Welcome to year 1 

Welcome  to 1E's class page. On this page you will find some useful links and resources, to support your children with their learning at home. You will also find, an update each term on the Mini-mission we are covering in year 1 and a brief overview of your child's learning in school. 

If you need to contact me and you haven't managed to grab me at the end of the day, then please don't hesitate to email me hannah.east@racemeadow.org 

Summer 1 - Superheroes

This term our Mini-mission is superheroes. We will begin the mission as Geographers. We will develop our map skills, learning the features of a simple map like a key and a compass, to be able to use maps to navigate our way through school. We will look at aerial photos and digital maps to explore our local community and continue to learn more about where we are in relation to other places around the world. Later in the term we will be artists focusing on pop art. We will learn about the work of artists Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol we will experiment with line thickness colour blocking and background effects to create our own piece of superhero pop art. 

In English we will revisit descriptive writing using adjectives to write a character description of our own superheroes. We will be learning to write instructions using bossy verbs and making sure our sentences are correctly structured and can be read easily. We will be building on our planning and editing skills later in the term when we create our own comic strip story. 

Spring 2 - London's burning

Our mini-mission is all about The great fire of London. We will start the term being historians and we will investigate the events that unraveled in September 1666. We will continue to develop our understanding of timelines and will be introduced to the terms primary and secondary source. We will conclude our investigation with looking at why this event was so significant and what changed after it to make sure that history couldn't  be repeated. In our science lessons we will be learning about materials and their properties. We will find out what materials different items are made out of and more importantly why they are made out of that material. We will then experiment to see what material will be best to use for a water bucket like they would have used during the great fire of London. To end our mini-mission we will be doing Design and Technology our end product will be a slide and see book. We will learn how to make different sliding mechanisms to make images move across or pop up and practice them. Then we will choose which mechanisms fit our purpose and select the appropriate resources. Finally we will create our final product. 

We will be extending our knowledge of Non-fiction texts in English, specifically newspaper reports. We will look at different examples and identify the common features then we will have a go at creating our own news pare article about the Great fire of London. On the way we will explore terms like first person and third person, past tense and present tense. Of course our focus will always be on handwriting, sentence structure and using our phonics knowledge. 

Spring 1 - Oh the places we'll go 

This term we will be going back to being Geographers as we embark on an adventure. We will learning about the four countries that make up the United Kingdom and the features that make them each unique, but also their similarities. We will use terms like street, road, town, country, city, urban, rural, coast, beach, seaside etc to talk about the places we have been to and the places we wish to go. Children will have the opportunity to share stories about holidays they have experienced and will locate where they have been on a world map using atlases to guide them. We will continue to develop our learning about the home nations in our science lessons, when we learn about plants and trees. We will learn how plants grow, the difference between vegetable plants and fruit plants and the difference between deciduous and evergreen trees. In our Art we will learn about the work of artists like Monet and Van Gogh, particularly their floral pieces of art. We will learn to create abstract and more realistic representations of flowers. We will explore using colour to create texture and will learn how to mix primary colours to get secondary colours. 

In English we will be continuing to develop our sentence structure and will also be refining our handwriting focusing on letter size and making sure our writing is on the line. We will be focusing on non-fiction texts exploring the features of different texts such as brochures, leaflets and postcards. We will be applying what we have learnt, from reading these texts, to writing our own information booklet about Atherstone as a holiday destination. 

Autumn 2 - The Queen's Hat

This term we start by being Historians. We will learn about Queen Elizabeth l and compare her life and reign to                      Queen Elizabeth ll. We will be learning why they were significant individuals in History as well as learning what history is and why it is important that we learn it. In Science this term we will link it with our History as we learn about famous inventors and their inventions such as the invention of television. Later in the term we will be studying design and technology in particular we will be food technologists and we will be designing and making the most delicious sandwich fit for a royal tea party. 

In our English sessions we will be focusing on writing sentences and continuing to develop our independence in writing our own sentences then checking it back to check it makes sense. Practicing applying our phonics skills to break sentence sup into words and then breaking words up into sounds making sure we pinch the sounds so we remember to write them all. We will be adding adverbs to our sentences to make them more detailed and exciting as we learn to re-write a story. 

Autumn 1 -Lost and found

We will start the term being geographers. We will learn about some of the similarities and differences between hot and cold countries and will begin to learn how to locate these places using globes and atlases. We will learn the names of the seven continents and five oceans. Later in the term we will be weather scientists. Linking it to our geography we will learn why some countries are hotter than others. We will also learn about the different types of weather we experience in Atherstone and in other parts of the world. We will be developing our data gathering and recording skills learning what we need to do as a scientist.  At the end of the term, we will become artists and we will learn different techniques to collage as well as painting and line drawing to create our own arctic landscapes. We will look at work by Antarctica landscape artists as well as Inuit folk art from the North Pole to help give us some inspiration. 

In our English lessons for this mini-mission we will focus on the book Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers. We will learn how to make inferences about how the characters are feeling and what they might be thinking and saying to each other. We will continue too build on our sounding out skills to write words and will be learning how to put sentences together using the correct punctuation. 

Maths

In our maths this term we will be securing our knowledge of number up to 10. We will be learning how to sort and group objects matching them to their quantities and comparing the amounts.  We will be securing our counting making sure we are accurate as well as continuing to develop our subitizing skills. Furthermore we will make sure we can order numbers to forwards and backwards and be able to say one more and one less than any number to 10. Towards the end of the term we will begin to apply our number knowledge by adding and subtracting amounts.