Year 1 - Purple Class
Mrs Swann and Mrs Raymer would like to welcome you to Purple Class.
Term 6
Make this world a better place.
How can I make a difference to the world?
English
We are starting off our term by reading 10 Things I Can Do To Help My World, and thinking of things we already do to help and what things we could do. The children have already come up with lots of good ideas showing what good citizens they are! We will be reading lots more books about environmental issues this term, learning about endangered animals and their habitats and writing fact books about them.
History
We are looking forward to a musical journey back through the last 60 years in History this term. We will be listening to lots of different music from each decade, dancing to some famous tunes and learning some others. We will link our work in History to Music and DT, where we will be making our own recycled instruments to form a Year 1 Junk Band.
Beach Walks
Our Beach Walks will be on Wednesday mornings this term, starting from 19th June.
Please look for the sign up sheet outside the classrooms if you can help us walk to and from the beach.
P.E.
This term in P.E. we will be swimming on Monday mornings. Please look for the sign up sheet outside the classrooms if you can help us walk to and from the pool.
We will also be doing athletics to prepare us for our Sports Morning which is on Tuesday 18th June. The children will be practising their running, jumping and throwing skills as well as competing in team relay and obstacle races.
Term 5
Island Life
What is on your island?
Trip to Reculver Beach
We had a fantastic day at Reculver Beach, hunting in the rock pool, doing a beach clean and learning about the wind turbines. The children found lots of interesting creatures and showed no fear in picking them up and investigating under upturned rocks and stones! Thanks to those of you who came along to help, and to Mel and Tom who told us all about the rock pools and wind turbines.
Scooter Workshop
Everyone had great fun at the Scooter Workshop this week, and their scooting skills were really impressive! Even those who were a bit less confident were able to take part in the 'Slalom', scooting in and out of scooter helmets without any collisions! All the teachers had a go too and Mr Dickinson was very clever on his!
Stream Walk Community Gardens
We had a Stunning Start to our Science topic of plants this term with a visit to Stream Walk Community Gardens to find out more about the different plants that are grown there. We got to taste some of the herbs and vegetables that are growing, thought about what plants need to grow and identified some of the different flowers, vegetables and herbs that we saw. A big thank you to the parents who came with us and to Fiona (Ruben in Red Class' mum) for showing us around.
English
Our book this term is Grandad's Island by Benji Davies. We have started by thinking about Grandad, looking carefully at illustrations to find out clues about what kind of character he is and we will be writing some questions to find out more about him. The children all draw their own fantastic illustrations of Grandad, proving what super artists they are!
Maths
This term we will be practising counting in 2s, 5s and 10s and using that to help us with multiplication and division. We will make equal groups of objects and use our counting skills to check whether groups are equal or unequal. We will add equal groups together to find out totals and solve mathematical problems.
Science
In Science this term we are looking at plants, and will be learning about their structure and what they need to grow. Thank you to you all for the fantastic work you have brought in - we have some fantastic artwork, fact books and posters, plant diaries and even plants to add to our book corners and home challenge displays. We will be planting some beans and seeds in school, identifying plants and labelling diagrams to show the different parts of trees and flowers.
P.E.
This term we will be playing hockey and football, practising our individual skills and developing our teamwork. The children will practising working with a partner to improve ball skills and control and will improve their control of a ball or beanbag while travelling.
Cooking
The children will be making their third recipe on Friday afternoons and we have chosen something savoury for this term. They will making Grandad's Favourite Scones. Each week 1 group from each class will cook with Mrs Raymer and Mrs Wardle. Some of them may already have brought home their delectable treats, but some may have to wait until the last week of term! Rest assured, everyone will get the opportunity to cook!
Geography
The children will be travelling around the United Kingdom this term, identifying the different countries and capital cities on a map and making their own passports to show where they have visited. We will talk about and look at photographs of key landmarks of the four home nations, identify the flags and talk about some of the similarities and differences in the geographic features.
Term 4
In the sea.....
Where should they live?
RELATIVES EVENT
Thank you to all of our families who took time out to come into Purple Class for our board games afternoon. We had such fun playing a wide variety of games which were not at all competitive ..... honest!
COMIC RELIEF
Great fun was had in the Comic Relief Joke Telling Assembly on Friday. Lots of laughter could be heard from the hall as the children told their jokes to the audience. Well done to all of our joke telling winners.
