We have now started our new unit of adding and subtracting up to 100. Using prior knowledge of number bonds to 10, we have been using part-whole models to solve number problems, such as 63 + ? = 67.

Music

In music , year ones have continued to learn about different instrument families, listening to their sounds and categorising them. In addition, they have played drums using different tempos and dynamics.

We have also learnt some cumulative songs which improve their memory co-ordination and pitch.

Panjabi

In Year 1 we have been learning 3 set of the Panjabi alphabet. To keep us on our toes we have been using a variety of resources such as magnetic letters and flash cards. This term, children have been learning the formation of letters and their corresponding sounds. To consolidate our learning, we have been practicing on our individual white boards and in our books as well and also been practicing mukta and kanna words. Children have also learnt the words beginning with those letters that they learnt. Our main focus for this term has been speaking in Panjabi. Children have also been learning family relationship names and how we refer to family members such as, (mummi ji ,daddi ji, bhan ji ,veer ji). This term they also have been learning about the martyrdom of Guru Arjan Dev Ji and the main message from Guru ji’s shahidi.

Physical Education

This month we had our Sports Day!  Children competed against each other in races such as Hurdles, Sprint, Football Dribble, Bat and Ball, Sack race and Space hoppers.

Children raced in their families and collected points throughout the day, and the winning team with the most points was The Sky Gliders.  Well done to all the Reds!

We also had a picnic with the parents, parents races and a teachers race – which was won by our Year 3 teacher, Mrs Athwal!

Religious Education

In RE, we have been learning about the religion of Judaism. We first learnt about religious symbols – the symbol for Judaism is a Star of David. Thinking about what creates our identity, we drew our own symbols. We then learnt more about the Jewish holy day of Shabbat, which begins at sunset every Friday and ends at sunset every Saturday. This special day is a day of rest, so Jews do no work and spend time studying their religion and socialising with their family and friends. We discussed our favourite day of the week and why it is important to us.

Science

In Science, we started our new topic on healthy eating. We have been finding out what makes a balanced diet. We learnt the names of the five food groups on the Eatwell Plate; protein, carbohydrates, diary, fats and fruit and vegetables. We discovered we need to eat balanced portions of all 5 of these foods to help us grow and give us energy. To consolidate our learning, we designed and drew a balanced healthy plate containing different types of food. We are now able to identify what we need to keep us fit and healthy!