Welcome to Year One!

Please keep an eye out on our page for regular updates on what we're learning as well as other important information we would like to share with you. 

The Year One Crew

Our Vision

Parent Information

Please find below the slides from our Year 1 information session that we delivered for parents. If you have any questions at all then please speak to your child's class teacher. 

 Tapestry

We use Tapestry in Year 1 as a way to keep communicating with our parents. We will be sharing what we're learning each week, any assessments we carry out, mental maths, and the sounds we're learning each week in phonics. We will also be sharing a weekly handwriting focus too. Please speak to your child's class teacher if you need any support. 

Our Classrooms

The team have worked so hard this summer to get the classrooms ready for our amazing children!

Our Provision

Our shared area can be accessed by all of our 3 classes as part of their continuous provision during Discovery Time.

Our Outside Area

Here is our amazing outside area which has been lovingly developed by our dedicated team. The children really enjoy using this space as a way to continue their learning and build on what they have learnt in Year R through continuous provision and set activities linked to our current topic, as well as our weekly Rainbow Challenges. 

Rainbow Challenges

Rainbow Challenges form part of our Continuous Provision. The children are asked to complete a range of activities throughout the week that link to the 7 colours of the rainbow. When the children have completed each job, they get to put their coloured lolly stick into their individual rainbow. We celebrate every Friday with our celebration song and everyone who has completed their jobs gets a special Rainbow Challenge sticker! The jobs cover different curriculum areas and allow the children to apply what they have learnt previously and they also help them to develop their independence.

Talk Time

We are invite a child each week to talk to the class all about themselves to help develop their oracy. We would like them to talk about their interests, pets, family, clubs or anything else they'd like to talk about. 

Partner Talk

We are focusing on developing our talk partners this year and we have decided on some rules to help us which are:

• We will use ‘talking knees’ when it is time to talk.
• We will turn to face our talk partner.
• We will look at our partner when they are talking.
• We will share our ideas.
• We will listen.
• We will take turns.
• We will share our ideas with the class.
• We will change our talk partners each week. 

Our Curriculum Plan

Here is an overview of our curriculum learning journey for this academic year. 

Our Reading Journey in Year 1

Here are our chosen focused texts for each of our topics throughout the year. We will also be reading additional books to enhance the children's wider reading which include fiction, non-fiction and poetry. 

2025-2026

Our Curriculum Learning Journey

Autumn 1

Commotion in the Ocean

Welcome to Year 1 and our first half term of incredible learning.

Our focus texts will be:

The children have settled in really well in their new classes and are already familiar with their routines. We have begun by writing sentences using 'I can see' about pictures from the story of The Lighthouse Keeper's Lunch. 

We have been using nouns and adjectives to describe what is inside Billy's Bucket. The children have done a fantastic job!

Here is a copy of the curriculum overview letter for this half term:

Here is some of our amazing learning from this half term...

Diwali

We have been learning all about Diwali and decorated biscuits using icing to make Rangoli patterns. They got to eat them too! 

Autumn 2 - After Dark

This half term we are learning all about what happens at night time. Our focus texts for this half term are The Night Box and The Lost Property Office. 

We will also be starting whole class guided reading and our focus texts will be Flashlight and Owl Babies. 

Here is a copy of our curriculum overview letter for this half term which explains all about the various learning opportunities we have planned. 

Be Bright Be Seen Day

To begin our topic, the children came to school dressed in brightly coloured clothing to help remind ourselves how to keep safe when we are out at night.

Harri Heart reminded us how to cross the road safely as we thought about the following to help us remember what to do:

We talked about the people outside of school who help to keep us safe such as the police, firefighters, paramedics and lollipop people. We took part in a range of activities during the day. 

Remembrance Day

We gathered together to commemorate Remembrance Day by taking part in a one minutes silence. We also did a range of activities to celebrate this special day.

History Week

As part of our History learning all about toys, the children brought in their favourite toys to share with the rest of the class. We talked about why they are our favourite and what they are made of. We have also looked at old and new toys and how they have changed over time. 

Visit to Milestones Musuem

We visited Milestones to learn all about old toys as part of our History topic. The children played old games such as hobby horses, dominoes, pick up sticks, skipping and hopscotch. They sorted old and new toys and also put them on a timeline. They got to explore the museum and even spotted some Christmas trees along the way. They had the best day!

Year 1 Christmas Concert

We came dressed in our Christmas clothes and performed lots of Christmas songs to our families. It was wonderful to see the children singing and dancing!

Spring 1 - Cold, Cold, Cold

Our new topic is all about the cold. We have 3 different enquiries that we will be focusing on:

• Antarctica enquiry
• Penguin enquiry
• Explorer enquiry

Our new focus books for this half term will be:

In our Guided Reading we will be looking at the following books:

Here is our Curriculum Overview Letter for this half term.

Visitors in School

Welcome PCSO Mel and Police Officer Lucy into school. They came to tell us all about their role in the community and how they help to keep us safe. We told them all about Harri Heart and how they keep us safe inside and outside of school. Our visitors were so impressed with all that they can tell them about safeguarding. We were even allowed to hold the handcuffs to see how heavy they felt. Well done Year 1!

Break the Rules Day

We broke the following rules as part of our Break the Rules Day to raise money to further improve our provision:

• Wearing a temporary tattoo
• Having crazy hair or wearing a wig
• Bring in a cuddly toy
• Bring a snack for after lunch
• Bring a 'treat' snack e.g. sweets, chocolate, crisps
• Wearing face paint
• Wearing nail varnish
• Uniform swap e.g. shoes for trainers, trousers instead of jeans
• Wearing odd socks
• Having squash instead of water

Children's Mental Health and Wellbeing Week

We came to school dressed in clothes that celebrate our unique selves and represent how we belong. We celebrated by thinking about how we belong. We talked about how we belong:

• in school
• within our families
• in the community
• in activities
• with friends
• within our culture

We also talked about how our CREW characters help us feel like we belong. We took part in a scavenger hunt which included pictures of how we belong in this world. 

Safer Internet Day

We read the story of Techosaurus. We reminded ourselves about how to keep ourselves safe online and looked back at our Computing Charters. Harri Heart reminded us about:

• Telling an adult when we see something we don't like
• Only going on the computer when we have asked an adult
• Not sharing personal information 
• Not talking to strangers

We also talked about voice assistants and how they can help us. We discussed how they aren't real, they are robots and not humans and they aren't our friends. We talked about the different devices in our homes and what we use them for. We reminded each other not to tell them any personal information about ourselves. 

Spring 2

To infinity and beyond!

We have started our new topic by reading Man on the Moon written by Simon Bartram. We have been editing sentences in our writing remembering our capital letters. We have been showing our grown-ups what amazing maths skills we have too. We are looking forward to celebrating Mars Day next week. 

Mars Day

We celebrated Mars Day! We learnt all about Space and our amazing solar system. We took part in lots of different activities linked to our current focus book of Man on the Moon:

• We designed and painted our own aliens
• We made alien masks
• We drank hot chocolate and marshmallows just like Bob!
• We decorated and ate moon biscuits
• We played space tic tac toe
• We created star constellations using chalk and sticky stars

Summer 1

Ready, Steady, Grow!

Our focus books for this topic are:

We will be focusing on sentence writing including nouns, adjectives, verbs and prepositions. We will also be looking at adding prefixes and suffixes to words. 

Here is our curriculum overview letter for the summer term: