Welcome to Life at KPS for Year 1

Mr Sussmann 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 2022

Art

We are continuing to develop our abstract painting skills, inspired by the colourful works of Frank Bowling. We have mixed colours with various tools on a large collaborative scale and have now started to work in a smaller individual way. We are trying hard to learn when ‘enough is enough’ and how to stop mixing colours at just the right time, but this can be very tricky! We are still perfecting our individual techniques and then we will produce a final piece for display.

English

We have been busy learning some Alan Peat sentences, such as SVO (subject, verb, object) sentences and 1A (1 adjective) sentences. We are leading up to writing a postcard home telling our families all about our time in Year 1 so far. Therefore, our sentences are all about things that we do in school or describing what school is like. We are very excited to write our postcards because the Jolly Postman will deliver them to our houses!

Food Technology

We made a special dish related to Black History Month. As we have been looking at Bob Marley and his Jamaican heritage, we decided to make baked plantain slices. To do this we first had to peel our plantain, which is like a banana, and then we carefully used table knives to cut slices. We the laid-out slices out on a baking sheet and brushed some oil over the top. Finally, we sprinkled some salt on for extra flavour and baked them in the oven until they were golden. Delicious!

Geography

We have been learning lots about our local area. We studied images of Slough, and also drew upon our own exposure to Slough, to then draw our own versions of landmarks in Slough. We are beginning to learn the difference between human and physical features, for example Tesco superstore is a human feature but the River Thames is a physical feature. We also learnt about aerial photographs and looking from a ‘bird’s eye view’. We carefully drew aerial perspectives of our classrooms by looking at the shapes of furniture and the distances and positions between each item in the room.

Maths

We have been exploring place value to ten. We have been focusing on representing the numbers with concrete manipulatives such as cubes and counters. We started by sorting objects and then have been looking at one more and one less within 10.  We have finished our topic off by looking at greater than, less than and equal to and how we can sort three sets of objects or numbers from fewest to greatest.

Music

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

The children have further developed their singing skills, using actions to help them with their lyrics. 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 learnt how to follow and create rhythm patterns using body percussion. The children particularly enjoyed jamming to Bob Marley songs in our Carnival celebration!

PSHE

We have been learning about our STAR rules and the Five Khalsa Values of Love, Truth, Humility, Compassion and Contentment. We have been working really hard to shine like the bright stars we are and to show the Five Values in everything we do. We are learning about our community and the people who help us, including our families. We drew the people who we feel are in our community – for some of us that’s those who are in our home but could also stretch as far as the doctors and postal workers etc. who work hard to help us.

We also learnt about democracy and voted for our head boy and head girl after listening to their speeches on a live stream.

Science

We have been learning about the 5 senses.  We have been using our investigation stations in class to explore sight and how what we see changes if we look at funny mirrors.  We have done some outdoor investigations, thinking about the sounds we hear outside if we are really quiet and we created a tally of all the sounds we encountered on our walk outside.  During our cooking session for Black History Month we thought about smells and taste and how they help us explore the world around us.

Sikh Studies

Children have been learning about of Guru Nanak Dev Ji as part of a topic to learn the teachings of sharing and Vand Shakna. Pupils explored the life of Guru Nanak Dev Ji by watching a short-animated movie about Guru Ji and deriving facts from watching the short movie. After children discussed the life of Guru Nanak Dev Ji shown in the video and then they wrote the facts they learnt about the first Guru. Along with that they also wrote any story about Guru Nanak Dev Ji from the ones they saw in the animation.