Welcome to Year 1 - Mr. Swann's Class  

WB 27.06.22

The weather has certainly turned for the worse this week but despite it being very damp outside, we have not let it dampen our spirits.

In music this week we explored different notes on the glockenspiel  and then we composed our own class tune. It sounded very impressive.

We have taken part in our sponsored Colour Run this week and had lots of fun.  We loved running around the field whilst our teacher threw special powder at it.  It made our t-shirts (and hair!) very colourful.

To launch our new english unit, we found a very mysterious treasure map today in our classroom and decided it would be a good idea to follow it and find where it led to. We then used this exciting experience to write our own recounts.

We have had our second transition day with Miss Dove. We looked at lots of different scenarios and decided whether we thought they were good behaviour choices or not good behaviour choices. We then worked together to create our class expectations and rules for next year. We are super excited to see our new classroom next week

WB 20.06.22

This week has been a very special week for us in Year 1 - it has been our very first Sport's Day.  We sadly, have not done one at Grange Valley since we started due to lockdowns so we all really enjoyed showing our skills off to our parents.  We all aced the sprint and bean bag race.

On Friday, we got the chance to meet our new teacher for next year and it is Miss. Dove.  We loved learning about her dog Mala and we know we will have an amazing time in her class.

In RE, we worked with Rev Dan from St Mark's to learn all about the Christian tradition of baptism.  We loved baptising a doll and learning all about this Christian rite.  

Their behaviour was exceptional and were, once again, credits to themselves.

WB 06.06.22

It dawned on us this week that this half term is our last in Year 1 before we make the step to Year 2.  We cannot believe how much we have all grown and we are certainly going to make this last half term special!

We started off our week celebrating the Queen's Platinum Jubilee.  We had lots of fun taking part in lots of different activities.  I think our personal favourite was the photo booth and pretending that Prince William was using the computers in our classroom.

We have also had our celebration of reading event for those of us who had 3 or more home reading signatures in our reading diary.  We enjoyed hot chocolate and marshmallows.

Our brand new English book is Iggy Peck Architect and we have been learning all about what an architect does by designing our own buildings.

WB 16.5.2022

What another action packed week we have had in Year 1!  

This week, we have loved celebrating our creative side and exhibited our pieces of cultural artwork in the school hall during GV's very first art exhibition.  The children were incredibly proud of their finished art (and rightfully so!)

We launched our cultural week this week with some African drumming.  It was very noisy but we all certainly had lots of fun.

In RE, we looked at items that Hindus might use to help them worship.  We loved seeing how each sense was tapped into and ensure that prayer was a full body experience.  

We have also enjoyed watching our jubilee caterpillars slowly go into their chrysalis'.  They have now been moved into their mesh enclosure where they will hatch out before being released. 

W/B 9.5.22

During maths this week, we have consolidated our knowledge of addition and subtraction to 30.  We really enjoyed playing addition number sentence noughts and crosses to practice our skills. We used a range of methods including number lines, hundred squares, tens frames and mental methods to answer our calculations.

In our science, we went into our school forest to explore the bark of different trees. We enjoyed doing some tree rubbings to see how they are similar and different.

Our Year 1 footballers represented our school fantastically at their first football tournament.  They played amazingly well and were a credit to our school. Mr. Feeney and Mr. Musker who accompanied them said that their behaviour was exceptional. 

You may have recalled last week that I mentioned that the children wrote their own narratives based on Stanley's Stick.  These were marked at the weekend and WOW!  I was blown away by them.  I was certainly a very proud teacher.

W/B  2.5.22

Can you believe it is Friday already?  It never fails to amaze me how much Year 1 manage to fit into their learning.

We have been authors this week and have created our own stories using Stanley's Stick as inspiration.  We have really enjoyed writing at length and have shown how we have been able to use capital letters, full stops, adjectives and even adverbials of time!

In art, we got a little bit messy when we were using shaving foam to create our prints.  A famous artist once said that creativity is messy!  If that is the case, we must be very creative.  We have also loved working with Mrs. Mavers to create some beautiful pieces of cultural work for our upcoming art exhibition.  

In RE we were learning about the trimurti (Three forms of one god).  We learnt all about Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu.   

We enjoyed watching our long awaited pantomime this week.  We were supposed to watch this before Christmas but sadly we had to postpone it due to covid.  We all loved watching the panto of Oliver Twist.  

W/B 25.3.22

Year 1 have been extremely busy, as usual, this week.  

