Year 1
Welcome to the fun and exciting world of Year 1, where we take all the wonderful skills that the children have learnt in Early Years Foundation Stage and develop them as they start to experience the National Curriculum. We make learning as fun as possible, using a range of different teaching styles to make sure that all children are able to access new concepts and succeed in their learning. Year 1 promotes independence, responsibility and hard work - as well as lots of fun!!! Our aim is for the children to deepen their knowledge and understanding in a relaxed, exciting and engaging environment where we set them up to become enthusiastic, lifelong learners.
Year 1 is made up of three classes - Darwin, Earhart and Goodall. Like all classes in The Discovery School, the classes were named after a famous scientist or inventor. Darwin Class is named after the infamous naturalist Charles Darwin who discovered the theory of evolution, Earhart Class is named after Amelia Earhart, an inspirational scientist who studied electromagnetism, and Goodall Class is named after the world renowned scientist and conservationist Jane Goodall. Click on the images below to learn more about the namesake of our classes and what they are famous for.
I am Mrs Boulton, Darwin class teacher. Our teaching assistant is Mrs Downing and on a Thursday Miss Stapley will be teaching in Darwin class.
We are situated in the KS1 end of the school next to Goodall Class.
Earhart Class is taught by Mrs Hook and the teaching assistant is Mrs Cox.
We are located at the end of the KS1 area between Darwin and Newton class.
Goodall Class is taught by Mrs Coldwell (Monday - Wednesday) and Mrs Healey (Thursday - Friday). Mrs Forsyth is the class teaching assistant.
We are located at the start of the KS1 area as the first classroom after the small hall.
Meet the Teacher presentation 2025
Below is a link for the Meet the Teacher Year 1 presentation from Monday 16th September 2024.
Communication
The communication between yourselves as parents and ourselves as teachers is paramount, so we thought it would be helpful if you knew when and how to liaise with us. It is best email us any messages. If you feel that you need to speak with us in person, please email to arrange an appointment.
Our email addresses are:
Darwin - Mrs Boulton - sboulton@discovery.kent.sch.uk
- Miss Stapley - dstapley@discovery.kent.sch.uk (Thursday only)
Earhart - Mrs Hook - bhook@discovery.kent.sch.uk
Goodall - Mrs Coldwell - ccoldwell@discovery.kent.sch.uk (Monday - Wednesday)
- Mrs Healey - chealey@discovery.kent.sch.uk (Thursday - Friday)
Mrs Boulton is the Year 1 phase leader, as well as Assistant Head.
Please allow 48 hours for teacher to reply to emails. For all urgent messages or enquiries please call the school office on 01732847000.
Topics
The curriculum at The Discovery School is an enquiry based one in which the children are encouraged to ask and answer questions about a topic.
Through this enquiry based learning, the children will get the opportunities to experience a range of activities which will help to develop further their knowledge and skills of the wider world.
Year 1 Learning experience guarantees 2024-25
Throughout the year the children in Year 1 will be trying to discover the answers to these 'Questions for Discovery':
Term 1: Who am I?
Term 2: What were toys like in the past and what are they like now?
Term 3: How can I keep myself safe and happy?
Term 4:Where do I live, where do I play, where do I learn?
Term 5:How has transport changed through the years?
Term 6:How are books made?
For more information about each topic please click on the following link:
PE
Our PE day for this academic year 2025-2026 will be:
Darwin: Tuesday and Friday.
Earhart: Wednesday and Friday.
Goodall: Wednesday and Friday.
The children will also be having 'Forest School' sessions throughout the school year. Please see the below table for the dates.
| Darwin | Earhart | Goodall |
| Friday 19th September | Wednesday 17th September | Wednesday 24th September |
| Wednesday 1st October | Friday 26th September | Friday 3rd October |
| Friday 31st October | Wednesday 8th September | Wednesday 5th November |
General information
Reading Books
Reading books will be changed on Monday and Thursday, two school books will be sent home each time. Therefore it is essential that your child’s yellow reading record book AND reading books are in school every Tuesday and Friday. Please record in your child's yellow book that they have read everyday even if it is just with a smiley face or a tick besides the date.
In addition to their regular school reading books, children will be able to chose a 'free choice' book from our class library to take home each Friday. These need to be returned the following Friday so that they are able to chose another.
Phonics
We believe that learning to read and establishing a love of books is an essential part of being a literacy learner. Therefore we value the importance phonics has in the development of early reading and early writing. In year 1 we deliver high quality daily phonics lessons using the FFT publications.
In phonics we want the children:
- To develop a good knowledge of phonemes and graphemes.
- To be able to blend phonemes to decode (read) a word.
- To be able to segment and blend to be able to spell a word.
- To be able to transfer the skills from phonics into everyday learning.
- To be confident with segmenting and blending pseudo (alien/made up) words in preparation for the statutory Year One phonics screen.
For more information please visit our phonics page.
Reading
The Reading Books in KS1 are an amalgamation of different reading schemes, for example; Oxford Reading Tree, Treetops, Rigby Stars and Floppy's Phonics. Reading in Year 1 can take the form of anything and doesn’t always have to be a school book.
You can read:
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Menus
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Road signs
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Maps
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Labels
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Cards
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Non-fiction books…to name but a few
It is important that children understand that reading words is everywhere…not just in their school books and should be enjoyable. We ask that you write in your child’s book every night to record that they have read, even if just with a smiley face or tick beside the date.
Our Homework
Please watch the Key Stage 1 Sway below to find out more about our Year 1 homework.
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