Class 4

Year 1 is a fabulous year – the progress children make both academically and socially is amazing. They really start to flourish as they build on their wonderful experiences in Early Years.

In Year 1 we enjoy exploring the world around us through our History, Geography and Science topics including learning about our village and surrounding areas, the weather, materials, animals and plants. We enjoy many opportunities to help our curriculum come to life including walks in the wood, first hand experiences, role play and drama. We begin to really foster lifelong learning skills such as being resilient, persevering, working together and problem solving.

We work hard and always try our best in a kind nurturing environment. We support and help each other and work together. We also work hard on our relationships and our main aim is to be kind and caring towards our peers, adults and classroom environment. We promote kind mouths, kind hands and kind feet.

Phonics and reading is a real driver in Year 1 and opens up a whole curriculum of opportunities and learning. Our decoding skills really accelerate over the course of the year through our daily “Little Wandle” discrete phonics sessions, and reading for pleasure and enjoyment is a huge focus with daily story times, exchanging sharing books in our class library area, and children bringing in their favourite stories from home to read and share together. Stories also form a stimulus for our topic work such as “Seasons come, Seasons go…Tree” which supports our topic about plants and trees, and the “Princess and the Pea” for our work about Queen Victoria and Castle Hill.

We are lucky to have our lovely Forest School area and Mrs Livesey will be taking children for their Forest School sessions this year, helping to develop confidence, independence, resilience and team work.