In maths,  we have been focusing on using concrete objects to share equally. The children have tried so hard and I am very proud of them. They have been very resilient with such a challenging unit.  

This week in our science lesson, the children have enjoyed going outside into our Forest School area  to see what different wild flowers they could find. We used the app PictureThis to try and identify them and made observational drawings.

During our art, we explored how we can mix two primary colours to make a secondary colour.  

This week also saw our school become a lot bigger with our brand new porta-cabins being delivered.  We all enjoyed going outside and watched them being hoisted into shape with some very large cranes.  Luckily, we were stood far enough back so we didn't need to wear hard hats!  

W/B 21.3.22

This week the sun has been shining and we have really enjoyed spending time outdoors!

We have reached the end of our English unit on non-chronological reports and have produced some wonderful reports on marine life, making sure we use the key features.  

We have enjoyed getting to grips with our Easter assembly and have had lots of fun making Easter bonnets, decorating eggs and flying kites in preparation.  We are all very excited to share our assembly with our mums and dads next Friday.

To help us celebrate Mothering Sunday, we enjoyed working with Mrs. Mavers to make special key rings using shrinking plastic.  

Have a lovely weekend in the sun ☀️

W/B 14th March

What another super busy week we have had in Year 1.  This week it has been parents' evening and it was lovely to welcome so many of our parents into school after such a long time.  For some, it was the first time they had seen the inside of our Outstanding school!  

In RE this week we enjoyed learning about the festival of Sukkot.  We learnt that one way which Jewish people celebrate Sukkot is by eating bread dipped in honey to remind them that God has given them lots of sweet things to be thankful for.  We then built our own Sukkah before sharing food underneath it and reading the story of the exodus from Egypt.  

In maths, we have started to learn how we can compare the length and size of different things by using different units.  This week we have compared using language such as tallest and shortest and measured using paper clips and our body parts.

We have developed our sewing skills this week and have blown our staff away with our ability to perform a basic running stitch.  We will use this new skill next week when we start to create our own brilliant bunting in DT.

We ended the week with a whole school fundraising event to help raise funds for the people who have been affected by war in Ukraine.  We all dressed in yellow and blue to mark this special day.  To remind us of this disaster we all took home sunflowers to plant in our gardens.  The sunflower is the national flower of Ukraine and we hope it will bring some sunshine to the world.  

W/B 28th February

The highlight of our week has definitely been World Book Day!

The children fully celebrated this special day by dressing up as their favourite book character, writing and illustrating their  own stories and creating their very own books in a box.  We had a special assembly to mark the day  and our teachers dressed up as crayons from The Day The Crayons Quit! Everyone loved laughing along with the stories and seeing our teachers act it out.

In maths, we started to read analogue clocks and have started to read o'clock and half past times.  This is such an important skill and the children have made me proud with our resilience.

To top off a very exciting week, we found out that two of our very talented artists have had their art work presented in the Youth Open Art Exhibition at the World of Glass. A fantastic achievement.

W/B - 21st February 2022

What a busy first week back we have had! 

On Monday, we had a new member of our class who seems a little bit lost.  We hope he will find his parents soon though (don't worry he is a penguin!)  We will be using our class member to help us out as we explore the book Lost & Found by Oliver Jeffers in our English unit.  

In Maths, we have started to explore how we can use use equal groupings and repeated addition for to help us represent multiplications.

Over this next half term, our science will see us explore seasonal changes between Spring and Summer.  We cannot wait to get outside more and see how our environment alters depending on the season.

During DT, we have started our new textile unit.  We cannot wait to explore a range of bunting and use different materials and techniques to create our own bunting.

The week was rounded off with us having an important assembly letting us know all about the important job that Young Carers do.  

W/B - 7th February 2022

This week has been Child Mental Health Week and each day we have thought about how we can make sure we are happy on the outside and the inside.  We have had Moving Monday, Technology Tuesday, WOW Wednesday, Thoughtful Thursday and Feel Good Friday,  We really enjoyed getting outside with Mr. Ashton on Monday when we took part in a mini-circuit class.

In science, this week, we have explored what the best material would be for the 3 little pigs to build their house of.  The paper straw house blew over straight away but thankfully the lego house and wooden house both stayed standing.  

In Geography, we explored how Haydock and Liverpool compare to each other.  We enjoyed taking in the sights of Liverpool using Googlemaps and spotted the Liver Birds, St George's Hall, both cathedrals and both football stadiums.  

