Living and Learning: health and prevention
Across school, our current Living and Learning topic is all about health and prevention which forms part of the new statutory Health Education. Here are the objectives for the children to learn by the end of Year 6.
Year 1 and 2 will be focusing their learning on sun safety and sleep but as dental hygiene is also part of this learning, the children will soon be bringing home their own toothbrush and toothpaste.
Here is some information you might want to read with your child to talk about this at home.
100 laps for charity
Skip into summer
This term, all classes will be taking part in the West Yorkshire Skip into Summer project with Skipping School. We are excited to be part of the 136 schools and almost 33,000 children taking part!
As part of this project, we have skipping ropes available to buy at a subsidised price of £3.
If your child would like to buy a rope, to keep learning their new skills at home, they will be on sale, outside the Year 1 classroom in the middle playground, 3:10-3:30pm on Thursdays and Fridays. Exact change would be helpful.
The Captain Tom 100 Challenge
Working scientifically
Today, Year 1 have been working scientifically. As part of their ‘Growing Plants’ topic, the children began by looking closely at a variety of seeds. The first stage, in the life cycle of most plants, is a seed and these come in all shapes and sizes.
The class discussed the appearance of different fruits and asked some very good scientific questions.
I wonder whereabouts the seeds are?
If we cut the lemon in half, will we see a seed?
Why are the seeds inside?
I wonder which fruit will have the most seeds?
I think all the seeds will look very different.
Next, we sliced the fruits open and examined the insides carefully.
Each fruit has a different seed.
Next, the children examined the open pieces of fruit and sketched some close up drawings. These images concentrated on a small section or slice of the fruit and the class looked carefully at the colours and the structure.
Year 1 were very curious about this learning and they use appropriate scientific language to communicate their ideas.
PE in our new playground
Today, Year 1 had their first PE lesson in the new area at the back of the school. It was great to have so much space!
The children worked hard to develop their throwing and catching skills. To finish the session, the class worked with a partner to see if they could aim their throw and get the ball through a hoop.
Welcome to the summer term.
Welcome back!
This term is set to be a very busy one indeed. Here is a quick overview of what will be going on in school.
Writing
The children will continue with handwriting, grammar and sentence structure learning. Below are some of the age related expectations for the end of Year One.
- To start and end sentences using capital letters to start, use a full stop to end, or question mark /exclamation mark.
- To use a capital letter for ‘I’ and for everyday proper nouns.
- To separate words using (finger) spaces.
- To combine words to make a sentence.
- To write sentences with one ‘chunk’ of meaning.
- To say what I’m going to write and then compose a sentence orally before writing it.
Maths
The class will continue with place value and counting work.
- Count within 100, forwards and backwards, starting from any number.
- Reason about the location of numbers to 20 and compare numbers.
- Develop fluency in addition and subtraction facts within 10.
- Count forwards and backwards in multiples of 2, 5 and 10.
Science
The children will be investigating, observing and describing how seeds and bulbs grow into mature plants. They will find out and describe how plants need water, light and suitable temperature to grow and be healthy. Below is the specific vocabulary that will be used in our science lessons. Talk about these words at home. Does your child know any of them? Can you child tell you the definitions?
- seeds
- bulbs
- temperature
- growth
- survival
- healthy
- mature
- plants
Computing Topic
The children will be learning about computer programming. They are going to discover what an algorithm is and what it needs to work effectively. We will be creating and debugging simple programs and will use logical reasoning to predict what will happen when an algorithm is executed.
In some of our lessons, we have regular ongoing online safety messages. These are usually prompts and reminders about the important of staying safe on and offline. Asking for a person’s consent is very important and this is something we regularly rehearse.
May I take your photo?
Yes, of course you can.
Would you mind if we show your learning to the whole class?
No, I really don’t want to share it.
As well as programming, the children will be having specific lessons about the following;
Age Restrictions
• I know that some online activities have age restrictions because they have content which is not appropriate.
Digital Content
• I am beginning to understand what a digital footprint is.
Misinformation, disinformation and hoaxes
• I know that I shouldn’t believe everything I see or read online.
Fake websites and scam emails
• I know that some websites have secure markings (eg padlock symbol next to URL) that makes them more trustworthy.
Password safety
• I know that passwords are important and that I should not share them. Personal data
• I know that I’m too young to share personal information (eg full name, address, school, age) online.
Persuasion
• I know that there are adverts online which, if clicked on, may take me away from the page I’m looking at.
Online vs. offline behaviours
• I know that people should treat others respectfully when they are online.
• I know what to do if someone is mean to me or someone else online.
Impact on quality of life
• I know that being online offers lots of positives but that
there needs to be a balance between time being spent on
and offline.
Below is the vocabulary that links to the computing topic.
algorithm | program | debug |
computer | password | personal information |
appropriate |
As always, please feel free to contact us with any questions or queries.
jackiefreeman@spherefederation.org
carolinetaylor@spherefederation.org
Tennis opportunities
Year 1 heroes
What a busy final day of the spring term.
For our ‘Not all heroes wear capes‘ day, we welcomed lots of NHS heroes, firefighters, police men, Leonora Cohen, Greta Thunberg, an astronaut, a footballer, Indira Gandhi (the first female prime minister of India) and Dr Andrew Pollard (the scientist who invented the AstraZeneca vaccine).
The children enjoyed sharing who they had dressed as and why they were a hero. If they gave their consent, a partner also took a photo of them.
This marked the end of our Heroes history topic. The children have shown a great understanding of what makes a hero, different heroes from the past (and present) and how they’ve made a difference to life today.
All the Year 1 staff would like to wish you a happy and healthy Easter break.
Science: plants
We’ve come to the end of the first of our plants topic and all the children planted seeds from the Innocent Big Grow project to grow at home. Keep us posted on how they grow.
We’ve had some vocabulary, and their definitions, to learn for this topic so we had a matching pairs quiz to check our final understanding.
Investigative science is also part of our learning in the shared area. Here the children can observe and sort a range of seeds. How are they different? How are they the same?
Our potato plants are starting to break through the soil. We observed them carefully.
They are growing.
They are starting to sprout.
The stems are getting taller.
Some leaves are starting to grow.
They are breaking through!