Year 1

2023 - 2024

Year 1 had a great afternoon starting off their Dinosaur Planet topic by being Palaeontologists out in the sand pit looking for fossils.

Year 1 and year 5 really enjoyed sharing their work about the topic of Space today. The conversations were great with lots of awesome scientific vocabulary being used and there is no doubt that all the children learnt something from each other.

On Friday Year 1 enjoyed Number Day with lots of different activities throughout the day.

White class have been enjoying investigating wheel size and how it effects distance today. They will use this information to inform their decisions when making Moon buggies at the end of the term.

Term 2

Term 1

2022 - 2023

White class have had great fun in athletics this week learning to throw in different disciplines.

Year 1 enjoyed their Healthy Bodies Week last week. They ended the week making a healthy snack they named as the 'Brazil Shimmy Kebab'. They used knives to slice, cut and chop tropical fruit into chunks. Seeds were scooped out and the fruit was put on kebab sticks. As you can see, the children enjoyed the whole experience and asked if they could do it every week!

Year 1 had a fantastic day on our trip to the Turner in Margate to see Beatriz Milhazes' beautiful collages. The children were so engaged, They loved the train journey and walking across the beach too.

It is Geography Fieldwork week for White class and we have decided to investigate what the Wonders of Minster Primary School are. we started by polling people in the school their favourite place and why, then voted on the top 5 places.  We are creating information posters to put up so everyone in the school community knows the wonders of Minster primary school. 

White Class have begun learning about money this week. We started learning about unitising and how much each coin is worth before becoming shop keepers for the day. We will continue learning about money this week learning about coins, notes and adding money.

Year 1 have been really enjoying their topic, Rio de Vida and have been learning how to use percussion instruments for Samba rhythms and investigating fruit from Brazil.

White Class have had a brilliant week being introduced to their new topic RIO DE VIDA. We have learnt about samba dancing, exotic fruit and even created our own samba music and dance.  

Year 1 have been enjoying playing tennis and having a rally with a buddy. We have learnt how to hold our rackets and tried to do forehand and backhand to send a ball back to our partners.

White class have been learning about patience in collective worship this week. They started by taking some brilliant photos of wildlife which got us thinking about spring time and the patience we need to have to see flowers bloom. We decided to seed bomb an area of the pond to help our local wildlife and the bees by introducing wild  pollinators.  As you can see, they had a great time and now we need to be patient to watch our tiny seeds grow.

White class have been working hard this week learning about position and direction. Today we focused on above and below, using our sorting animals to create our own word problems.

We have had a lot of fun in our OAA activity in PE today. We had to work with our buddy to find all the answers to clues about London landmarks. The answers were hidden inside cones with letters on and we had to take turns to find the correct cone letter, move back to our partner before finding the next answer.

Year 1 have been investigating The Great Fire of London and we took our learning outside to act out some of the events. Can you see us waking up in Pudding Lane, running out of the city and finding a safe place on the River Thames? We also acted out our return to the city after the fire was over and trying to rebuild the streets.

White class have been using the computer suite to make images of London transport, this is part of our Bright Lights, Big City topic. The children picked an image to recreate before learning how to save the document. We will be using the skills learnt to recreate London landmarks.

Red Class have loved hearing and discussing special stories in our story area this week.

Year one are doing OAA in thier Fridays Pe which consists of team building communication and social activities. Today the children had to cross the swamp as a team without touching the floor, after this they worked in groups to try to get from inside the hoop to outside the hoop without using their hands or touching the floor. We ended with yoga poses and some mindful breathing.

Year 1 are learning hand eye co-ordination through tennis this term, we have been practicing our control with keepy-ups and have learnt to serve. Today we practiced a rally and will move on to trying the forehand shot next week.

White Class have been looking at London landmarks this week. We discussed how to find them on a map and the children gave instructions on how to get a counter to a landmark moving a counter. The children then went outside to create their own maps and used compass directions in their instructions.

Red Class have been investigating equal groups in our Maths lesson. We have made cube towers to make a number of equal groups and adding them together to find a total.

Red Class have been learning to observe closely for Science this week. We have been investigating fossil details in lots of ways and here we have represented what we have seen using clay.

Red class have enjoyed learning about 'Capacity' out in the playground today. We have been using the words, full, half full, half empty, nearly full, nearly empty to describe our containers.

Year 1 have really enjoyed combining paper, card, ribbon, beading and more to create a portrait collage of themselves. The children tried to capture their moods, feelings and expressions through colour and textures.

 White class have been researching endangered animals this week using IPads, atlas and books to find out important information about their chosen animal.  After that, they created an information poster as a table.

White class have been expirementing with measuring mass this week using a balance scale to find out which item is heavier and which one is lighter.  They have also been programming BeeBots  in computing using algorithms they have created.

We have also been working hard on investigating portraits and have now made our own using colour in response to significant artists like Pablo Picasso.

Please can you write: Red Class have been doing some great learning this week. We have been investigating dinosaurs using QR codes to locate information on a website. We have been reading with our reading buddies to record facts together. We have also made 'flow diagrams' to show what we think happened to the Earth and the dinosaurs millions of years ago.

In Geography this week we have been discussing how the world changed since the dinosaurs walked on it, we investigated the seas and oceans around the UK using globes and an atlas.

Year 1 experimented with using different mediums to create color portraits in the style of significant artists like Dora Maar and Pablo Picasso. The children gave thier portraits a title before taking part in a gallery experience.

Year 1 are learning how to use their core strength on apparatus. We are stretching and curling our bodies and making sure we think about pointing our toes too!

