Year 1 & 2

Welcome to Key Stage One.

Our theme this term is “Stars and Space”.

The children have been enjoying our class text “Star in the Jar” and all the wonderful activities planned around it.

Literacy

Upon their return from their Easter holidays the children found a star had landed in their classroom! They have looked after this star by talking about its feelings, researching where it may have come from and even designed a “lost poster” to help it find its way home. Interestingly, they have received a couple of letters. One from the Stars family to say that they are missing their star and another from a sister and brother who found a star themselves – they have been ever so helpful and our children have enjoyed reading their story using our Talk for Writing approach to learning in literacy. The children are looking forward too many more activities planned around this story and other fantasy and non fiction space texts this term.

Numeracy

The children are continuing to learn about Fractions this term, this will be followed by statistics, Place value, Position and Direction, finishing off with revisiting their learning from throughout the year. They are enjoying learning in the classroom but really enjoy taking their counting, estimating, investigating and measuring outside!

Science/Forest School

Our focus in Science this term is Materials. Although the children have a weekly Science lesson in school, Science is also interweaved throughout our weekly Forest School sessions. They have enjoyed looking and collecting data about the different materials that are inside and outside our school environment and are currently learning about their properties. We incorporate this learning within their Forest School sessions by looking closely at man-made and natural objects and materials that are around us. The children particularly like playing “Eye Spy the material”, on our way through the village as we head to and from our site. They have been busy investigating which would be the best material for the little pig’s roof and most recently, they have used a combination of materials combined with their fine motor skills to make wands. These wands are being used to help grant positive wishes for their friends and to talk about each other’s star qualities. We will be continuing to investigate different materials both inside and outside school and look at how we can change the shape of materials in different ways i.e. bending, twisting, soaking, heating etc.

Music

The children thoroughly enjoy their weekly music lessons with Darren. This term they have been introduced and

listened to the music suite ‘The Planets’ by Gustav Holst and are using this as an inspiration for their own compositions. Alongside this, Darren is busy teaching them to:

• Develop their confidence through performance, critical thinking through peer assessment and collaborative skills through group work.
• Work on compositions (in pairs and groups) using ostinato, texture, solo & structure.
• Continue with beat keeping skills, singing and preparing for a summer performance using many of the musical skills developed through their time at Combs.

Art and Design

The children are having a wonderful time in Art. They have created posters to put up around the village to help remind everyone to help keep Combs tidy. Recently, they have been introduced to Vincent Van Gough, linking his work to our Space theme. The children are going recreate his “Starry Night” painting using water colours and have also made stars out of salt dough to be mounted and hung around our space display.
Throughout the rest of this term the children are going to be sewing stars, making Paper Mache planets, exploring with chalks and pastels and using marbling inks – very busy but exciting indeed!

History

The children have been introduced and are very interested in learning about Neil Armstrong. They are using the IPads to research him and to create a fact file about him. They are also going to be looking at objects that have modernised over time, placing them in order and talking about how and why they think they have changed. The children will be encouraged to ask older family members i.e. grandparents about some of the objects, encouraging their family to become involved in their learning.

Geography

The children do a lot of work outside in our school environment so can confidently talk about what it is like where we live. They have a wonderful display of the United Kingdom in their classroom, where they can talk about and identify the four countries and their capital cities of the UK. This term the children are learning about Locational Knowledge, in order to do this they will be using the IPads, looking at maps and using the globe to look at the seven continents and five oceans that make up our world. The children have really enjoyed learning the “Seven Continents” and “Five Oceans” song to help them remember them.

PE

The children continue to enjoy their twice weekly PE sessions with our sports coaches from PAS. This term they are focusing on Small Ball Skills such as rolling dribbling and bouncing, using their different body parts to send the ball and individual ball work. They will also be learning about Agility, Balance and Coordination understanding body movements, balancing and taking part in different challenges.

IT

Continuing to follow the ICompute scheme of work, the children are learning how to use ISafe, IWrite, IPublish and ISearch.
ISafe – The children will be introduced to Jessie and her friends who will encourage the children to explore key aspects of e-safety and digital citizenship helping to prime pupils to engage in smart and safe technology use and online behaviour. They will also be learning about the risks associated with sharing personal information online and how to make informed choices
IWrite – Introducing the children to basic word processing.
IPublish – The children will learn about the remarkable advances computing and technology has made throughout time.
ISearch – The children will learn how to use the internet to find out answers to questions relating to Space and The Solar System.

RE

Continuing from our work on Christianity from last term, the children have learnt about Judaism and how a Jewish child might spend Shabbat. The children are now learning about who a Muslim is and what they believe, learning about the five pillars of Islam and Ramadan and will be moving on to learning about Eid before looking at Mosques. The children were ever so lucky to try some traditional Muslim food which was wonderful, it was delicious!
Towards the end of term to help consolidate all their learning, they will be creating a display comparing the similarities and differences between the different religions.

PSHE/British Values

The two main areas that the children are learning in PSHE this term are “Being Responsible” and “Bullying Matters”.

They are learning about the importance of rules and what could be the consequences if rules are not followed. What is meant by fair and unfair, making a decision, understanding why sometimes we do not get what we want and dealing with this in the correct manner, asking if we do not understand, being responsible and what we should do with our rubbish and why, looking after our environment. Towards the second part of this term, the children will be learning about the effects of bullying.  Understanding what bullying is, what cyber bullying is and who we need to talk to if we experience this. The children will be using puppets to act out bullying scenarios, talk about feelings of how it makes us feel if we were to be bullied, what we think a bully must be feeling to be nasty to other people and using our kindness to “fill other children’s buckets” revisiting our text “Have you filled a bucket today?”. The children will also be exploring different fairy tales in which bullying occurs such as “Cinderella” and “The Three Little Pigs”.
The British Values that the children are learning about this term are “Rule of Law” and “Individual Liberty”. The children understand the importance of following rules and how these are in place to help keep them safe. The children are also provided with opportunities to develop their self-knowledge, self-esteem and encouraged to increase their confidence in their own abilities throughout our Forest School lessons and PE lessons.
Each of the British Values are incorporated through the children’s PSHE lessons and they lay the foundations for discussion during our weekly class assemblies. Our student council meet and suggest ways of how we can filter the understanding of these values throughout school, they talk to the other children and bring their feedback back to the meetings, promoting a voice for all the children at Combs.