Latest News
2020/21
Term 2
English
Italian Ibex have really enjoyed continuing with their ‘Muck, Mess and Mixture’ topic. We have let our imagination run wild with the help of Drew Daywalt’s book, ‘The Day The Crayons Quit’, which has inspired us to write our own letters in character as Duncan. We responded to the poor crayons and used emotive language to persuade them to return. In our grammar sessions, we explored apostrophes and identified how they can be used for omission and possession. We challenged ourselves to use this new piece of punctuation in our writing too. As well as this, we have thoroughly enjoyed another book which linked with our History topic, called ‘Traction Man’ by Mini Grey. We continued to work on our expanded noun phrases, commas for a list and conjunctions, to write a character description of Traction Man. This term, we also began something new in writing called ‘Free Writing Fridays’, which we are thoroughly enjoying as we can really show off our creativity and individual writing style without limitations.
Maths
During Maths this term, we have been looking at halves and quarters. Once we were able to identify halves and quarters of shapes, we challenged ourselves to find halves and quarters of amounts. This was a little tricky at first but once we understood and remembered that half means sharing into two equal groups and that quarter means sharing into four equal groups, we soon got the hang of it. Later in the term, we explored money and were able to identify coins and notes and explain their values. We really enjoyed using the plastic coins in our lessons and were able to apply our knowledge further to compare and count coins too. More recently, we have returned to number to investigate numbers up to 100. We have started to develop our partitioning skills and identify the place value of digits within a 2-digit number.
Science & Art
We have continued to get messy by constructing our own printing tools in Art using pipe cleaners and straws to create beautiful firework inspired paintings. We have linked Art and Science whilst exploring the properties of wax to create wax resistance artwork using white crayons and watercolours. This piece also helped us to develop our paint mixing skills working with Autumnal shades and tones. We have continued to develop our investigative skills to explore the questions, ‘Which ball is the bounciest?’ and recorded our results in a number of different ways. This helped us make links to materials and analyse their properties.
History
For this term we have really developed our understanding of history in the context of toys by creating a huge class timeline of toys. We had lots of fun sharing our favourite toys discussing how they worked and what they were made of. Through interviews with our parents and grandparents, we were able to see how toys have changed over time. Our exploration of toys through the years has also been brought to life through our Guided Reading book, ‘The Velveteen Rabbit’, which helped us understand what toys were like in the early 20th Century. We had great fun creating our own Victorian-style toys making peg dolls and soldiers and a thaumatrope which is an optical toy.
RE
We have been exploring the question, ‘Why did God give Jesus to the world?’ and through this unit, we have understood that Jesus was a gift from God. We looked at how the world could be ‘saved’ and realised that we can all be a type of superhero and make a difference to the world to make it a better place. We looked at this in the context of the book, ‘George Saves The World By Lunch Time’. We also explored the word ‘advent’ and we learnt about the ways some Christians prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus and created our own advent wreaths as well as exploring the Christmas story in more detail.
Term 1
English
Italian Ibex have had a fantastic start to their ‘Muck, Mess and Mixture’ topic. We have let our imagination run wild with the help of Roald Dahl’s ‘George’s Marvellous Medicine’, which has inspired us to conjure up our own unique concoctions, create a list of ingredients and write our own recipes too. Our ingredients included a whole array of ‘tasty’ items such as ‘slimy, slippery slugs’ and ‘wriggly, wet worms’. We worked on developing our noun phrases by including adjectives and using commas in a list too. In our recipes, we explored bossy verbs to start each of our instructional sentences, such as ‘Mix…’, ‘Stir…’, ‘Chop…’ and ‘Blend…’ and quantity phrases inspired by Roald Dahl like, ‘dollop’, ‘smidgen’ and ‘splodge’.