BOOK WEEK
We had a truly inspirational visit from Chris Wormell the author and illustrator today (who many of you met at the book signing after school). Chris talked to us about how he learned to draw and write and had us all laughing at the funny stories about his childhood.
Using our 'In the Sea' theme, Chris used the children's ideas to create our very own Purple Class Sea Creature with: the head of a sea monster, the ears of a bunny rabbit, the body of a shark, the legs of a lobster, the neck of a plesiosaur and the tail of a crocodile. We will use Chris' work to inspire our writing this week.
Also, well done to everyone for the Where's Wally costumes - although the biggest Wally in Purple Class didn't make it into the photo (because she was taking the picture), we had lots of Wallies on that day! Thank you to all of our families for making such an effort.
Finally, a big well done to those grown ups who came in to share stories with our class. Thank you from all of us.
PANCAKE DAY RACES
Lots of fun was had during the Year 1 Pancake Day races. All of the children took part in relay races which involved lots of pancake flipping and seagulls circling for a tasty treat!
ENGLISH
During this term our book theme is 'The Storm Whale' by Benji Davies. Although we have only read the first few pages together the children have already drawn what is in their 'mind's eye' when they heard where Noi lives, as well as discussed and written about how Noi feels when his dad leaves for work every day.
MATHS
After two weeks of measure where the children were very successful in measuring using centimetres (cm) for the first time, we have moved on to looking at place value in numbers up to 50. We have started this topic by ordering numbers, discussing the patterns and thinking about how many tens and ones there are in each number.
SCIENCE
This term we will be studying the topic of Animals (including humans). The children were very knowledgeable when we discussed the different parts of the human body and the five senses. We had some animated discussions about our 'favourite' thing to use each sense for which included lots of ice cream and cats!
PE
Our multi skills sessions this term are on a Wednesday morning and we will be covering all areas of 'games', developing our skills suchas jumping, catching, throwing and running.
In our afternoon sessions we will concentrate on dance when we will move in time to music creating sequences which we will learn to perform as a class.
ART
We are learning all about printing this term and after exploring how to print with different objects / different amounts of paint we have now started making our own printing blocks.
Many thanks to Mrs Lambirth for coming into Purple Class to teach these lessons and helping us have so much fun!
COMPUTING
We are exploring music on the computers and tablets this term using the 2Music Toolkit. The children will be investigating rhythm, pulse, melody and harmony by dragging and dropping sounds onto the grid.
BEACH WALKS
This term we are carrying out our drama and role play lessons at the beach. We have had a wonderful time re-creating scenes from 'The Storm Whale' and making our own whale shapes on the beach.
Term 3
Treasure
What is buried under the X?
CHINESE NEW YEAR - LION DANCE
Purple Class had a lovely time practising the Chinese Lion Dance in the hall to celebrate Chinese New Year. Most of the grown up's had as much fun as the children!
ART DAY
Purple Class would like to extend a very big thank you to all of the families who came in to help us complete our Art Day activities. We started with a marbling ink activity showing the stormy seas of our pirate adventure and then moved on later in the morning to make our own parrot puppet and pirate hat. During the afternoon session we followed Mister Maker's advice and created our very own paper plate treasure island. All in all it was a good day's work!
TRIP TO SWALECLIFFE BROOK
We had a great time in the sunshine when we went on a geography field trip to Swalecliffe Brook. We began our activities by looking at the physical features of the area and plotted some of these features on our map. Some of us were able to include the sea, stream, play park, football pitch, church, caravan park and houses. The information board was useful to help us see that we needed to plot the features from overhead. We had a good chat about whether things like bicycles and dogs were features of the area before heading into the play park to warm ourselves up!
Many thanks to the wonderful parents who helped us during the morning of activities - we wouldn't have been able to do it without you.
ACTIVE 30:30
We had a tiring but exciting time when Firefighter Fit Kids came in to visit us and show us how to use their website to enhance our activity levels each day. Not only did we take part in a HIIT work out but we also practised how to stay safe in the event of a fire and to test our smoke alarms.
ENGLISH
This term we are reading the book 'How to Find Gold' by Viviane Schwarz. We have started by looking at the characters and thinking about how we can describe them. During the first week we are also making our own treasure maps and writing a set of instructions on how to find our own treasure.
Throughout the term we will be writing a character description as well as letters.
