Learning Journey

8.7.22

What an exciting week we have had in Year 1! We kick-started the week by watching the Year 6 production, which was simply brilliant. It was especially lovely to see the younger children’s reactions to the performance and to their older siblings taking part.

On Wednesday, the children and said goodbye to the wonderful Miss Orr, as she completes her teacher training and moves on to her first job back home in Northern Ireland.

On Thursday, the whole school came together to run in the KPS Colour Run, which was so much fun! It was wonderful to see the children having such a brilliant time and raising so much for the school. Thank you to everyone who took part, helped out and sponsored. Special thanks to the PTFA for organising such a fantastic event.  Hopefully your houses weren’t too covered in paint at the end of the day!

Finally, on Friday the whole school took part in our ‘Culture Day’. The children had the opportunity to “visit” different countries from around the world and learn a little more about their geography, traditions and culture. It was another great day!

1.7.22

A great week completing some fantastic pieces of instructional writing on ‘How to be a Commonwealth athlete’. This compiled our ideas on what would be needed to be a super athlete and the important steps to make this happen. We were so pleased with the results and I am sure that this has inspired many to take their own advice.

In Maths this week, we have explored and compared money. We were super impressed with the knowledge the children already had in this topic. In Design and technology, we used our knowledge of an athlete’s diet to create our own unique snacks. Healthy treats such as salmon flavoured Haribo and chicken nugget ice cream were inspirational! In Forest school, we explored the 5 oceans of the world on a scavenger hunt. The children recorded key facts about this and then created the ocean names from pebbles and sticks.

24.6.22

A lovely week in Cedar full of all things sport! We have launched our new topic of ‘The Commonwealth Games’ in the lead up to the events in Birmingham this year. It was lovely to hear of the children’s existing knowledge and begin to explore what makes the games different to others.

Our new topic has inspired our work in English. We will be creating instructional texts explaining ‘How to become a Commonwealth athlete’. We had a fantastic session of what an athlete would need to become successful. Everyone is looking forward to the finished results!

17.6.22

Year One have had a busy but exciting week at school. The children all had a fantastic day at the Think Tank on Tuesday, they loved exploring the Mini Brum Gallery and getting to learn about being an astronaunt on the International Space Station, the Science garden was a big hit too.

In English we have continued to look at the structure of a narrative. The children used their prior knowledge to organise story boards and to identify the different parts of a narrative. They have been writing excellent stories, the children have been working really hard. We have loved reading them.

In Maths this week, we finished looking at position and the children have done really well. We have started to look at counting to 100 and have been doing some great practical work, counting in 10’s to 100 both forwards and backwards. In PSHE we have started looking at ‘Changing me’ and the children enjoyed a practical lesson looking at the life cycles organising the stages

10.6.22

We have also begun to explore narratives this week. We introduced the text ‘The Way Back Home’ by Oliver Jeffers. Great discussion was completed surrounding the main plot points and we have explored how this structure could be used to create our own narratives. In Maths this week, the children have been showing excellent knowledge in our Geometry learning surrounding position and direction. This has included some fantastic practical learning and recap of our knowledge of shape also. In Design and Technology, we have started to explore rockets and think about the purpose of the design. We have started to think about initial designs and completed some research on existing rockets.

27.5.22

A busy last week of term for all! We have enjoyed both jubilee celebrations and the circus. In Maths, we continued to explore fractions this included practically showing great examples on the playground.  This week we were very lucky to have a letter from The Queen. This asked us to design her a new pair of  knickers for her celebration. We saw some fantastic designs that were enjoyed by many in the school when they were turned into bunting. The descriptions of these knickers were excellent and used expanded noun phrases to describe. On top of these amazing celebrations we were also joined by the circus at school. All year groups were lucky enough to see a behind the scenes preview. We are very thankful to the PTFA for arranging this for us. 

20.5.22

This week in English we have continued our work on letter writing. We have been amazed by the fantastic ideas and effort going into these and cannot wait to see the finished results. This week we completed paragraphs surrounding questions and justifying reasons for a reply.

