Welcome to Birch Class! 

We are Year 1 and we are excited to share our learning journey with you. You can find out everything we will be doing and follow how our learning is going with lots of updates and photos! 

Happy browsing!  

Autumn Term

Spring Term

Summer Term

Our Learning...

Home learning - 7th July 2022

We had lots of fun investigating colour for Science week. Have a go at this cool activity that we tried in class, we made a rainbow by separating the colours but you could try practising different ways of arranging the skittles. Watch the video below to see how it works...the magic doesn't last long so keep your eyes on your plate...

Fractions...

Half or not half? Quarter or not a quarter?

We have been investigating fractions. We have looked at halves and quarters of numbers, followed by halves and quarters of shapes. We had lots of fun folding paper to see if we could make equal halves or quarters!

Here is some of our Maths learning from the last two weeks...

Hand Puppets...

We designed and made our own puppets from the story Little Red Riding Hood...

Seasonal Tree Paintings

Here are our completed seasonal trees...

Platinum Jubilee Celebrations and Outdoor Learning Day!

We had lots of fun learning about the Queen and her life. We practised putting photos of her on a timeline and thought carefully about those in our living memory and those from before we were born. We watched a video about the crown jewels and thought they were amazing!

We created crowns for our jubilee celebrations! During outdoor learning day we completed a scavenger hunt before making carriages out of crates and cable reels or balconies to wave from.

Science: Seasonal Changes in Trees

Throughout Year 1 we look at seasonal changes in Science and observe changes in and around the school. We have been learning about trees and the difference between deciduous and evergreen trees. We have thought about how deciduous trees change across the years and created some paintings to show our observations. Here are some photos of us creating the trees. Watch this space for our finished paintings! :) 

Pentecost - How do we know God is always with us?

In RE we have been learning about the Christian festival of Pentecost and the story of Jesus ascending into heaven leaving his disciples with a promise! We waved streamers to represent the fire in the story and then completed Pentecost crafts to make a hanging display in the classroom.

English: Report Writing - Bats

We have explored non-chronological reports and how they are written. Our focus book was about Bats. We practised exploring the classroom wearing blindfolds and using our ears to guide us (with a partner close by!). It was strange not using our eyes to find our way!

Then we each wrote a report about Bats.

Maths - Arrays

We have investigated the language of multiplication and practised making arrays to represent the 2, 5 and 10 times tables. We had great fun watching 'Multiplication Boy' on BBC bitesize...see the link below our pictures to watch how he works things out! 

Have a look at some of our learning about arrays. We practised finding the maths in pictures and in everyday objects then created arrays to match...

Geography - The 5 Oceans

We have started learning about the 5 oceans of the world - Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Southern and Arctic.

If you log in to Purple Mash you can play the oceans quiz. I have set it as a 2do if you would like to practise at home, you should receive a notification when you log in.

Practise at home with the song we listened to in class...

Maths - Sharing

We have started to learn about multiplication and division. This week we have practised sharing numbers up to 20 into equal and unequal groups. We have learnt that even numbers can be shared equally and that odd numbers cannot, leaving a remainder of 1. We worked hard sharing even and odd numbers into 2 groups with our partners.

Home Learning 28th April 2022 - The Little Red Hen

Follow the link to help your child learn the story of The Little Red Hen off by heart. We have practised lots in class and they are becoming really confident. 

Many thanks 

Religious Education

In RE we have been considering why Christians pray to God. We learnt that Jesus taught his followers how to pray and what they should include in their prayers through 'The Lords Prayer'.

Tom and Tessa are characters who help us in our RE learning, they challenged us to re-arrange the Lords Prayer into the correct order in 5 minutes!

Multiplication - Counting in 5s

We learnt to count in 5s. One partner had a sticker with a multiple of 5 on and the other partner had to position them correctly in the 5x table. Here we are once we had worked our way into the correct position...

Counting in 2s, 5s and 10s

We have had great fun practising skip counting using these songs...

Jigsaw - Relationships

We have considered actions that make people kind friends and unkind friends. We sorted them into categories and hope to be the kindest friends that we can be to each other. 

Spring Hunt

In Science, we look at seasonal changes. We went on a Spring hunt in the school grounds to see if we could spot any signs of Spring. Lewis took some photos of our hunt. We wrote about what we see in Spring time, check it out.

Perhaps you could use the Spring Hunt Checklist at home on a walk or in your garden.

Designing a Puppet

Following on from our joining materials activity we started to look at hand puppets. We read the story of 'Little Red Riding Hood' together and then had to choose a character from the story to make a puppet of.

Have a look at our designs, we are really proud of them...

Design Technology - Joining Materials

We are going to be making our own puppets, which we are very excited about. To do this, we had to practise joining materials in different ways. We practised using a stapler, safety pins and PVA to join pieces of felt together. The safety pins were super tricky!

