Year 1 blog

• Friday 6 December 2024 The Christmas Story On Thursday, we went to St Paul's Church in Letchworth to learn about and experience the first ever Christmas. The children went on journey learning about the message sent to Mary, the journey to Bethlehem, the gifts given by the wise men and finally ending with the birth of baby Jesus in the stable.
• Friday 29 November 2024 Family Learning Week A big thank you to all the families that just us for family learning week. The children have all thoroughly enjoyed designing, making and painting their clay fish. It was so lovely to have families join us in our classroom to help create our whole school art project. We can't wait to see the final results!
• Friday 22 November 2024 Our own toys workshop This week, the children all brought in their favourite toys. We created our own toys workshop where we shared and enjoyed playing with each others toys. It was great to see such a range of toys. The toys workshop will help us to answer our History big question: "Do we have better toys than our grandparents?"
• Friday 15 November 2024 Anti-bullying Week - Odd Socks Day To celebrate anti-bullying week 2024, year 1 have completed a variety of activities from exploring adults they trust, to designing their own odd socks. The class were challenged to see if they could represent themselves within their odd socks design.
• Friday 25 October 2024 History of Toys To launch our new History topic, we went to the British Schools Museum in Hitchin. The children had a history of toys workshop and they got to enjoy a number of activities including playing with some Victorian toys and making their own Thaumatrope (an optical illusion toy).
• Friday 18 October 2024 Healthy Snacks As part of our Design and Technology unit of learning, the children have been working hard to design, make and evaluate a fruit or vegetable based snack.
• Friday 11 October 2024 Mr Postmouse Letter Writing This week the children have been writing their own letters, based on the story Here Comes Mr Postmouse. We have been looking at the features of a letter and exploring different things the characters in the story might say to one another.
• Friday 4 October 2024 Pineapples grew in Hitchin? Year 1 have been learning about the history of Hitchin and in particular The Priory. In the 18th Century John Radcliffe built a hothouse inside The Priory to grow a variety of exotic fruits including pineapples. On our local visit to The Priory, we sketched the building and created a journey map with natural resources found in the grounds of The Priory. It was a great morning despite the rain and a excellent way to bring our learning to life.
• Friday 27 September 2024 Making maths fun! The transition from Reception to Year 1 can be challenging; however, by making our lessons fun and practical, the children are embracing this challenge. In particular, we have made maths more engaging by exploring 'one less than a number' in various ways—going outside, using counters, and jumping on number tracks.
• Friday 20 September 2024 What has this house seen and heard? The children had the opportunity to share their "room in a shoebox" with each other. It was great for the children and I to learn more about everyone through the clues found in their rooms. This will help to support our learning around our local area - Hitchin and the history of the Priory.
• Friday 13 September 2024 Sorting objects As part of our maths learning we have been exploring how we can sort objects into groups. Through our exploration we sorted a variety of different objects in multiple ways. We enjoy making our learning practical and fun!
• Friday 6 September 2024 The Colour Monster! We have nearly made in through the first few days of Year 1. The children have been settling in well to their new class and learning the new routines.
• Friday 14 June 2024 What's blooming? As part of our Stem Week, year 1 went on a nature walk around the school looking for plants and flowers. We used our scientific enquiry skills to identify any of the flowers we didn't know the names of. We all realised how lucky we were to have a school with so many different beautiful flowers.
• Friday 24 May 2024 What do Christians believe God is like? This term the children have been exploring and trying to find the answer to a Big Question in RE 'What do Christians believe God is like?'. The children have enjoyed listening to stories from the bible, such as The Lost Son and discussing what this can teach us about God. Together the children came up with different words and phrases to describe God and we turn them into a prayer.
• Friday 17 May 2024 Fun with fractions Fractions can be a tricky concept to grasp so by cutting up jam sandwiches the children were able to explore and practice different ways to find a quarter of a shape. Hopefully the children can remember the importance of find a quarter and not just how yummy the jam sandwiches were!
• Friday 10 May 2024 Field study in Hitchin To continue our learning around human and physical geography, we visited Hitchin town center to identify as many different human and physical geographic features.
• Friday 3 May 2024 Aaaaaaah it's a spider!!! This week year 1 have been putting their 3D paper skills to the test. The children worked collaboratively to roll and shape newspaper to create a giant 3D spider.
