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.

November 2021

Art

In Art, we have been busy finishing off our observational drawings of our wooden mannequins. We have been trying so hard to look carefully at the different shapes that we can see and have tried to not let our brain take over and tell us what to draw! It is a very tricky skill to learn. We drew onto brown paper to give an old feel to our artwork and once we had drawn in sketching pencil, we went over our lines with charcoal. We used our smudging skills from earlier in the unit to carefully smudge our charcoal, which created shades on our drawings.

English

In English, we have started our new unit of writing, which is inspired by the story ‘Androcles and the Lion’. We were very excited to see the Colosseum featuring in this story about a gladiator who goes to fight a lion in the arena! We will be writing from the point of view of a gladiator, so the imagine what it would be like, we created our own noisy Colosseum crowd in our Contemplation Zone. We caused a huge ruckus with our stomping, clapping and cheering! We took it in turns to stand in the middle and think about what we could see and hear. We then used this to write our thoughts in first person, using ‘I’, ‘me’ and ‘my’.

History

This month in history we have been learning about toys from the past and the present. We got a chance to physically look at some old toys, such as Nintendo Gameboys. The children were so fascinated to see how different the Gameboy looks compared to the Nintendo Switch we see today.

We learnt how to be historians ourselves and thought of ways to identify clues as to whether a toy is from the past or present. We discussed differences in materials used, such as wood and metal compared to more commonly seen colourful plastic. We also thought about how electric toys would not be from a very long time ago because they did not have electric toys over 100 years ago.

Maths

In Maths this term, we have been learning all about 2D and 3D shapes. We revised the properties of both 2D and 3D shapes, using correct mathematical language to describe, for example the square has got four equal straight sides. We have been making different patterns with 2D shapes, considering whether to focus on colour patters, shape patterns or both.

We then moved on to using direction and positional language to plan different routes in the class. We used a special robot called ‘Doc’ to program our algorithms and then test them out. We managed to get Doc to draw squares and rectangles and visit specific locations on his special map! This was a great unit to help us remember our shapes and apply our mathematical language.

Music

“I have been very proud of the attitude of the students this term.” – Mrs Stoker

The Children have further developed their singing skills, by beginning to learn ‘A little bird told me’. They have created class rules in order to produce the best group singing that they can, including clear words, keeping to a pulse beat, listening to others and balancing their sound.

In addition, they have listened to and responded to the 4 seasons by Vivaldi (an Italian composer) by writing words to describe how the music made them feel and by selecting colours to represent the sounds.

Physical Education

This month in PE the children have been linking maths to their PE lessons!

Children have been playing ‘Pirates Treasure’.  The aim of the game is for each team to collect as much treasure as they can within a set time, then they go back to their team and count how many pieces they have.  The team with the most points wins that round and we start to introduce different values to different pieces of treasure, leaving children to problem solve by planning which pieces are worth more and to add the total value of their treasure to give themselves a grand score.

We also used the balancing skills learnt from our last game to find interesting and creative ways to place the treasure back in its place after each round.

PSHE

In PSHE, we have been discussing how to share one kind word to prevent bullying from happening. We all thought about one simple thing we could say to each other to spread kindness.

We have also been revising what democracy means and the importance of having a voice. This month we listening to the Year 6 candidates for Head Boy and Head Girl. After listening to their amazing speeches, we then each voted for who we thought would do the best job. After marking our ‘X’ in each box, we folded our paper twice to keep it private and put it inside the ballot box.

Science

In Science, we have been learning about different types of weather across the four seasons. As we are currently in autumn, we have been focusing on the changes in weather and wildlife that we can observe. One thing we have all noticed is that lots of leaves are turning orange, brown, yellow or red and falling off! We learnt about the two types of trees – deciduous and evergreen. We went on a leaf hunt to find leaves from evergreen and deciduous trees. The children were able to spot that Christmas trees are a type of evergreen tree. We learnt that evergreen tree leaves are usually darker green, waxy and sometimes spiky. We noticed that different trees have different shaped leaves and colours. We found lots of colourful deciduous tree leaves to stick in our book!

Sikh Studies

The main focus of this term has and will be on Guru Nanak Dev Ji, since we are celebrating the Parkash Dehara of Dhan Dhan Shri Guru Nanak Dev Ji. We learnt about Guru Ji’s family using interactive resources such as pictures and whiteboards. Children learnt the story of ‘The Sacred Thread’ and to remember the story we did the role play and hot seating. We celebrated Guru Nanak Dev Ji’s Prakash dihara by doing an assembly. In the assembly, the children were talking about Guru Nanak Dev Ji’s life and we all sung Shabads together. Year 1 took part in singing and cutting the big birthday cake, which was served at Langar.