Year 1 have had a fantastic term learning through their topic ‘Julia Donaldson’! Throughout the term, we have been learning all about her amazing books and developing our creativity, literacy and numeracy skills through lots of fun activities!

We started off the term by reading ‘Stickman’. We have been using the Pie Corbett ‘Talk for writing’ actions to help us retell the story. This task supported our story telling skills and has prepared us for our retelling activities throughout the term. We became very creative and made Stickman and his family using real sticks and molded the clay into small Stickman figures. This was a very creative and messy activity!! Following pupil voice discussions, a lot of the children asked to draw the characters from the story. With this in mind, we used the ‘Austin’s butterfly model’ to draw three drafts of the Stickman. Using this model, we improved our drawing each time, paying attention to detail and our end results were fantastic. This story was voted one of our favourite Julia Donaldson books and the pupils thoroughly enjoyed participating in all of the activities involved.

After looking at ‘Stickman’, we moved onto ‘The Smartest Giant in town’. Did you know he was such a helpful giant? The Smartest Giant role play has been our favourite so far! The pupils have been using the large items of clothing to create their own giants on the floor, using their imagination to serve customers and mend clothes in the role play and they even took their learning outside and created a giant using natural objects – They looked great!

How lucky were we to have a visit from Animal encounters? We were super brave and held, petted and had close up pictures with lots of interesting animals. We met a snake, Biscuit the bearcat (Binturong), a skunk and an armadillo! We were so excited to find out lots of very interesting facts!

Recently, we also visited Glyn Anwen. We had such a lovely time discussing our favourite Julia Donaldson books and asking the ladies and gentlemen questions about their favourite books. A lot of children read their favourite story to them and they took it in turns to share the story aloud. Following this, the pupils also designed and created the front cover of a book together. It was such a lovely experience for all involved and the children were so excited to visit. Many have asked when they can return!

Our final visit this year was a very special visit from Louby Lou this term. During our drama workshops, we helped to make some magic potions, went on a hunt to find the Smartest Giant and retold the story through a dramatic performance. We really enjoyed getting involved and retelling the story in such a fun way.

We are so excited to continue this theme after half term. I wonder what we will do?

We hope everyone has a lovely half term break. Stay safe and have fun!