Maths
During Maths this term, we have been looking at multiplying and dividing and have developed our understanding of making equal groups. Through exploring repeat addition and doubles, we have been able to apply these concepts to more tricky word problems too. As well as groupings, we have been on the lookout for arrays in everyday life, such as Lego blocks, cakes and boxes of chocolates and doughnuts. This helped us to understand rows and columns and we used these arrays to help us multiply by counting in 2s, 5s and 10s. We also did some more complex counting in 3s, 4s and 6s using the skip counting method on our number lines. This developed into sharing equal groups in order to understand division too. Using counters, has really helped and we even made some of our own salt dough doughnuts which we hope to use to create our own arrays.
Science & Topic
Our Topic work has been very much linked with our Science this term, which has enabled us to really get stuck into getting messy and mucky.
In Science, we have been experimenting and investigating a variety of messy mixtures. During our ‘Lively Liquids Week’, we investigated which soapy materials created the best bubbles and explored the question, ‘What shape is a bubble?’ by made our own bubble wands. This also resulted in us creating some beautiful and effective bubble artwork using black card and oil pastels. More marvellous mixing was needed when we made predictions and investigations to see what would happen to a range of materials when they were mixed with water, including whether or not they would dissolve. We had great fun during our ‘Kitchen Capers’ Week, combining Science and Design & Technology by working with dough and getting our hands messy exploring ways in which this material could be manipulated. We were super excited to make our own tasty ice cream, which demonstrated how materials can change from solids into liquids and vice versa.
Keeping with the food theme, we were in awe of the amazing artwork by Carl Warner, who created landscapes out of food. This led to us creating our own collaged landscapes using pictures of bread, fruits and vegetables.
During Art and Design, we have been using primary colours to create secondary colours and looking at tone and shade ranges within colours such as purple and orange. This exploration of colour has not stopped there.
Through ‘The Colour Monster’ book, by Anna llenas, we have made links between colours, feelings and emotions and used this inspiration in our most recent English lessons to create imaginative similes when describing our own Brave Colour Monster.
2019/20
Term 5 and Term 6
Spanish Bulls have thoroughly enjoyed working on their number bonds and becoming familiar with numbers to 50. They have enjoyed using the greater than, less than crocodile to compare numbers and recognise patterns in numbers. Children have also learnt to count in twos, fives and tens and identify tens and ones in numbers.
Writing
Children have enjoyed completing writing linked to topic lessons this term. They loved learning about The Great Fire of London and the events that took place. They studied Samuel Pepys and were inspired to write their own diaries as if they were at The Great Fire of London.
Spanish Bulls also enjoyed completing writing related to science and art week. They wrote about things that they could identify in the natural world.
History
Spanish Bulls thoroughly enjoyed completing silhouette paintings linked to The Great Fire of London. Children explored various textures, shapes and patterns during this activity.
Year one studied two historic figures this term, Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole. Children enjoyed learning about the significance of their lives and they were inspired by the nurses that they became. Children enjoyed looking at the similarities and differences between the two nurses through a Venn diagram.
Art
Spanish Bulls loved producing art work in relation to science and art week. They learnt about evergreen and deciduous trees and wrote facts about the two variations. Children created art work through painting and textures to explore their findings.
Science
Spanish Bulls have loved learning about the natural world. As well as producing fantastic writing, they also enjoyed exploring the playground and discovering many aspects of the natural world such as trees, plants, dirt, sand and bark.
Term 4
Year 1 loved learning about Palm Sunday in relation to the Easter story. Children enjoyed imagining that they were a follower of Jesus in Jerusalem, cheering for Him as He entered the city. They made their own Palm leaves using various craft materials and thought about what they would say to Jesus if he were here in Maidstone today.
Drama linked to RE/English (Spoken language)
Children enjoyed completing role play in relation to RE. They thought about famous people that they could relate to, such as the Queen and how they would formally greet her. This fun activity helped children to get into character when thinking about Jesus entering Jerusalem.
Some of the greetings were as follows:
“Your majesty, it is an honour to meet you.”
“Praise be that you have come to our town!”