W/B - 31st January 2022

I can't quite believe that we have got to the end of yet another fun filled week.  Our highlight this week has certainly been our pyjama day on Thursday to celebrate National Story Telling Week.  We enjoyed cozying up with our teddies and hot chocolate to share stories with Mr. Swann, Miss. Dove and Mrs. Morley.

Earlier on in the week, we went on a local walk around Haydock to see what physical and environmental features we could find.

During science, we have started to plan our science investigation to explore what the best material would be for the 3 little pigs to build their house out of: plastic blocks, lollipop sticks or paper straws.  We cannot wait to feedback our findings next week.  

This week also saw us celebrate Chinese New Year.  We were encouraged to see if we could complete the chopstick challenge and learn how to use them to eat a meal.  

W/B - 17th January 2022

Well that’s a wrap for another week! We’ve had an alien invasion, created our own collages and created our own pieces of persuasive writing - to name but a few things. No wonder there were lots of tired little faces at the end of the day.

I can’t wait to find out who crashed landed in the UFO next week.

It goes without saying that the children have, once again, had an amazing week. Thank you so much for all your support.

W/B - 3rd January 2022

Although it has only been a short week, what an awful lot we have managed to fit in!  On our first day back, my first day, we spent lots of time establishing our class room expectations and exploring how we make sure that our classroom is a happy place to be.  

In English, we found that someone had left some magic beans in our classroom (how curious)!  The following day we discovered that they had been left by Jack and he was trying to persuade us to buy them.  We have enjoyed exploring Jack's persuasive advert and cannot wait to dig deeper into persuasive writing over the coming weeks.  

Our maths has seen us exploring 3d and 2d shapes.  We have learnt lots of new vocabulary and names of shapes such as sphere, cylinder, cube.  We will keep exploring shapes next week and begin to look at the properties of them and how we can sort them.

I know that next week will be another amazing week.  

W/B - 6.12.2021

What a busy week we've had this week! We had a fabulous visit from the author Sean Perkins on Tuesday, Sean read his story 'Oscar and Bob' and even had a sing song with the children! On Wednesday, we had a wonderful Christingle assembly, the children learnt what each part of the Christingle orange represents. On Thursday, the children watched a brilliantly funny puppet show, which they absolutely loved and Friday was Christmas jumper day, we had Christmas dinner and a Santa dash as well! 

W/B - 29.11.2021 

The children learnt a snowflake dance this week. They did some group work as well as some partner work and the final performance was fantastic, we have some super dancers in Year 1. We ended the week with a special visit from Father Christmas, the children sang a Christmas song to him and posted the letters they had written in his postbox. It was a lovely surprise for the children. and they absolutely loved it!

W/B - 22.11.2021

We have come to the end of our English unit on traditional tales and the children worked really hard on Friday to retell the story of The Three Billy Goats Gruff. The children used everything they have learnt to produce some amazing writing, which included traditional tale language, adjectives and conjunctions. In maths, we have finished our unit on numbers to 20. Next week we will be starting a new English unit on the book 'Paddington's Post' and we will be starting a unit on addition and subtraction within 20 in maths.  

W/B - 8.11.2021

The children have worked really hard in maths this week. They enjoyed our lesson on fact families, where they worked out all the possible addition and subtraction number sentences they could make from the numbers 2, 5 and 7. The children used counters and drawings to help them with their working out. We have now finished our learning on addition and subtraction within 10 and will be moving on to learn about positional and directional language next week.

W/B - 1.11.2021

The children were surprised to find giant footprints in our classroom on Monday morning. After some investigative work, they worked out that the footprints belonged to the giant from Jack and the Beanstalk, the children listened to the story and then retold the story in their books. We have also looked at other traditional tales this week. We looked at the similarities and differences in the stories and the type of language that is used.

W/B - 11.10.2021

We're almost at the end of our English unit on instruction writing. The children have completed some fabulous writing, which I am very proud of. To complete the sequenced steps for the instructions, we acted out the steps first before writing them to help the children remember what needed to be done. It was great fun!

W/B - 4.10.2021

We've had a very busy week in year 1. In English, we have looked at some of the language features included in instruction writing. In Maths, we have been learning about number bonds. In science, we have continued our learning about seasonal changes and we ended our week with a lovely Autumn walk around the school grounds.

W/B - 27.09.2021

What a fantastic first week I have had with year 1! The children have been amazing and made me feel very welcome in their class. We started a new English unit on instruction writing. We looked at the features of instructions together and the children made a great start to their writing by thinking of their own title and equipment list for a set of instructions on how to prepare for a teddy bears' picnic.

Autumn Notices

Enter text...