Welcome to Year 1

In Year 1 we do three themes across the year. We try to fit Literacy and Numeracy into the themes as well as all of the other subjects. However, a few subjects remain discrete; PE, Music and French. Each theme includes a trip and a visitor to school to help bring the topic alive. The classroom environment is also used to set the scene. Wall displays reflect what the children are learning and show work the children have produced. The classroom role-play area is converted into a place that links with the theme; this is a place where the children can imagine and recreate roles from the real world.

Fire

This is the first of the three themes covered. It takes the children on a journey through time. We explore how fire was first discovered and how early man used fire. We learn about the Great Fire of London and the children imagine they were really there. They write their own diaries and build a giant 3D model of the Great Fire. We look at the story of Guy Fawkes and act out what happened!

We investigate fiery dragons and learn about dragon myths. A very important strand of this theme is fire safety. The children have a visit from a fire officer who teaches them how to stay safe and brings some little goodies for them to play with! The children get to visit the fire station and get to have a ride in a fire engine, squirt the hose and dress up in real fire men uniforms. There are some fantastic crafts involved in this topic including making their own fire t-shirts.

Houses and Homes

This theme is very hands on and gives children an insight into homes in their locality, exploring the influences of time, climate & environment. They compare housing around the world and have a guest speaker in to talk about homes in Africa! We travel back in time and look at houses through the ages with a particular focus on castles. The children enjoy a real banquet ball in a castle and have medieval dancing and a jousting tournament. We make different kinds of houses using a variety of different materials including real bricks! Science work in this theme includes studying a creature home! The children turn into nature detectives and investigate the school grounds for different animal homes and spend time studying what happens in these homes, taking lots of pictures.

Journeys

Our final theme of the year is very exciting. It explores all the different ways we can travel from water travel to air travel, and from land travel to space travel. The children learn about a variety of famous people linked with journeys and look at how things have changed over time. The classroom role-play area turns into a travel agents and the children all make their own passports for travelling. During the space strand we make a giant rocket and learn about journeys to space. The children make their own space helmets and fly off to space in a simulated experience using the interactive whiteboard. The children are very lucky when it comes to studying air travel as they get to visit a real airport! They get to sit in the pilots seat of a plane, explore a helicopter and even visit the control tower; an amazing experience for the children.