In Maths this week, we have been exploring halves and wholes. This included representing and showing this with shapes. Then this progressed to find half of quantities. Next week we will look at quarters.

In Music, we continued to explore the live pieces from Gustav Holst. This week we compared how Mars and Venus made us move. The different dynamics and use of a crescendo was discovered to be the reason we move so differently.

In forest School, we created Kandinsky inspire art looking at the nature around us for inspiration. Some fantastic pieces of art were made!

13.5.22

What a week for writing! This week the children have began to write sections of their letters. We began with researching astronauts to find out more about our audience (who we’re writing to) and discovered some very interesting information.

The children came across a British astronaut called Tim Peak and have decided that is who they would like to write their letters too. So far, the children have written their introductions and a reasoning paragraph about why they are writing their letter. Next week, we will continue and add questions, some persuasive writing to encourage a reply and a closing statement. In Maths, finished off our unit of work on multiplication moving on from understanding arrays and doubling objects to sharing (dividing) objects into groups. In PE, we have continued with our striking and fielding unit. 

06.05.22

This week in Maths, we have continued with multiplication moving on from making/adding equal groups to arrays and doubling. The children have been great detectives in Maths this week finding patterns in their doubles, we have all been really impressed with their continued enthusiasm. In Science, we have continued our learning surrounding humans and had great fun playing ‘Guess who?’ from the absolutely amazing baby photos before looking at our senses and what body parts allow us to use our senses. In PSHE, we looked at friendships and the children had great discussion about what a friend is and what it means to them to be a good friend. We heard really kind and beautiful things about their friends and friendships with Year One! This week is deaf awareness week so in forest school, the children were using sign language to try to sign: numbers, their names and animal names. This was a lot of fun and the children all really enjoyed themselves!

29.4.22

This week in maths, we have continued with multiplication moving on from counting in 2s, 5s and 10s to making/adding equal groups. In Science, we have started our learning surrounding humans and spent the first lesson sharing our knowledge of what body parts we know. We also observed if there were any differences between children and adults. In PSHE, We started our first lesson exploring what it means to be a family and how this can look different to everyone. We read a brilliant story about the planet ‘Zarg’ and how the families on this planet could be compared to ours. In forest school we blasted off into space and created art inspired by this term's topic. We were very lucky this week to have Worcestershire County Cricket come into give us an experience afternoon. This was a highlight for many!

08.04.22

A week full of 'EGG'cellent work! This week we have completed a range of Easter themed learning opportunities. A highlight was the persuasive posters created to advertise the best egg in the world. This showed great knowledge of adjectives and imperative verbs to persuade the audience to buy their egg. We said a big thank you to the pupil parliament and PTFA for making this week so special for us all.

25.3.22

In English, we have explored a new form of poetry – acrostic poems. The children have learnt the key features of an acrostic poem and written their own acrostic animal poems. The children have done an awesome job at using their prior knowledge of poetry, rhythm and rhyme to inform the writing of their acrostic poems. In Maths this week, we have focused on recapping some key concepts to help deepen the children’s knowledge and understanding before moving onto our next units of work. We have deepened our understanding of place value, tens and ones. As well as counting in 2’s, 5’s and practised our number formation. In PSHE, we focused on looking at medicines that can help us when we feel poorly. Great discussion took place about how and when we should have this. As well as highlighting what is safe to use and why we always needs adults help to do this.

18.3.22

In Year One this week, we have thoroughly enjoyed the different learning opportunities we have explored. This week was Science week and the theme this year was ‘Growth’ and ‘Smashing Stereotypes’. The children were excellent scientist all week! This was shown particularly through our slime experiment where we made, observed and recorded observations around slime. Our investigation sought to explore how much the slime would stretch or grow before snapping. In English this week, we have continued to explore poetry and created fantastic rhyming sentence poems linked to our topic on animals. The poem is called don’t and lists many different animals that shouldn’t be fed objects. It was fantastic to see such great lines using amazing adjectives we have looked at previously. In Maths this week, we have continued our work on volume and capacity completing a range of practical and abstract problems to help understand how we can measure this. Great were made.

