What’s been happening in Year 1!
It has been an exciting and busy term in Year 1, filled with academic growth, creativity, and fun in our school community.
Phonics
This term, Year 1 has been building strong foundations in phonemic awareness through daily, explicit instruction. Our phonics lessons have been helping students isolate, blend, and segment phonemes with confidence. Through engaging activities, repetition, and targeted support, they’re developing a solid understanding of the phoneme-grapheme connection, an essential skill for reading, spelling, and writing. It’s been a joy to see them applying these skills independently and with growing enthusiasm!
Art
In Visual Arts, Year 1 has been exploring the fascinating technique of Pointillism, a style that uses tiny, deliberate dots of colour to create vibrant, detailed images. Inspired by famous artists like Georges Seurat, the children used cotton buds and paint to carefully construct their own colourful scenes, dot by dot. This process not only resulted in stunning, eye-catching artworks, but also helped students strengthen their fine motor skills, concentration, and patience. Their dotted masterpieces are now proudly on display in our classrooms, adding a burst of colour and creativity to our learning spaces!
The Bazaar
To celebrate our Feast Day at St Thomas More, students enjoyed a range of fun activities organised by our incredible Year 6 leaders. Year 1 had an absolute blast with coloured hair spray, fake tattoos, face painting and exciting games. One of the highlights of the day was the spooky haunted house, where many students braved the creepy decorations and jump scares, some even went back for a second round! It was a fantastic day of fun, friendship, and celebration, reminding us of the strong community we share at St Thomas More.
Year 1 Teachers,
Mrs Ashlee Ross and Miss Emma Bujaroski