Term 4 

English:

In English this term we have been writing our own journey stories. We first read and learnt our model text about a meerkat called Marley who lived in Malaysia and wanted to visit his family, who lived at London Zoo. Throughout his journey he encountered different problems, these included, not being able to see through the large crowds at Buckingham Palace and the rain when he was queueing for the London Eye.

Once we knew this story really well, we then wrote our own journey story based on the features we had explored in Marley’s story. We tried our best to use different ideas that we picked up from other stories.

Maths:

In Maths, we are now learning to count and write number to 50. We have learnt that numbers can be partitioned into tens and ones for example 29 is made of 2 tens and 9 ones. We have used ten frames to represent this and help us to understand each value.

Science:

In Science, we have been learning about weather. We noticed that the weather changes as the seasons change. This includes how much precipitation we can expect. Precipitation is when water in the atmosphere falls back to earth. This includes rain, hail, sleet and snow.

German Wolves set up their own experiment to answer their question, ‘How much water falls from the sky when it rains?’ The children decided that they needed a rain gauge to help them to measure how much rain falls. They made predictions about what they thought might happen. We left the rain gauge in a safe place to collect the rain and look forward to seeing what the outcome is!

Music:

In Music, German Wolves  have been learning about beat, tempo, dynamic and pitch and how these affect music. We learnt that beat is like the heart beat of a song and is kept steady throughout. We practised keeping the beat using percussion instruments and body percussion. Tempo is the speed of the music. Dymanic is how loud or quiet the music is being played. Finally, pitch is how high or low the notes of the song is. We had great fun experimenting with these musical techniques by singing and playing different songs focused on the seasons and numbers.

P.E:

In PE, we have been exploring what skills we need to work effectively as a team. Over the term we have found out about different skills that help us to reach this goal. These are trust, cooperation and communication, strategy and problem solving. Each PE lesson gave us a different task to find out how the different skills are important to effective teamwork. Some we found easy, other tasks we found challenging.

Term 3 

English

In English this term, German Wolves have been writing their own postcards from far off locations such as Spain, Turkey and Australia!

We first learnt about what post cards are and about how to successfully write a postcard by analysing a postcard Miss Bidder sent us from her trip to London. She had seen many famous landmarks from the Tower of London, where she saw ravens and the crown jewels, to the London Eye with its spectacular views.

We then wrote a postcard, using the same structure as Miss Bidder, about different attractions in London. Some of us visited the aquarium and saw various sea creatures, others went to London Zoo and Hyde Park.

We then used what we had learnt to write our final postcard from a location of our choice.

Maths

In Maths, we have been learning about place value with numbers within 20. We have discovered that numbers above ten have one ten and some ones. We used ten frames to show this. We have used this knowledge to find missing numbers on number lines, estimate where numbers fall on a blank number line and compare numbers to 20.

Next term we will be using and building on our learning to add and subtract numbers to 20.

Science

In Science, German Wolves have been learning about seasonal change, including the changes that occur across each season, how these changes affect the weather, animals and plants.  

In our first lesson, we wrote predictions about what we expect to see as winter changes into spring. These included how the weather might change, how nature will change around us with different things such as blossom and what changes might happen to how animals live.  

Next, we focused on grass snakes and learnt how they change over the year through the four seasons. We also saw how evergreen and deciduous trees change throughout the course of the year.

We will continue to learn about seasonal change next term investigating the weather and how it changes throughout the seasons of the year.

Music

In Music, we have been exploring beat, tempo, percussion and dynamics. Numbers have been the inspiration and focus for this topic. We learnt that the beat of a song is like the heartbeat. Its stays steady throughout the song. We practised tapping out a steady beat through different songs using body percussion, as well as a variety of percussion instruments such as triangles, drums and guiros.

We learnt that we can count the beat of a song using a count of 8. We could identify this and then practised following a song by applying actions.

Through our music lessons this term we have learnt about different instrument families such as the woodwind, percussion and string families. We have learnt how we can identify which instruments belong to each family by looking at their features or how we play them.

Term 2

English

This term we have been learning more about what life in the 1950’s was like by looking at non- chronological reports. Inspired by the differences and fascinated about how life has changed over 70 decades, we have started to write our own non-chronological reports about everyday life in the 2020’s.