11.3.22

We have had another wonderful week in Year 1. In English this week, we have built on our knowledge of rhyme and rhyming strings and practiced putting our rhymes to some rhythm and creating a counting poem in the style of One Two Buckle my shoe. In Maths, we have continued using our weight and mass knowledge to measure the mass of objects using a balance scale and to compare different masses.

4.3.22

A fantastic first week of in Year One full of exciting events to share. We have enjoyed starting our topic of ‘All creatures great and small’. We have loved seeing the excellent topic homework in a celebration lesson of this! We have had a brilliant day hearing and seeing the fantastic costumes and stories enjoyed by all in Year One. we have enjoyed exploring rhyming this week linked to our class text 'Oi Frog'. In Maths, we consolidated learning of length & height and introduced weight & mass. 

18.2.22

This week we have enjoyed wellbeing activities! One of our tasks was to create the letters KPS in a creative way. In English we investigated the life of explorers and recalled this information on a storyboard. In mathematics we learnt about comparing height and length using key language to show this. In computing we learnt how to insert clip art images into a spreadsheet. This meant the class could create fantastic 'Zoo's' on their laptops. 

11.2.22

In English this week, we have spent time recapping our SPAG (Spelling and Grammar) knowledge and completing lots of reading activities. In Maths, we have re-introduced counting in 2’s and 5’s. The children have picked this up really quickly and  particularly enjoyed using songs and movement to help recall this knowledge.

Thursday’s Art lesson was especially fun! The children revised their knowledge of lines and then ‘met’ the famous artist Vicent Van Gogh. Our class’s favourite painting was Starry Night. We used oil pastels to create a landscape picture, using the different types of lines we have learnt and then blended them to give more texture. The children’s art was FANTASTIC! We were really impressed!

In Computing, this week we joined in with Safer Internet Day. The children enjoyed listening to Digi-duck and learning about how to use apps and games safely, as well as how to create a secure password. Some fantastic geography work was completed to create a map with symbols to help an explorer fly home!

4.2.22

In English this week, we have been continuing our lessons in the build up to writing our own explorer stories. We explored how we can use adjectives to describe settings utilising our senses. To help think of ideas we bought objects from the woods into the classroom to focus on each sense. The children cam up with fantastic adjectives to describe a range of settings.

In Maths this week, we have developed our knowledge of place value to 50 by comparing and ordering numbers with different representations.

In Science, we planted seeds working scientifically to think about what questions we have about how they will grow. We were impressed with the knowledge retained from previous weeks to recall the plants parts and some functions. In computing, we continued our work on spreadsheets creating a list for an explorers party. 

28.1.22

In English this week, we have been building up to writing a character description using amazing adjectives. The class enjoyed our starter game of ‘guess who’ describing various characters using a range of amazing adjectives! In Maths, we have made a great start to our place value to 50 unit. This has included using various representations to explore these larger numbers. Continuing our exploration of plants in science this week meant the children dissected and labelled parts of a plant. We explored the petal, stem, anther and leaves and discussed what job each part has.

In Computing, we have started our unit on Spreadsheets. This helped us to show data another method alongside pictograms. In PSHE this week, we talked about obstacles and how we can overcome these. To test this the children were given the challenge to turn an outline of their hand into a flower!

21.1.22

In English this week, we have continued to look at our class text ‘Explorers in the wild’ by Cale Atkinson. We have been learning about a stories structure beginning to understand and use story mountains to show this.

In Maths, we have continued using our addition and subtraction knowledge to recognise related number facts, compare number sentences and show understanding of this through reasoning and problem solving. We will be moving onto to place value to 50 in the next few weeks to expand our knowledge of number.

In line with our explorers topic the children recorded observational drawings of a range of flowers in science. This activated our prior knowledge of plants ready to learn more about plant in the coming weeks.