• Thursday 25 April 2024 Planting seeds In this week’s Science lesson, we planted some sweet pea seeds. We have been taking care of them by watering them daily, we can’t wait to see our beautiful flowers grow soon! Hopefully we will continue to learn about how best to take care of plants and have the opportunity to plant our sweet peas in our outdoor area when they are ready.
• Friday 19 April 2024 The Lighthouse Keeper's Lunch In English, we began looking at the story of The Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch. We were given some clues to help us make predictions about the story. We then used these clues to support us in retelling the story. We look forward to continuing to improve and develop our writing through the story of The Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch.
• Thursday 28 March 2024 Happy Easter During Holy week, the children have been learning about why Easter is so important to Christians and meaning of different symbols. Christians see eggs as a symbol of resurrection and new life. In RE, the children had the opportunity to design and decorate their own eggs representing what Easter means to them.
• Tuesday 12 March 2024 World Book Day 2024 Year 1 had a wonderful day on Thursday, celebrating World Book Day. All the children came dressed up as one of their favourite non-fiction characters. During our English session the children has the change to share with their friends and write about their own special characters. Throughout the day the children enjoyed many World Book Day activities including listening to an adult reading them a story in Secret Reader and sharing their own booked with this Year 5 buddies during Buddy Reading. To end the celebration of reading, the children all got to see the whole school dressed up for World Book Day in a special World Book Day assembly. It was joyous day, where you could see every child sharing their passion for reading with others.
• Friday 1 March 2024 Dinosaur hunt To launch our new topic we embarked on an artefacts hunt around the school grounds. The children became detectives searching for the clues and working out what linked all the artefacts together. The children guessed the clues were all linked to dinosaurs. We were able to confirm our suspicions by opening the eggs revealing miniature dinosaurs nestled inside! This discovery was a great way to launch our dinosaurs topic, which closely links to our English writing based on the book 'The Odd Egg'.
• Friday 16 February 2024 Celebrating Raksha Bandhan During RE week, Year 1 enjoyed learning about Hindu's traditions and beliefs. To end our week the children learnt about the Hindu Festival Raksha Bandhan, where Hindu's celebrate the bond between brothers and sisters. Hindu's give Rakhi bracelets as a sign of their love and bond between siblings. Year 1 created their own bracelets to share with a sibling or loved one to represent their special bond.
• Friday 2 February 2024 Antarctica
• Friday 19 January 2024 Next Page Books Today, half of the class had the opportunity to walk down to Next Page Books in Hitchin. We listened to 3 books all about snow and ice, one of the books was a non-fiction book, we learnt at penguins that live in Antarctica. The children then voted for their favourite and we purchased this book to share with the rest of the class and keep in our class library.
• Friday 12 January 2024 Taking care of our environment Despite the colder temperatures this week, we have taken our learning outside to observe the signs of winter, search for minibeasts and collect natural resources to make journey strips. The children thoroughly enjoyed taking their learning outside. We also discussed as a class how we can take care of our school environment – ideas included: picking up litter, not picking leaves or flowers, and not scaring any birds or wildlife. When creating our journey strips, we made sure to only collect natural resources that has fallen from trees or resources laying on the ground, in order to protect our environment.
• Friday 1 December 2023 Wood, metal, plastic, rubber, & rock This week, Year 1 participated in an interactive workshop facilitated by STEMPOINT. The children delved into material exploration, identifying the composition and properties of various different objects. The children explored the most suitable fabric to effectively block out sunlight, carefully choosing the optimal material for curtains. Inspired by the tale of the Three Little Pigs, the children applied their knowledge by determining the most effective structure to safeguard the pigs using only cocktail sticks and mini gems.
• Friday 17 November 2023 Family Learning Week It has been a privilege to welcome you all to our classroom this week, for our annual family learning week. Your participation in our literacy lessons has added a special touch to our learning environment and the children thoroughly enjoyed your company. I hope that you enjoyed yourself and were immersed in our "Toys in Space" story.
• Friday 10 November 2023 Part-whole models
• Friday 3 November 2023 Toys Workshop
• Friday 20 October 2023 Human and Physical Geography This week, we went on a walk around the school to identify human and physical geographic features. It was a competition to see which groups could find the most human features and the most physical features.
• Friday 6 October 2023 Number line fun Year 1 practiced drawing number lines.
• Friday 29 September 2023 Celebrating Sukkot
• Friday 22 September 2023 Year 1 become meteorologists As part of our science work, we have been measuring and recording information about the weather. We created a rain gauge to measure how much rain had fallen and a wind vane to measure the wind direction.
