Willow
Welcome to Year 1 - Willow
Mrs Andreas and Mrs Morgan
History
This week, we began our new topic, School Days. The children explored old photographs of Oaklands and spotted lots of changes over time — including a completely different school uniform! We were also delighted to welcome Mrs Fuller, who shared how the school has changed during her 25 years here before retiring last July.
One of the children’s favourite discoveries was that there used to be a swimming pool on the school grounds.
We then created a timeline of events from Reception and Year 1 so far, and finished by thinking about the people who help us in school — what their roles are, how they support us and how we can help them do their jobs successfully.
Literacy
In Literacy, we read Julian Is a Mermaid by Jessica Love. Inspired by Julian’s fabulous carnival costume, the children designed their own headdresses and necklaces, then wrote persuasive adverts inviting people to visit their costume shop.
We focused on choosing the correct punctuation — question marks, exclamation marks or full stops — to match the purpose of each sentence.
To end the unit, we danced to carnival music and imagined ourselves as our favourite creatures (turtles, monkeys, capybaras, dogs, pythons and more!). The children then wrote a three‑stanza poem about their chosen creature, using rhythm and repetition to bring their ideas to life.
Maths
In Maths, we have been learning about place value within 100. We have:
- counted from 50 to 100
- recognised multiples of 10
- partitioned two‑digit numbers into tens and ones
- ordered numbers to 100 on a number line
- compared numbers using the vocabulary greater than and less than
Phonics
In Phonics, we continued revising all Phase 5 sounds, decodable words and tricky words. This week we focused on:
Sounds: ph (phone), wh (wheel), ir (girl), ea (beach), oy (destroy), ou (soup), ew (chew), ue (blue), aw (claw), ea (head), g (magic), c (ice)
Tricky words revisited: many, who, your, their, people, whole, thought, through, any, friend, once, our, laugh, because, your
Next up
We will continue to revise all of the above phonics skills ahead of the Phonics Screening Check during the week beginning 8th June.
In Maths, we will learn about time.
Summer Term 2025
Links to Summer Term learning are in the process of being uploaded.