MATHS
We are continuing to look at numbers this term and will begin by revising addition and subtraction to 20 before moving on to place value in numbers to 50.
During the first week we have been investigating with Numicon how to add tens to our number bonds to show that, for example, 7 + 3 = 10 SO 17 + 3 = 20.
SCIENCE
Our topic this term is Materials and we will begin by talking about the different types of materials we find in and around the school such as wood, plastic, metal and fabric. We will use words such as 'bumpy', 'smooth', 'hard' and 'soft' to describe these materials to each other to think about their properties.
PE (INCLUDING GEOGRAPHY)
This term we will be covering gymnastics and orienteering.
Gymnastics will include the use of apparatus and we will continue to work on our balance, travelling and jumping as we think about linking these movements into a routine.
Our orienteering lessons will not only be physically based but will also include the geography element of map work. We will begin by thinking about how to read maps and then move on to drawing our own maps of the school grounds to include main features. The orienteering course in the school grounds will also help us with our phonics and spelling as we look for words and sounds.
PHONICS
In our phonic lessons this term we are revising all of the sounds we have learned and practising segmenting and blending them in both real and alien words.
COMPUTING
This term we will be learning how to code by using screen turtles and beebots. Each week we have activities to complete including creating our own beebot mat, directing a screen turtle around using code and instructing characters such as the big, bad wolf using the tablet.
FRENCH
Mrs Thomas will continue to teach French on a Wednesday afternoon with a focus on greetings, counting and colours.
RE
Our big question this term is 'Who is a Christian and what do they believe?' We have been discussing this and coming up with our own ideas of Christian values and beliefs as well as images of where we believe Christians think they can find God.
ART
Our Art lessons will be based on the illustrations in our book this term, 'How to Find Gold'. The children will be looking at the effects they can make using charcoal and create their own background scene for the characters of Anna and Crocodile.
COOKING
During our cooking sessions this term we are busy making our very own 'Treasure Island Rock Buns' with special 'X' marking where we think we have buried our treasure!
Term 2
Deadly Dinosaurs
Which dinosaurs ruled the world?
Curriculum Newsletter
COMPUTER SAFETY AT THE WHITSTABLE SCHOOL
Many thanks to The Whitstable School who hosted a wonderful computer safety session along with some ict games for Purple Class this morning. We had great fun leaning about staying safe online as well as improving our gaming skills!
MORE CHRISTMAS ACTIVITIES WITH THE FOW
We had great fun today with helpers from the Friends of Westmeads during our Christmas Activity day. Everyone went home laden down with decorations and a happy smile on their face! Many thanks to everyone who arranged this wonderful treat for us.
IT'S CHRISTMAS!
Christmas has finally arrived in Purple Class - not only did we enjoy making advent wreaths today during our RE lesson but we also decorated the tree with our class decorations during assembly. Watch out, you might hear Miss Hyett singing carols next!
DINOSAUR WORKSHOP
What incredible fun we had today during our drama workshop with Perform for Schools. Not only did we get to experience what it was like to live 65 million years ago but we had to hide from a velociraptor who kept a very tidy nest! Our imaginations ran wild during the session as we acted, sang and danced.
POPPY DAY
The children had a lovely day creating art work for the 100th anniversary of Remembrance Day.
As we arrived at school for our first day we were very excited to find a dinosaur egg in the classroom. Some of the children suggested that we put it into water to keep it at the right temperature and after a couple of days it is hatching! We are looking forward to meeting our Purple Class dinosaur soon.
He's hatched!! Say hello to Percy the Purple Class dinosaur!
ENGLISH
Our lessons this term are based on non-fiction (information) texts. We are learning facts about different dinosaurs and writing these in our own words. Each of us is forming our own sentences using capital letters, full stops and finger spaces. Some of us are trying to use the word 'and' to help us join simple sentences.
The first dinosaur we are focusing on is a Triceratops. Many of us are already using adjectives (describing words) to helps us write about this plant eater. Here are some examples of our sentences:
A Triceratops has three strong horns and a sharp beak. It has a bright colourful frill and scaly skin.
From next week we will move on to look at other dinosaurs and already have lots of questions we would like to find the answers to!
MATHS
After looking at place value in numbers to 10 and addition with these numbers, we are now learning about subtraction (minus or take away). We will begin by reinforcing the part, part, whole method and looking at how to turn the number sentence around (inverse). When we are fluent with our understanding we will move onto reasoning and problem solving.