• Friday 15 September 2023 Getting creative In art this week, year 1 were given the opportunity to get creative using the medium of chalk.
• Friday 8 September 2023 First week back at school! Going back to school after the school holidays can be a daunting task, but all the children have taken this challenge in their stride. I have spent lots of time getting to know everyone and we have had lots of fun.
• Friday 14 July 2023 Learning about time in Year 1 Year 1 have been learning about time this week, learning and singing the months of the years and the days of the week. We have moved on to understanding the relationships between seconds, minutes and hours.
• Thursday 22 June 2023 Learning about inequality symbols in Year 1 Year 1 have been learning how to use inequality symbols when comparing numbers, first with the same amount of tens, and then any numbers under 100.
• Thursday 22 June 2023 Growing climbing French beans Year 1 have proved to have properly green thumbs! The climbing French beans we planted several weeks ago are enjoying this hot weather much more than the humans and shooting up the willow wigwam. If we keep our fingers crossed, we might even be able to harvest beans before the end of term.
• Friday 9 June 2023 Seaside display Our year one seaside corner! Well done and thank you to all the children who have brought their seaside box into school. They have all done so well and they have enjoyed looking at them and sharing them this week. So many lovely creative ideas have been used. Thank you parents for your help and support.
• Thursday 25 May 2023 Jam sandwiches and maths In maths in Year 1 we have been learning about fractions. Today we were learning how to find a quarter of an object or a shape.
• Friday 19 May 2023 An exciting visit to the seaside Rather early on a cloudy Wednesday, Year 1 set off to the seaside to carry on their Geography learning. Despite a chilly forecast, it was quite mild when we arrived and set up camp on a deserted beach.
• Friday 12 May 2023 A local walk for Year 1 As part of Geography this term, Year 1 embarked on a walk from the school to Windmill Hill in the centre of Hitchin. Our objective was to see if we could recognise and record different geographical features of Hitchin and sort them into physical features (those that occur naturally) and human features (those which have been built into the town).
• Friday 5 May 2023 Learning about the Coronation
• Friday 28 April 2023 Growing plants in science In science, Year 1 have been learning about plants. As part of the topic, they each planted a runner bean seed in soil in a clear cup and have been observing how the plants sprout and then grow.
• Thursday 30 March 2023 An Easter visit to St Paul's Church, Letchworth Year 1 were delighted to be able to visit St Paul's Church in Letchworth to witness a re-enactment of the events of Holy Week. We arrived to the sounds of people cheering as they laid palm leaves at the feet of Jesus, had wine ( grape juice!) and bread when we took part in the Last Supper and witnessed the betrayal of Jesus by Judas Iscariot.
• Friday 24 March 2023 A visit from Father Ian In RE, Year 1 have been learning about why Easter is important to Christians. We were very fortunate to welcome Father Ian from Holy Saviour Church into our classroom one afternoon. We shared out hot cross buns while Father Ian taught us about Holy Week and the significance of different events within that.
• Friday 17 March 2023 Paper birds challenge in Science Week The school challenge for Science Week this year was to create a paper bird using only A4 paper and scissors, which was quite a challenge for the adults in Year 1, never mind the children!
• Thursday 9 March 2023 Learning about Antarctica We were delighted to welcome Susi Grant, a marine biologist, to Year 1 this week. She very generously offered to visit us to tell us what it is like to live and work in Antarctica.
• Friday 3 March 2023 World Book Day Guess who
• Thursday 2 March 2023 Mysterious eggs in Year 1 Year 1 were very excited that a strange and mysterious creature has laid eggs in the school grounds. The eggs were surprisingly large and suggestions for the animal that laid them ranged from snakes, to crocodiles to turtles. We haven't actually sighted any of those animals in our school grounds yet...
• Friday 10 February 2023 Comparing the weather in different places As part of our geography topic, we have been finding out about the weather in Antarctica and comparing it to the weather in Hitchin.
• Friday 10 February 2023 Subtracting by counting back In maths this week, Year 1 have been learning different ways of subtracting. In this game, we were learning to subtract by counting back from 20. The first to get to zero exactly was the winner.
• Friday 3 February 2023 Learning about the celebration Vesak Year 1 have been learning about the Buddhist celebration of Vesak, as part of RE Week.
• Friday 27 January 2023 Textiles and the land of ice and snow Year 1 were fortunate to have many willing helpers when we ventured with their art into the land of ice and snow.
