Year 1

Welcome to the Year 1 Class Page!

Class Teacher: Miss Benson

Support Staff: Mrs Hughes

Hello, my name is Miss Benson and I will be teaching in year 1 and year 2 together this year. I am eager and excited to begin a year of learning and fun together! This is my second year teaching at Armley Park as I worked in year 1 last year. I am really enjoying getting to know you all and working as part of the Armley Park team. I grew up in Blackpool but have loved living in Leeds for the last 5 years. A few of the things that I enjoy the most are baking, shopping and cuddling my dogs!

We hope you enjoy looking at our class page. We will update this regularly throughout the year with photographs of what we have been doing and also with key information which you may find useful. If you have any questions, please contact me and I will do my best to help.

Things to remember
We have P.E every Wednesday so it is important that your child has a P.E kit with them each week (a plain white top, black shorts or bottoms and pumps or trainers). Your child's P.E kit can be brought into school at the beginning of each half term and can be left on their peg.

It is important to read with your child at home and to write it in their reading record. Me and Mrs Hughes work hard to read with the children throughout the week but extra reading at home will really help to build fluency and confidence! We bought lots of new books last year so have plenty of exciting books for your child to choose from.

What are we learning about this year?

Year 1 Long Term Plan 2020-2021.pdf

W.C 26th April
Maths -
In Maths, Year 1 have been focusing on comparing number sentences and numbers within 20. We worked on how we can use our knowledge and understanding of place value as well as our addition and subtraction skills! We will be moving on to Place Value within 50 so wanted to make sure we had confidence working within 20.

D.T -
In D.T, we will be designing and making our own 'Moving pictures'. Over the next few lessons, we will be building on and developing our skills of making different mechanisms. Within this weeks lesson, we focused on 'slider' mechanisms. Miss Benson modelled how to create a slider mechanism following simple instructions, before the children had a go independently!

Our slider mechanisms!

Our slider mechanisms!

W.C 19th April - First week back after the Easter holidays

We have loved our first week back after Easter. We have started off our new topic 'Plants' with some exciting activities.

In Writing, we worked in groups to follow Miss Benson's instructions on 'How to plant a sunflower seed'. We began verbally using bossy (imperative) verbs and time conjunctions to talk through the instructions, in preparation for writing our own instructions over the next week.

In Science, we went on a 'Plant hunt' in our playground, looking for wild plants as well as searching in our school garden. The children enjoyed recognising, finding and naming many of the plants and working together to tick them off their list!

W.C 22nd March
We have been working very hard doing our assessments this week. The children have been determined and resilient and have made me extremely proud! In the afternoons we decided to have some fun completing our Art lessons. In Art the title of our topic this half term is 'Let's Sculpt'. This week we have looked at sculptures made by artists 'Michelle Reader' and 'Eva Rothschild' and have tried to recreate some of their work using similar materials.

Here we are making structures using spaghetti and marshmallows! We thought about the shapes that we were going to create, how we were going to join the shapes together and the size of our structures.

Here we are making monster structures using recycled rubbish! We thought about the body parts and features of our monsters, the materials we were going to use and how we were going to join them together!

W.C 15th March
Maths -
We have enjoyed some more practical Maths this week! We have been using the language of 'greater than', 'less than' and 'equal to' to order and compare objects and numbers! Year 1 have impressed me with how well they have been able to recognise the tens and ones in a number to work out which is greater and which is less.

PSHE -
In PSHE this week, we have been looking at harmful and safe substances. We discussed how harmful substances can make us feel ill and can be really dangerous for our bodies if we eat or drink them. We discussed how medicine should only be given by an adult and stored in a safe cupboard. The children showed a good understanding of how to keep themselves safe and agreed that if they don't know what something is - they should never put it in their mouth! The children sorted safe and harmful substances and created posters to teach other children about them.

First week back - W.C 8th March
It has been so so lovely having all the children back in school this week! The children have loved seeing their friends and we have worked hard to get back into routines,

Our topic this half term is 'Living things and habitats'. In writing, we started the week by watching a clip of Meerkats in their habitat on Youtube. The children loved watching the clip and became really excited to research and answer questions about Meerkats. The children worked in pairs on computers to find out information and write it onto large paper. They found out lots of different facts! We are going to use these facts to write Non-chronological reports.

Maths -
We have enjoyed lots of practical, hands-on learning in our Maths lessons this week! We have been recapping some previously learnt concepts. We recognised and represented numbers to 20 and began looking at their tens and ones.