Art/DT
Spanish Bulls have thoroughly enjoyed their topic of Dinosaurs over the last two terms. A highlight from the term was making dinosaur masks and exploring different materials and textures during the process. Children were able to identify various materials and decide which materials would best for their mask. They could also describe the different textures and how they felt.
Maths
Spanish Bulls enjoyed learning about shapes this term. They learnt how to identify 2D and 3D shapes and compare the similarities and differences between the two. They also looked at different patterns and identified which shapes made up each pattern. Children also enjoyed completing shape hunts around the classroom and looking at the shapes of real objects.
Computing/Science
Year 1 enjoyed researching dinosaur facts this term in order to broaden their knowledge of animal types. They thought about the type of animal dinosaurs were, whether they were herbivores, carnivores or omnivores and what type of habitat they would have lived in. Children used various forms of ICT to support and present their learning.
Term 3
RE
Year 1 have enjoyed learning about Christianity this term and how Jesus was a good friend. They learnt different bible stories and thought about how Jesus responded in various scenarios. Children developed their understanding of what being a good friend means.
Maths
Year 1 thoroughly enjoyed learning the part whole model. They learnt this method in various ways and a highlight was going outside to practice on the playground. This model supported them well with learning addition and subtraction.
Science
Spanish Bulls have enjoyed learning about animals this term. They studied the different animal groups and learnt about herbivores, omnivores and carnivores. Children created their own Venn diagrams to demonstrate their knowledge.
Topic
Spanish Bulls learnt about continents and seas this term. They located countries on a map and labelled their own maps. They also learnt a song to support their learning.
English
Spanish Bulls thoroughly enjoyed writing their own dinosaur poems based on facts they had learnt about dinosaurs. They were inspired by the book ‘Dinosaurs Love Underpants’ by Claire Freedman. They enjoyed using their imagination and thinking carefully about rhyming words.
Jubilee University
Year one enjoyed their week of Jubilee University this term. They learnt how to keep themselves safe in various ways. A highlight was learning about how the school keeps us safe and what the school has in place to protect everyone.
Term 2
Topic
Year 1 have loved their topic of ‘Splendid Skies’. They developed their knowledge of different types of technology and learnt how to use technology in purposeful ways, by creating and filming weather reports. Children worked in groups to create a weather chart and practised presenting the weather to each other and the class. They used learn pads to film each other and manipulated the content in various ways. This was a thoroughly enjoyable experience.
Maths
Year 1 enjoyed learning about ‘greater than, less than and equal to’ in maths. At first, they found this quite a challenging topic but they loved exploring different practical ways of using numbers and greater than and less than signs. By the end of the topic, all children were able to clearly demonstrate their understanding and they felt a sense of accomplishment.
Flying kites!
Spanish Bulls had a fantastic start to the term and thoroughly enjoyed flying the kites that they made at the end of Term 1. The children predicted which kite they thought would fly the best based on the material it was made from. Children tested their results outside and concluded that the plastic kite flew more successfully than the paper kite. Children then recorded their results scientifically.
Nativity
The highlight for Year one this term has been The Nativity. The children have thoroughly enjoyed their preparation for the production. They have been working hard to learn their lines, songs and develop their acting skills. Children have loved learning about the Christmas story and have enjoyed making various Christmas crafts and props to use in their production.
Term 1
Spanish Bulls have had a fantastic start to the year! They enjoyed doing a mini beast workshop and investigating the playground to discover the mini beasts that we have living on our doorstep. They thoroughly enjoyed making mini beast fossils and using clay to mould their shape.
Music
Year 1 loved exploring instruments to make different sounds related to weather. They were each given a stimulus which they then worked in groups to compose a piece of music to perform to each other.
Art/DT
Our class also loved exploring materials to make kites this term. They followed step by step instructions to use plastic, dowells and many other resources to make a kite. The children then did an experiment outside to compare their kite against kites with other materials. This was a great experience!
Maths
Spanish Bulls have loved using numicon to explore numbers this term. They have looked at representing numbers in different ways, ordering numbers and solving one more/less number problems.