First, we looked at and learnt our model text with actions to help us. We learnt that children went to the cinema on Saturday mornings to watch cartoons and cowboy films for entertainment and that children had an hour and a half lunch break at school! We then planned our own non-chronological reports, including the changes we have noticed with what we now do for entertainment, what our school day is like and the clothes that we wear.

Maths

In maths, we have been adding and subtracting within 10. To help us deepen our learning and solve problems, such as finding the missing part from a whole, we have used part – whole models. This has allowed us to easily see the different values in a number sentence and solve problems.

We have used lots of different manipulatives to help us such as cubes, number lines and tens frames.

Topic

In Topic, we have been discovering what life was like in the 1950’s. We have found out that lots of things have changed in the seven decades since the 50’s including having to visit lots of different shops to be able to buy food, instead of just being able to visit one large supermarket and now having large colour televisions instead of small black and white televisions. We tried watching some black and white children’s programmes from the 1950’s!

We have also analysed maps to be able to spot how locations have changed over time since the 1950s too. What differences can you spot?

Science

In science, German Wolves have been exploring the human senses. We learnt that we have five senses that help us to survive, keep us safe and take in information from the world around us. These are: touch, taste, smell, hearing and sight.

We tested our senses through a range of different experiments. We found out that we have two eyes to help us to see clearer than if we only had one. We tested out sense of touch to see if we could work out what object had been hidden. Finally, we tested our sense of smell to see if we could figure out what unidentified liquids were.

German Wolves have really enjoyed finding out about our senses and can’t wait to find out more!

Term 1 

English:

I am made of glass.

I am small and round.

My centre is colourful.

Children like to play with me.

What am I?

Can you answer this riddle?

In Year 1 we have been learning riddles!  We first learnt two model riddles to help us understand what riddles were and how they were written. We enjoyed trying to work out what the riddles were describing and learning actions to help us remember the riddle. German Wolves cleverly worked out that one was describing a marble and the other a teddy bear.

We explored adjectives, as they are important when writing riddles - they help us to describe the objects to the audience. If we didn’t choose carefully, we might confuse them, and they might not guess right!

Maths

In Maths this term, we have been focusing on recognising and representing numbers to ten.

First, we practised counting forward to ten from zero. When we were confident with this, we learnt to count backwards from ten to zero. We made number tracks and used number lines to help us.

When we were secure with this, we then used this knowledge to help us with finding one more and one less of a given number. To help us we used a range of manipulatives - our favourite resource being cubes. We even began to use inequality symbols < and > to help us to write comparing sentences.

History

In History, we have been learning about ‘Childhood.’ We have found out about where childhood sits  within the stages of life. These are baby, toddler, child, teenager, adult and elderly. We identified that we were in the childhood stage. We then delved deeper and looked at some toys from the past. Some of the toys we could recognise and some we didn’t. We did see that they were made of different materials from what we were used to such as porcelain, metal and wood, whereas our toys were mostly made of plastic. We are looking forward to finding out what ‘Childhood’ was like in the 1950’s!

Spanish

In Spanish, we have been learning how to greet people and start conversations.

We learned that there are formal ways of greeting people, which we would use if we were greeting someone we did not know or someone with high authority. To say hello formally we would say “Buenos días!” whereas, if we did know the person and we were friends we could use informal language such as “Hola!”.

We have learnt different phrases such as how to introduce ourselves “Mi llamo…” as well as how to ask how someone is “Cómo estás?”. We are excited to learn more Spanish!

Term 6 - 2023/24

English

As part of our topic ’Under the Sea’, we have explored many storybooks such as ‘Tiddler’, ‘Commotion in the Ocean’, ‘Come Away from the Water, Shirley’ and ‘Rainbow Fish’.  We have explored how stories relate to our own experiences such as how we can be kind friends and practiced our skills with recalling stories and rhyming words.

Topic

The children have enjoyed playing in the pirate area in the classroom.  They have written messages in bottles, pirate stories and treasure maps.  The children have also enjoyed drawing their favourite sea creatures carefully referring to pictures and photographs from our encyclopaedia.

Maths

During this term, English Lions have been building on their knowledge of addition, particularly focused on number bonds to ten.  We have used different manipulatives to help us to work out number sentences.  We have learned actions to help us remember how to write a number sentence and this will help in Year 1. We have played games to help us remember number bonds.  We have also started to work on division, sharing gold coins between two pirates.  The children enjoyed mathematical activities and games.