Welcome to Life at KPS for Year 1

Mrs Sandhu 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.

October 2020

Art

We have been learning about an artist called Naoimi Wanjiku Gakunga. She is a sculpture artist who uses string and tarnished sheet metal to create interesting hanging sculptures. We learnt how to tie knots to join two or more pieces of string and ribbon together. Naomi talks about how thread is something that we see all over the world in different cultures, whether it is how it is used in weaving bowls or how it makes the clothes that we all wear. The knots also symbolise how we join together as a community. Our final collaborative sculpture of hanging string knots is a visual representation of our community.

English

We have been busy writing instructions. We first learnt about SVO sentences, e.g. You get paper.

We then chose a topic to teach someone about, such as ‘How to write a letter’, or ‘How to make a cake’. We wrote three simple instructions for our reader. We then extended this to include adverbs of time, such as ‘first’, ‘then’, ‘finally’. This helped to order our instructions. Some of us also learnt about adverbs, such as ‘carefully’, ‘quickly’, ‘gently’. This helped to make our instructions clearer. We finally wrote up our instructions neatly and our teachers posted them home so that our parents could see our amazing work!

History

We have been learning about some of the pandemics which have happened through time. We learnt about some big pandemics such as the Black Death, the Spanish Flu, Swine Flu, MERS and COVID-19. We looked carefully at image representations and ordered the pandemics on a timeline. We have been learning about key workers, and discussed how doctors and their equipment have changed over time. We carefully investigated a range of images and classified them according to whether we thought they were items from the ‘present’, or items used in the ‘past’.

Maths

We begun by working within numbers to 10 and learnt about the ten frame and the part whole model. We used these tools to help us to double and half numbers up to 10. We also looked at one more and one less.

We then moved on to addition and subtraction. We have learnt that the part-whole model works by adding the two parts to make the whole, but we can also use it for subtraction by starting with the whole, subtracting one part and then seeing what part is left. We used cubes in our part-whole model to represent the numbers before writing our addition and  subtraction equation.

Music

Despite restrictions due to COVID-19, we have still been working hard in Music.

So far this term, we have been concentrating on pulse and rhythm as well as starting and stopping together. Our rhythm games have included chanting and beating the rhythm to ‘Bee Bee Bumble Bee’ and ‘Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear’. We have enjoyed participating in a ‘move and freeze’ song, which has helped to develop our listening skills.

We have also learnt to read simple graphic scores using body percussion as well as using pictures to create our own.

Panjabi

We have been learning the first two letters, from the first 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. 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.

PE

In PE, we have been focusing on getting our fitness back with lots of exercise!  We have been working hard on improving our stamina by running, speed walking and skipping!

We have been taking part in the daily mile walk as well as participating in shuttle runs which have been designed to increase in difficulty from week to week. Skipping has fast become a very popular hobby at our school. Towards the end of half term some of us were lucky enough to meet and skip with the Skipping Sikh!

PSHE

We have been learning about our rights and responsibilities as learners. We use our STAR rules to be our best every day:

S tay safe and be kind.
T ry your best at everything.
A lways tell the truth.
R espect everyone and everything.

To keep our classes awesome, we work together and we each have a class job that we are in charge of. We have been learning how to share and work hard, which has also related to our learning in RE about the Three Pillars of Sikhism.

Religious Education

We have been learning about some of the teachings of Guru Nanak Dev Ji. We listened to some stories about Guru Nanak Dev Ji, such as ‘The Milk and the Jasmine Flower’ and ‘Duni Chand and the Silver Needle’. We discussed the five values, which are on the wall of every classroom, and thought about how Guru Nanak Dev Ji showed the five values. We then drew a picture of ourselves showing one of the five values.

After learning about Guru Nanak Dev Ji’s teaching of ‘Ek Onkar’, we recited the Mool Mantar. The first line of the Mool Mantar is ‘Ek Onkar’.

Science

We have been learning about different types of weather and changes across the four seasons. We dressed up in different items of clothing to show the season we could be dressed for. We discussed the water cycle and how water is evaporated and then condenses to make clouds, which then rain back down. We did an experiment with water in a bag to see if the rain would evaporate and condense at the top of the bag. We went on a leaf hunt to find leaves from evergreen and deciduous trees! We noticed that different trees have different shaped leaves. We found lots of autumn leaves!