Welcome to Year 1 - Willow

 

Mrs Andreas and Mrs Bell

Year One have had a wonderfully busy first half-term and have done brilliantly to settle into their new classroom, new routines, and mission-based learning!

Literacy
We recently completed a unit on The Naughty Bus by Jan Oke. This delightful story inspired some truly imaginative and independent writing. The class were thrilled to discover “evidence” that the Naughty Bus had paid a visit to Oaklands—he even managed to sneak into Mr Hassan’s office and the staff room, where he cheekily stole Mrs Oracova’s sandwich! The children then wrote thoughtful letters to teach the Bus how to be kind, polite, and sensible. To finish the unit, they created their own stories in which the Bus was no longer naughty but instead set off on exciting adventures around the world—and even beyond! (A few imaginative writers flew the Bus to the moon to meet an alien!). We are incredibly proud of every child in Year One for their enthusiasm and creativity; they have already made such impressive progress this year.

Maths
The children have been exploring Place Value within 10. They have sorted and counted objects, recognised numbers as words, practised counting forwards and backwards within 10, and learned about “one more” and “one less.” They have also mastered the symbols for less than (<), equal to (=), and greater than (>), ordered numbers, found missing numbers, and worked with number lines. We have now begun our Addition and Subtraction unit, which includes learning about parts and wholes using the part-whole model, recognising the plus (+) and equals (=) symbols, and writing simple number sentences. Within our shapes unit, the children have been naming simple 3-D shapes such as cubes, cuboids, cylinders, pyramids, cones, and spheres. While some questions require children to write the names of the shapes, at this point the focus has been more on verbally naming and matching.

Phonics
The children have been busy revisiting Phases 3 and 4 and have now begun exploring Phase 5. They have learnt several new graphemes, including ay (play), oy (enjoy), ou (proud), ea (beach), ir (girl), ie (cried), ue (pronounced “oo” as in blue, and “yoo” as in argue), and u (unicorn). They have also been introduced to some new Tricky Words, such as your, people, oh, and their.

Driver Project
This term’s Driver Project has been History-based, focusing on the topic Childhood. The children have learned about toys from the past (including those from the 1950s), explored special events in their own lives, created timelines and family trees, and compared family life then and now.

R.E.
We have been learning how Christians celebrate Harvest. We listened to joyful Harvest songs, picked apples from the Oaklands apple tree, and made a delicious apple crumble—which was enjoyed by many! We also read The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde and reflected on the importance of sharing and kindness. More recently, we have explored the Hindu festival of Diwali, reading the story of Rama and Sita, crafting Diwa lamps from clay, designing colourful Rangoli patterns, and thinking about the special things that bring us good luck.

Art
Our unit Let’s Mix! introduced the children to colour theory. They experimented with primary and secondary colours and created some vibrant, joyful artwork.

Next half term, the children will be:

• Starting a brand-new (top-secret!) Literacy text
• Continuing their work on Addition and Subtraction
• Advancing through Phase 5 sounds and tricky words in Phonics
• Continuing their Childhood History project
• Exploring Human senses in Science
• Starting our Geography topic Our Wonderful World
• Beginning a new Art unit, Funny Faces and Fabulous Features, exploring portraiture
• Starting a DT project called Shade and Shelter — and if any parents working in the construction industry would be happy to visit and talk to the children about building structures, please contact us at admin@oaklands.herts.sch.uk. The children always love a parent visitor!

Wishing all our children and families a restful, happy, and fun-filled half term!

Learning Update

Stay tuned to find out what children have been doing, and the upcoming learning in Year 1. 

 

 Autumn Term 2025

Click on the links below to see what the children in Year 1 will be learning in the Autumn Term.