In Computing, we have completed a unit on pictograms. This helped us to answer questions such as ‘what is Cedar class’ favourite fruit’ and ‘what is the most popular way to travel to school in cedar class’. In PSHE this week, we talked about the challenges and benefits of working with a partner. This was tested by having to design a welly together.

14.01.22

What an exciting week! We have begun our new ‘Explorers’ topic and the children have become really invested in our focus story ‘Explorers of the Wild’ by Cale Atikson. In English, we began by predicting what we thought would happen in the story based on the front cover. We then explored the story and learnt about the purpose of a blurb. The children wrote some really fantastic blurbs to entice readers to choose their story. In Maths we have been focussing on subtraction within 20 by counting back and by crossing out. This was aided by our number bonds to 10! In PSHE, the children enjoyed talking about goals and the steps to achieve them. A lot of laughter and learning came from our goal to programme ‘Miss Gatfield the Robot’ to make a jam sandwich. Although, we made mistakes (including jam on the table) we were successful in achieving our goal. This facilitated great conversations around resilience and mistakes helping us to achieve.

07.01.22

A fabulous first week back to school. This week we used quiet critters to help us concentrate on writing amazing New Years resolutions. We enjoyed a great lesson in PSHE on success in which we were able to succeed at the whole class challenge to pass a hula hoop around the class without letting go of the person next to them. 

24.11.21

From London to Paris and on to Venice, where will we be traveling to next? New York!

The children have had a wonderful week exploring Venice. They were particularly fascinated by the lack of roads and the Gondolas used to travel around. The children have learnt lots of interesting facts about Venice which they have used to complete an elevated fact file. In Maths, we have been comparing groups of objects within 20. Next week we will finish our place value topic by recapping tens and ones and consolidating our knowledge within 20. This week we continued working scientifically to explore seasonal changes- creating rain gauges. In PE, we practised using narrow movements in a sequence. We also had a fantastic session led my Mr Dalton to get active in our classrooms! 

19.11.21

This week we flew off to France – Paris to be exact and have had lot’s of fun exploring the city. The children visited a travel agents to collect some brochures full of information and facts. They identified the key facts and practised writing them in a spider diagram (mind map) and in list format. Finally on Friday we used these notes to write our own Paris brochure.

In Maths we have continued learning how to read, write and order numbers within 20. We have also introduced place value using tens and ones.

In our topic lessons we designed model aeroplanes in D&T, which we will be making next week.  Finally, in PSHE we have discussed what bullying is and how we can make everyone feel included and welcome in our class / school.

12.11.21

The children have had a busy week full of exciting learning within our new topic- Around the world in 49 days. A highlight for many was the ‘bus ride’ through London to see and hear about the sights of our capital city.

In English this week, our travels (based around the class text of Emma Jane’s Areoplane) has inspired some excellent work. The week began with predictions being made about where the character would be flying to and why- developing key reading skills.  In Maths, the children have continued fantastic work on subtraction. This included using a number line to subtract, part-whole models and finding the difference between numbers.

In addition to this, some fantastic topic lessons have been enjoyed. Including excellent geography work in which Year One created aerial maps of local landmarks. As well as this, our history lesson provided an opportunity to explore how transport has changed from past to present which led to recording a timeline of transport from old to new.

5.11.21

This term our topic is ‘Around the world in 49 days’ . The children will ‘travel’ to a different country each week along with Emma Jane, the main character from our focus text Emma Janes Aeroplane by Katie Haworth.

This week we have recapped and consolidated our knowledge from last term and focussed on settling back into our school routines. We have begun our new topic by identifying ourselves on the map. The children loved exploring Google Earth and zooming in until they were able to find our school. Next week, we will begin our ‘travels’ by hopping on a double decker bus to London! We will explore the capital city, its landmarks and history.

In English, we will begin to look at factual writing and in Maths we will continue to focus on subtraction within 10. In PSHE, our focus for the term will be celebrating differences. We will also begin our new science topic of Seasonal Changes.