Week 6 - 7th December
We have had an extremely busy week across Year 1 and Year 2! We have had a week full of hands-on learning. We have lots of photo's to share with you all!

In Art, we have been looking at Monet's Cityscapes and worked with pastels to replicate his paintings of the Houses of Parliament. Year 1 enjoyed using pastels for the first time as well as trying to recreate the shape of the buildings.

In Maths, Year 1 have been using part-whole models to 'find the part'. We spent lots of time using counters to practically represent the part-whole models.

In English, we have been reading and exploring the book 'The Polar Express' by Chris Van Allsburg. On Thursday, the children were lucky enough to go on a very special trip... to the North Pole! The Polar Express arrived at Armley Park to take the children on a journey. Year 1 and 2 loved dressing in their pyjamas, drinking hot chocolate, singing christmas songs and getting a silver bell from Santa Claus!

In D.T, we made our own dips based on our designs from last week. We discussed different food groups, looked at different chopping techniques and talked about food hygiene. The children really impressed me with how well they followed their design and how sensible they were when chopping the vegetables!

And finally... Christmas jumper day selfie!

Autumn 2 - W/C 30th November
This week has been our first week working as a mixed class with year 2. We have been extremely busy getting used to new routines and have worked very hard, particularly in Maths and Phonics! In D.T we tried some dips ready to design our own next week, in Music we worked on our Rhythm and in Computing we drew and labelled animals!

It has also been assessment week across Armley Park. The Year 1 children have been so resilient and determined when completing their Reading and Maths assessments. Miss Benson was so proud that she decided to give everyone a Golden Time treat on Friday...

We decorated the Christmas tree!

Christmas Tree decorating!

Week 5

We have all had a really good week at school!

In our Maths lessons we have been learning all about greater than, less than and equal to! This is a new concept to the children and they have all been super!

In English we have been writing thank you letters to the aliens for our lovely party we had on Friday remembering to use our full stops, capital letters and finger spaces.

In our topics we learnt all about healthy eating in PSHE, special books to us in RE and we tested lots of materials in Science.

Enjoy your weekend and we look forward to seeing you on Monday.

Week 4

In math's we were sorting objects by: size, shape and color. We worked together to sort all the objects. We also learnt about greater than, less than and equal to.

In English we received a very exciting party invitation to an Alien party. We then had a go at creating our own invitations!

Then for our Golden time we had an Alien party where we made Alien party hats, danced and ate some Cake!!

Week 3

It has been a very wet week at school this week but we haven't let that stop all our hard work!

This week in English we have been learning all about adjectives and we used lots of different adjectives to describe the Aliens in our class text 'Aliens love underpants'.

In Math's we have been concentrating on careful counting and making sure we count one object at a time and then matching numbers to the correct number of objects.

The children have learnt all about the United Kingdom in Geography, natural observational drawing in Art and Yoga in PE.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend and we shall see you next week!

Week 2

It has been another busy week in Year 1.

We continued our writing topic about 'Aliens love underpants' and this week we have learnt all about space linking to the topic and created wanted posters to catch the aliens so they stop stealing underpants!

In maths this week we have been concentrating on numbers to 10, we ordered them, wrote them and looked at how many different ways we could make numbers to 10.

In topic we really enjoyed learning about a famous artist called Rhiannon Roberts and we created some colorful dogs in the style of Rhiannon's work. We also had great fun on the computers learning how to use the space bar, backspace and how to draw on paint.

Have a lovely weekend and see you on Monday!

Hello Year 1,

I am Miss Avison and I am covering Ms Thompson-Thorpe for the first few weeks at school. I am really looking forward to meeting you and welcoming you all back. Miss Benson and I have been busy planning lots of fun and exciting activities for your first week back.

Some of you may feel a little nervous to come back to school and because I am new so am I, however together we will all settle in fast and have a great start to the term.

See you in the morning!

Miss Avison and Mrs Hughes

Week 1

We have had a very busy first week back, all the children have settled in well and I have been really impressed with how excited they are to learn!

In phonics this week we have been recapping our sounds, in writing we read the story 'Aliens love underpants' and we made our own underpants and ordered the story using time conjunctions.

In maths we did some super counting and looked at 2D and 3D shapes sorting them into the correct hooler hoop. We then ended our week with golden time creating some lovely art work using clay.

Enjoy your weekend and I look forward to seeing you on Monday!

Miss Avison