Have a look at the pictures to see how well we did. Unfortunately the metal went a bit rusty when our learning was in storage during our time in the hall; they were shiny silver when we started. We enjoyed discussing what had happened to them though.

Celebrating Easter

We have discussed the Easter story and practised sequencing the main events in the correct order. We recognise that this is both a sad and happy story for Jesus' followers. We looked at Easter traditions and considered what the symbols of Easter are.

Easter Cards

We used our colour mixing and repeating pattern skills to paint Easter cards for our families.

Maths - Problem Solving

We have been learning about problem solving in Maths this week where both parts are known and then when one part and the end result is known. We have learnt to look at what the problem starts with, what changed and then what the result was. For example:

I have 3 cats and Sarah has 6 cats. How many cats are there altogether?

We start with 3 cats, the change is that Sarah has 6 cats so we add 3 + 6 to get 9 which is how many there are altogether. 

We worked in pairs to put the problems in order of start > change > result. 

Ordering Toys Chronologically

We have spent lots of time thinking about our 'living memory' and the changes that happened before and during our living memory. Have a look at our timeline; the blue line shows all the time that has passed and the green line shows how long we have been alive, Mrs Terris' life is the purple line - we couldn't believe how long it was!

We had no idea what the video, cassette or vinyl records did!

Hertford Museum Visit

We were super lucky to have a visit from Vicki and her collection of old toys from Hertford Museum. We had great fun exploring all the different toys and came up with lots of good questions to ask. 

Maths - Doubling and Halving

In Maths we have been doubling and halving up to 20. The song on the link below really helped us to understand more about doubles, sing along with me at home...

Jigsaw - Being Healthy

This week we talked about making healthy choices and considered items in our houses that may be safe or unsafe. We worked in our hoop groups to sort the items into safe and unsafe categories. 

World Book Day

Today was World Book Day and the theme was 'magic'. We came in as all different characters and took turns on the catwalk to show off how amazing we looked!

International Week

We have spent International Week looking at Kenya and reading the story 'Handa's Surprise'. We have had great fun exploring this country and looked at how we might travel there using Google Maps...we decided we would go by plane and couldn't believe how long it would take us to drive!

This week we have used time words and describing words in our writing, tasted fruits from 'Handa's Surprise', sang and danced along to the song 'Jambo Bwana' and watched how Kenyan's dance, we also mixed colours to create African Necklaces.

Click on the weblink for the song 'Jambo Bwana'.

Fruit Tasting - we tasted pineapple, avocado, mango, banana, tangerine, orange, passionfruit and drank some guava juice!

African Necklaces - We used our colour mixing skills to create colourful African necklaces. 

Maths - Difference

This week we have been finding the difference between two numbers in a variety of ways. This group rolled the dice and made a matching tower. They rolled the dice again, made the tower and worked out the difference between the two towers! It was good fun!

English - The Disgusting Sandwich

The Disgusting Sandwich by Gareth Edwards is always a big hit with Year 1 and this year we really enjoyed reading the story. Poor badger is desperate to get his hands on a yummy peanut butter sandwich but the sandwich ends up rather disgusting! 

We read the story and practised using time words to sequence events. We then used bossy words to begin giving instructions - we loved being bossy! Then...our favourite part...we made our own disgusting sandwiches and wrote instructions to tell people how we made them!

Take a look...

WARNING: Some sandwiches may put you off your food for a while 

Weighing

We had lots of fun weighing different objects. We made predictions about whether objects would be heavier or lighter than another object and then tested with our arms. We practised using pan balances the next day. We used the words heavier, lighter, balanced and unbalanced.

Here are some of us being human scales...

Abstract Art

We looked at the work of abstract artist Beatrice Milhazes. She uses shape and bright colours to create her artwork. With a partner, we practised arranging different coloured circles on paper to create a composition we both liked and then stuck them down to create our abstract art. We love our new classroom display...

The Train Ride

We have been practising writing labels, lists and captions in our English learning. We have been reading 'The Train Ride' by June Crebbin, all about a young girl on a train journey to meet her Grandma! 

We thought about what we might see out of the train window as we whizzed by the world on our journey and wrote lists about what we would pack in our backpacks. Here are some of our ideas...

Positional Language in Maths

Our first unit of Maths explored Positional Language. We had lots of fun learning the correct vocabulary and using it to describe where the teddy was, for example...

The teddy is under the table.

The teddy is inside the box.

The teddy is on top of the box.

Maths Games

We played lots of Maths games in our first week back to rehearse and reactivate the knowledge we gained in Reception. Dottzi is a fun game where you have to match dice and order them correctly, it's fun against a timer!