22.10.21

In English, we have built up to writing our diary entries. We have explored the different features of a diary through a range of activities exploring: time adverbials, past tense verbs, the use of feelings, spellings, punctuation and grammar in our writing. The children brainstormed a sequence of events that they then developed into a diary plan. They then used this to help them write their diary entries.

In Maths, we have continued to develop our knowledge of addition this week. We have used our prior learning of number bonds to create paper chain number sentences. This helped us to practically show totals and fact families. We also used number lines to practise counting forwards as another way of solving addition number sentences.

In Forest School this week, we used our topic of ‘emotional intelligence’ to inspire some amazing outdoor artwork. We discussed a range of emotions that can be portrayed by our facial expressions and then created faces to show this using the natural resources around us.

15.10.21

In English, we have continued developing our knowledge and understanding of the story Ruby’s Worry. This has included identify the characters thoughts and feelings as well as writing in the past tense, preparing the children to write a diary entry next week. On Friday, the whole school completed an independent Friday write based off the same stimulus – The Windmill Farmer. From this we saw some fantastic stories, letters and songs. In Maths this week, we have continued to develop our understanding of number bonds. This included different ways to represent them- some excellent number bonds to 10 were created using natural resources in our forrest school session. We have also been using the ‘+’ and ‘=’ symbol to write our own number sentences.

08.10.21

In mathematics we have moved onto to our new topic of addition and subtraction. This week we have introduced the part whole model, looked at number fact families and began focussing on addition within 10.In English we have continued with our class text ‘Ruby’s Worry’ We are working towards writing a diary entry for Ruby but in order to do this we first need to know how to write in the past tense. In Forrest school we had an art focus, we completed patterns in the style of Andy Goldsworthy. In computing we used purple mash to sort shapes using different criteria. As well as, working on fine motor control to complete a piece of electronic art.

01.10.21

In English this week, we have been focussing on questioning and learning some key language related to questioning e.g. who, what, where, when, why, how etc. Phonics lessons saw us create some 'tricky words' from Play-Doh to practice these words that are harder to sound out.  In Maths, the children have been using the greater than and less than signs in forest school to compare numbers and we have also introduced ordinal numbers. On Thursday we had a day celebrating Harvest Festival. The children learnt all about what ‘Harvest’ actually is, why we celebrate it and when it occurs. In the afternoon, we created some wonderful harvest pictures using fruit and vegetables to print patterns with paint. We continued our unit on Invasion games in PE. 

24.09.21

This week, the class text inspired character descriptions with a focus on using amazing adjectives. In maths, we have looked at comparing numbers using the language ‘greater than’, ‘less than’ and ‘equal’. We are also continuing to have great PSHE lessons with the help of Jigsaw Jack. This week we focused on the rights and responsibilities in a class.  In PE we continued our unit on invasion games -all showed great ability to move and dodge into spaces. In science, we had a fantastic lesson comparing and exploring everyday materials. In computing, we used purple mash to explore how to search using key words and filters. This helped us search  for year one art activities to complete on the laptop. We enjoyed our first forest school lesson and applied our knowledge of counting to a scavenger hunt. 

17.09.21

Cedar class have had a lovely second week at school and the children are continuing to learn school routines and engage well in lessons. We have continued our topic based on ‘Emotional Intelligenge’. This week the class text inspired our learning in english through planning and creating an instructional text for The Worrysaurus to go on a picnic. This also inspired some FABULOUS art work focusing on line to recreate the cave drawings in the story. In maths this week we looked at counting forwards, backwards, one more and one less. In topic students enjoyed learning about the countries and capital cities in the United Kingdom. We are also continuing to have great PSHE lessons with the help of Jigsaw Jack. This weeks lesson focused around ‘belonging’ and ‘how we learn best’. The class then created fantastic drawings of what helps them learn best. In PE we started our unit on invasion games- this involved developing the key skill on chest passes.