PE
Our lessons this term include volleyball on a Tuesday afternoon and gymnastics on a Wednesday morning. We can't wait to get going and will be working on our balance, agility and co-ordination as well as attack and defence in the team game.
COMPUTING
This term we will be discussing how to stay safe when using computers both at school and at home. We will be using the 'Hector the Protector' series of videos and linked activities to ensure we understand what information we should keep safe and who we should talk to online.
ART
Our painting this term will consist of an investigation into how to make a colour lighter and darker. Once we have practised this skill we will be painting some pictures for our display.
When sketching our dinosaur pictures we will be looking at the work of Quentin Blake and attempting to use his 'line drawing' style in our dinosaur sketches.
RE
Our focus this term will be thinking about how and why we celebrate special times. We have been in touch with the Canterbury Mosque and are hoping to visit here later in the term.
Term 1 - Fantasy Worlds: Where will you go?
DRUIDSTONE TRIP
Well, we couldn't have asked for a more wonderful day to go on our trip to Druidstone Park. Not only was it lovely and sunny but the animals and the mystical creatures in the Enchanted Woods were all on good form!
We had an exciting start to the day with our first ride in the school minibus and obviously there was a lot of singing en route to the park!
On arrival we went into the Enchanted Woods where we found some strange characters to sketch and admire. After collecting leaves we then tried to conjure up some magic by making our own wands.
Following lunch we had a bit of a play on the climbing wall and slide before using crayons and sugar paper to attempt some leaf rubbing - some were more successful than others.
We then had an exciting time feeding the animals and learning how to hold our hand flat so that it didn't accidentally get nibbled by the hungry donkeys and alpacas! The children thoroughly enjoyed feeding time - maybe even more than the animals who reaped the benefits!
COOKING - FANTASY FLAPJACKS
All of the children have had a turn at making their 'Fantasy Flapjacks' this term with Miss Wardle and Mrs Raymer. Fresh fruit was used in this recipe to make it extra tasty!
We hope you all enjoyed them!
FIZZ POP SCIENCE ASSEMBLY
What a wonderful start to our morning we had when we took part in the Fizz Pop Assembly. Not only did we see lots of wonderful inventions but we learned about friction in a really exciting way. Some of us even got to go up and take part!
We hope you have all enjoyed the start to Year 1 after such a long and warm summer break! We are looking forward to having lots of fun this year so hope you are prepared with a big smile on your face!
This term we are going to be thinking about Fantasy Lands and what type of world we would want. We have just started discussing 'favourite' things and these currently include: Chocolate Cake Land, Pig Land, Alien World and Desert World (with snakes and kangaroos!). I hope you are looking forward to describing, drawing and making your lands as the term continues.
ENGLISH
We will be watching episodes of Mr Benn to help us with our ideas and see the types of adventures he has in all of the different worlds.
Our writing will be focusing on understanding what we need to write a sentence - capital letters, full stops and finger spaces - as well as using the word 'and' to make our sentences longer and more interesting.
At the end of each lesson we will also be checking our writing and thinking about spellings.
MATHS
At the start of Year 1 we like to begin gently by reinforce our counting so this means we will be thinking about different ways of counting forwards and backwards to 10 and then 20 from different numbers. Some of us will also be counting in 2s!
To help us with this we will be using counters, Numicon and tens frames.
ENRICHMENT
During this first term we will be having music lessons with Ms Diamond every Friday afternoon as well as French lessons with Mrs Thomas every Thursday.
RE
In our R.E. lessons we will be thinking about what it means to belong to a faith community. We will be discussing our thoughts and ideas as well as taking part in various activities around this theme.
PE
For our PE lessons during this first term we will be covering tennis and netball. Our tennis lessons will be on a Wednesday morning with Helen from Appeti Tennis in Canterbury who will be teaching the children the basic skills through fun games.
On a Friday afternoon we will be playing netball and concentrating on catching, throwing and dodging as well as attack and defence skills as part of a team. Our new Sports Apprentice, Mr Dickinson, will be helping us during these sessions.
Please remember that you will need your PE kit in school so that you can take a full and active role in these lessons.
PSHE
This term we will be talking about our feelings using the framework of 'Zippy's Friends'. We begin by thinking about what makes us happy or sad and move on to discuss how to deal with our emotions through stories, drawings and discussion.