Year 1: What We Are Learning!

Year 1: What We Are Learning 

This week in Literacy, the children enthusiastically began exploring a new story about a very small but adventurous snail. They developed their comprehension skills by answering retrieval and inference questions, discussing where the snail lives, what she dreams of seeing, and how she feels as she gazes out at the vast sea. Using a "Role on the Wall" activity, the children explored the snail’s appearance and personality, describing her as not only tiny but also curious, brave, and adventurous. They then used these ideas to inspire their own descriptive writing, supported by phonics lessons focusing on the ‘ai’ sound in words such as snail and trail, and the ‘y’ suffix in words like silvery, tiny, and swirly. We were incredibly proud of all our writers, who challenged themselves to write simple descriptive sentences, listen carefully for sounds in words, and share their wonderful vocabulary and ideas with confidence.

 

This week in RE, the children have been learning about Muslim beliefs and Allah. We discussed how Muslims believe in Allah and explored the idea that not everything that exists can be seen.

To help us understand this, we used a balloon as an example. The children could not see the air inside the balloon, but they could see the effect it had by making the balloon expand. We talked about how, in a similar way, Muslims believe that although Allah cannot be seen, He is always present.

After learning that Allah is important to Muslims, the children enjoyed sharing the people who are important to them and the reasons why. 

In our science lesson, the children learned about day and night and how the length of daylight changes during the summer. They created a Day and Night Paper Plate Craft by drawing a daytime scene on one half of a paper plate and a nighttime scene on the other. The children added a rotating arrow to show whether it was day or night. To deepen their understanding, the children took part in a practical demonstration. One child held a torch to represent the Sun, while another child acted as the Earth and slowly turned around. They observed that when their face was towards the Sun it was daytime  and when their back was towards the Sun it was nighttime. This helped the children understand that the Earth rotates and that the Sun shines on different parts of the world at different times creating day and night.

Well done Year 1 for an amazing week - keep up all your brilliant work!