Year One

English

At Glendower, we learn to read for pleasure and to gain knowledge, but we also read books for lots of other reasons. We base the ideas we gather from stories to write our own, we learn to hear rhyming words, develop comprehension and a curiosity for the world around us. Reading also helps us with our spelling and we use books to spot spelling patterns. In this activity, we read the story of a little girl’s favourite toy, Knuffle Bunny. We focused on the sound ‘le’ in Knuffle and used a variety of books to find alternative words with the ‘le’ ending.

Maths

In maths we would often embark on investigations. We would look at ways to solve problems by discussing processes and drawing conclusions. We would often work in teams or pairs and on occasion, we had a surprise visit from Mr Ludwick!

We learned about fractions of shapes and amounts. We made sandwiches and then cut them up into halves and quarters. Then we got to eat them!

We use Numicon in lots of different activities. It helps us with our number bonds, when adding and taking away, calculating fractions, adding groups of the same numbers, the list is endless. In these lessons, Numicon helped us to calculate totals of an amount of money, where each coin was represented by a Numicon piece, which we then added together.

Science

One of the topics we study in Year One is electricity. We learnt how to create circuits and experimented with different materials to see if they were good conductors of electricity. We had a visit from Fizz Pop who showed us lots of fun ways to experiment with electricity safely.

We also learn about different forces and how the force of gravity and friction effects how things move. We conducted experiments using ramps and cars, measuring how the distance travelled changed depending on the gradient of the ramp. We discussed the importance of a fair test and how to answer certain questions by changing one element of the test.

Art

In art and English, we read the story ‘There’s a Lion in my Cornflakes’ by Michelle Robinson and Jim Field. We designed and then made our own cereal box. We thought of what to call our cereal and how to describe its taste.

We also designed and made our own puppets.

PSHEE

In PSHEE we spend time sharing our feelings and reactions to certain scenarios. We talk about how to learn form our mistakes and how to celebrate the similarities and differences between us. In this activity, we discussed the things we enjoy doing and the things we might be less enthusiastic about and why that might be. We made decisions on whether we liked or dislike a specific activity or situation and then gave reasons why. For example, swimming in the sea and darkness. We compared our thoughts about each and experienced we’ve had.