• Friday 20 January 2023 Learning about the continents in Year 1 Year 1 children arrived at the beginning of term with some handsome blue globes they had made at home.
• Friday 13 January 2023 Outdoor maths in Year 1 In Year 1 we have been extending our understanding of number lines, now drawing them to 20. We practised filling in blank paper number lines in our classroom and then went outside to draw our own number lines on the playground.
• Friday 9 December 2022 Geography in Year 1
• Friday 2 December 2022 Computing with our Year 5 buddies Year 1 were very excited to have visitors in their classroom recently.
• Wednesday 23 November 2022 Science in Year 1 - Materials Year 1 were delighted that so many relatives were able to come and work with them during Family Learning Week.
• Thursday 10 November 2022 Learning about 2-D shapes Year 1 have been learning about shape this week. They have been identifying, naming and sorting 3-D shapes and then recognizing and building 2-D shapes.
• Friday 4 November 2022 Learning about the part whole model in maths
• Wednesday 12 October 2022 Writing in Year 1 Year 1 are reading about a special postman called Mr Postmouse. He delivers all kinds of things to the animals in his town.
• Friday 30 September 2022 Inequality symbols in maths Year 1 had their thinking caps truly and firmly on this week as they were learning about inequality symbols to match the language of less than, greater than and equal to.
• Friday 23 September 2022 Outdoor Maths Year 1 went outside to practise maths today. We were learning to understand the meaning of '1 less'. We were given a number and then had to find one less than that number from any of the resources in the Silver Birches.
• Friday 16 September 2022 Our Journey Sticks Year 1 took their learning outside on a sunny day to start their mapping skills unit by creating a Journey Stick. They walked through the school grounds and as they went, they picked up leaves, small sticks, the odd flower and even a feather and stuck them on their stick in the order in which they found them. Next we will map the object to the place it was found.
• Friday 10 June 2022 Victorian Seaside In History, we are comparing seaside holidays of the past and present to answer the question: How has the seaside changed since our grandparents’ day
• Tuesday 7 June 2022 Celebrating the Platinum Jubilee To celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, Year One created some group poems describing the characteristics of the Queen after learning about her life and service. We learnt so much about her achievements and the qualities of a leader.
• Wednesday 25 May 2022 Outdoor Learning Week This week, we are celebrating Outdoor Learning Week. Today, we conducted a wild plant hunt in our school grounds and identified lots of different wild plants. We looked at the similarities and differences between them using scientific language and worked with our partners to complete tallies. We also learnt how to identify some common trees by looking closely at the different leaves. We enjoyed finding these around the school and seeing if we could name them.
• Thursday 19 May 2022 Sports Day Well done, Year One, for such fabulous participation in Sports Day! We were so impressed by your sportsmanship, your encouragement of others and the way in which you celebrated your peers for their efforts and successes. It was wonderful to see the children collaborating with the older children and we saw koinonia in abundance. We are already looking forward to next year!
• Thursday 19 May 2022 Christian Aid in Year One This year for Christian Aid, the children learnt about andcelebrated women from the past and present who have broken down barriers through showing determination andovercoming difficulties. The children explored different activities in the Silver Birches, led by the Worship Acolytes. The activities included decorating pebbles using positive colours or drawing an image to represent a woman in history. The children could also create an amulet using clay to depict a symbol of strength. The children had different opportunities to reflect and be calm, thinking about the messages from the day. The Worship Acolytes led the day so well and we enjoyed sharing our learning back in the classroom.
• Friday 6 May 2022 Off to Southwold This week, Year One went to Southwold to explore the geographical features of a British seaside town and to see the features of seasides from long ago. We had the most wonderful day with our friends, playing in the sea, jumping waves, building castles and forts, and enjoying our time together. We noticed some different features in Southwold to compare with the features of our own town, including the pier and the lighthouse.
• Monday 25 April 2022 Mapping our local area Last week, we visited Windmill Hill to explore the geography of our local area. We observed the different geographical features and sketched them with our partners. The following day, we created maps of our walk and wrote a recount in our English lesson. We practised using the -ed suffix and time sequencing words to write our recount in the past tense.
• Wednesday 23 March 2022 Steel Pans Workshop Today,we enjoyed a wonderful workshoplearning about steel pans and how to play some notes.We even explored playing at different volumes for effect and practised playing different notes. We learnt the correct technique and most of all, we had a lot of fun and made all the adults smile with our wonderful music. We hope you enjoy seeing some photographs!
• Friday 18 March 2022 STEM Day Year One

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