ARCHIVED Year 1 Blog 2024/25

Today was our first lesson on our new topic - Hot and cold places.  We looked at a map of the world and located the UK on a map and discussed the type of weather we get.  We then talked about the equator and looked where this is in the world. We spoke about it being an invisible line around the earth. We talked about temperatures on and near the equator being hotter.  We then looked at different photographs of places and worked out if they were hot or cold places. We then Located the North Pole, South Pole and equator on a world map. We had to decide if they were hot or cold places. 

This morning we received a special delivery from Ventnor Coastguard. Whilst they were out on a search on Gurnard beach this morning, they found a letter in a bottle. It was addressed to the children at Gurnard Primary School.  The children were excited to read the letter and found it was from a lonely animal. They worked out it was from a penguin. We were unsure where penguins live so we looked online and found out they live at the South Pole / Antarctica. We looked at a globe and a map to find out where he lives and to find out how far the bottle has travelled! We decided we wanted to write back to the penguin so the children wrote lovely letters and drew pictures that we will put back in the bottle and send out into the sea. 

Today we looked at maps in our Geography lesson. We looked at maps of the Isle of Wight and Blackgang Chine and spoke about why maps are important. We then looked at aerial maps and how they are from above. We looked at a variety of aerial maps and tried to work out what the different symbols were showing   We then pretended to be a bird in our classroom to show what it looks like from above. We used bricks and loose parts to make an aerial map of the classroom. We tried to show the tables, chairs, carpet spots and different areas in the classroom. Some children were also able to add labels to their maps. 

Today we looked at our school environment. We looked at a map of the school building and the school grounds. We then had a walk around the school and grounds and identified the main features of our school. Back in class we had a go at drawing a map of the school and our favourite parts of the schools.