The children are very proud of what they have learnt to do.

This week the children have been working on mastering number and showing a 2-digit number in four different ways. We have also started to learn about length and height. 

Year 1 have been showing great learning in representing 2-digit numbers in lots of different ways.

Year 1 have been learning how to use a number line in different ways to subtract.

We have also been working together to sort the properties of everyday objects in our Science lesson. We gave names to our sorting groups such as Planet Stretchy or Planet Transparent to go with our Moon Zoom topic.

Year 1 have been enjoying their Hockey lessons and have been practising how to use a hockey stick to control the ball along a pathway and to pass back and forth to each other through a gate of cones. 

Year 1 have been busy making their lanterns for the church. They will hang from the trees lit up with a little candle. Take a look when you hear they are ready.

Year 1 have been enjoying their Splendid Skies topic this term. We have been learning all about finding the difference between amounts in Maths, getting Red and White classes together for some fun wellbeing activities, learning about a famous artist who makes cloud installations, testing the weather and finding out about the seasons.

Tree planting. we are looking after a tree as a class, and gave it space, soil, water, air and sunlight all the things it needs to survive.

Year 1 have been doing lots of active learning and using our playground to apply what we know. We have investigated the artist, Andy Goldsworthy and created our own artwork from nature. We have made number lines to help us calculate using the part-part whole method in Maths. We have also made 3-D model maps of our school, after investigating maps of woodlands in our topic stories.

Year 1 have been enjoying their new learning since the beginning of term. They have been finding amounts of objects in maths and comparing them using symbols. They have investigated trees and woodland settings as well as sorting animals and plants that live there. They have also enjoyed listening to stories set in a woodland and making designs of what a woodland could look like using small parts from the classroom. 

2021 - 2022

Year 1 have loved reading for pleasure under the trees in the school garden this week. 

Year 1 has a fantastic trip to The Turner in Margate on one of the hottest days of the year. We enjoyed painting like JMW Turner on the steps outside looking out to sea. We sat in front of paintings by the artist and made soundscapes and then we got to have sensory boxes to develop our own artistic ideas. The fact that the train was delayed on the way back didn't seem to matter to the children, who just enjoyed the extra time chatting away and enjoying their trip.

Year 1 have had a great Healthy Bodies week so far. We have done a lot of different kinds of exercise such as Movement to Music by the grandstand, Mindful Yoga in the classroom doing 'downward dog' and 'table top', making healthy flatbread and chopping up our salad, learning about keeping our teeth healthy and improving our lap scores around the playground. 

Year 1 had a great first day back today for their new topic, Rio de Vida! They made fantastic headdresses and learnt all about carnival in Brazil.

Year 1 have done some amazing portraits of the Queen. They used graded pencils to sketch and place the features correctly, then they expertly used watercolours to add in the special details to show the Queen in her bright clothes. What a Jubilee celebration of the Queen as she is today!

'Year 1 have so enjoyed making and testing out their model cars. They have learnt so many skills as well as lots of resilience and independence.

The children in Year 1 have been learning how to navigate websites about dinosaur information. After getting into Reading Buddy pairs, the children had to select the correct dinosaur from an alphabetical list. They then had to read lots of facts to build up a profile.

Year 1 are really enjoying this term's topic, Dinosaur Planet. We went outside on a dinosaur fossil hunt for our first day back and to their huge surprise, the children found a giant dinosaur egg hidden in a ditch at the back of our Forest School area. 

It has been taken away for a closer inspection. What dinosaur baby could be inside? 

In Year 1 we have been investigating chronology as part of our topic in lots of different ways. Here we are using time lines but we have also made our own family trees and learnt about the vocabulary to do with the passing of time. 

Year 1 really enjoyed their cheerleading taster session today. They copied a pattern and then got into their houses to create their own cheerleading performance. The children added in extra twirls, shakes and wiggles to make their group stand out!

'kites'

 'Year 1 so enjoyed their kite making day for their Design and Technology topic.

We learnt how to design our product, make it and then evaluate it. Part of the evaluation was seeing if we could get it to fly in the air, even though it was not a windy day. Some of them really did go up in the air!

Year 1 have shown some amazing skills in their gymnastics over this term. We have learnt to balance on 'points' and 'patches', which you can see from the photographs. We have learnt to point our toes and show our core strength in holding a tricky balance for 5 seconds.

Year 1 and Year 4 partnered up this week for some reading as our classes are 'reading buddies'.  We read our own books to each other as well as the younger ones choosing a book that they would like their reading buddy to read to them. Both classes enjoyed it so much and look forward to our next meeting in a few weeks.

Lots more learning outside for Year 1! We investigated woodland homes for woodland animals and took a toy outside to build a safe, cosy home for them.

We made crowns using interesting treasures collected from the woodland areas in our school. We used our finished crown to help us write instructions on how to make one as well. We even had a parade wearing them around school.

We had a lovely sunny afternoon to do our land art. Year 1 were using their learning about the famous land artist, Andy Goldsworthy to develop design techniques using colour, pattern and texture with natural objects. 

Year 1 have been enjoying our outside areas around school. We have been investigating woodland and trees. We have been finding out about different types of trees and using the words 'deciduous' and 'evergreen' to describe them.

We have been very busy with our Maths in Year 1 so far. We have been learning to count and sort by different criteria and compare different amounts of objects and numbers. We have been learning to write our numbers correctly and use the symbols for 'greater than' and 'less than'.

We have enjoyed doing Write Dance in hall all together. This helps us to strengthen the muscles needed for our handwriting.

2019 - 2020