Form One Website News Spring 1 2026

We have enjoyed another busy half-term in Form One. Have a look at some of the super learning we have been doing.

In English, we loved listening to the story ‘Girls Can Do Anything!’ and felt inspired to make posters to share with the younger girls in the school. We started thinking of phrases we thought might inspire the younger girls and wrote them on huge posters around the room. We then hunted for other inspirational quotes around the school and got to work in pairs making some amazing posters. We can’t wait to share them with the Reception girls next week.

We shared another amazing story by Tom Percival, ‘The River’. It told the story of Rowan, whose feelings flowed just like the river. It was a sad story, which included the passing of his beloved dog Atlas. We discussed the different feelings in the book and tried to name as many feelings as we could. We wrote as many feelings on large paper around the room, before making our own feelings books, thinking carefully about when we feel each emotion.

In Science, we were delighted to find out our new topic is ‘Materials.’ We shared everything we know already about the topic and then went on to learn some of the main material names. Mrs Bishop’s glasses had fallen off during the lunch break and she had labelled lots of the classroom equipment incorrectly, for example Jigsaw Jack was labelled with ‘paper’ and books in the book box said ‘plastic!’ Silly Mrs Bishop! We went on to help Mrs Bishop even more, by sorting her Christmas tree decorations into material groups so she could put them away safely in her loft. Thanks for your help, girls!

We used our newly acquired skills in all things Materials to design and make comfortable dog beds for Mrs Bishop’s dog, Molly. We discussed the materials we wanted to use and then designed beds, sharing our super designs with the whole class afterwards.

Fab Science popped in for an amazing practical workshop, where we discovered how aeroplanes are held up in the air and how air pressure is all around us pushing down on everything.

In Maths, we have been focusing on bigger numbers and have been learning how to make the numbers using base ten, for example 12 is one ten and 2 ones. We matched amounts, using different ways to represent them, including base ten, Numicon and tens frames. We practised making amounts using the base ten and became so much more confident explaining how to make the teens numbers. We enjoyed playing ‘Under the blanket’ game, where we had to use our super Maths vocabulary to work out which number (and girl!) was hiding using ‘one more, ‘one less, ‘in between’, ‘before’ and ‘after’. We took time to play snakes and ladders and addition snakes and ladders with our friends.

We enjoyed playing lots of simple board games, scoring them using our tallying skills and working out who was first, second and third. See if you can play games at home and make a simple score card.

In Art, we learnt about a new artist, Jackson Pollock. He was an American artist, who found new and exciting ways to paint, including dripping, blowing, scribbling, dabbing and so much more. We explored some of his painting techniques and loved the results. January has been a very wet month, so we decided to make simple silhouettes of ourselves with our umbrellas, used masking tape to cover them and then we used Pollock’s dribbling, dripping and blowing techniques to make the rain. We thought they looked amazing!

In Geography, we enjoyed using Google Maps to locate out homes and school by zooming in on the globe. We found out a little more about maps, compasses and how to use them. We were surprised to see aerial photographs of Form One and enjoyed trying to make a simple map of the classroom. Harder than it looks!

We then learnt about compasses and how we use them when map reading, as well as looking at symbols. We used our map reading skills to give directions to different landmarks around London, telling our friends whether they needed to go north, east, south or west along routes. Very useful skills to have when travelling around the capital!

In Focused Show and Tell, we have loved sharing ideas about what we might like to do when we are older. These have included teachers, architects, bakers, hairdressers and footballers so far. We can’t wait to see if these aspirations come true in the future!

To celebrate St Valentine’s Day, we looked at Wassily Kandinsky’s amazing art work and tried hard to mix our own colours to paint pretty hearts for our families.

In RE, we celebrated the Lunar New Year which is an amazing fifteen-day celebration to welcome in the spring. We loved making a class dragon, using Jackson Pollock’s painting techniques, and even tried to write our names in Chinese!

We ended our half-term by inviting our lovely families into the classroom to show off all of our super work.

Wow! What a busy half-term. We can’t wait for longer days, and some spring sunshine soon in the second half of the Spring Term!