Be the best you can be

Year 1

Autumn Term 2018

Year 1 is a very important and exciting year for our children when they move from the Foundation Stage into Key Stage 1. We continue to build upon the progress the children have made during their Reception year and to encourage greater independence in subtle ways. We ask our parents to leave their children at the classroom door to give them responsibility for getting ready each morning. We recognise that it is sometimes more difficult for our parents than it is for our children!

We will be busy settling into our new classrooms and routines. The focus for our PSHE lessons will be on new beginnings and changes. The children will have the opportunity to talk about settling into Year 1, voicing their worries and excitement. They will help to set up their own classroom rules to support with creating a fun and fair learning environment. We will also look at relationships with our friends and family and kindness and anti-bullying.

 Our theme this term will be a fairy tale of 'Once Upon a Time'. The children will receive a letter from The Three Little Pigs, asking them to build a new house. They will be making masks and puppets of the characters to act out the stories in the home corner. We will also undertake an investigation about which material would be best for building a house and create a fair test to find out. We will talk about where we live and compare our own houses. Underpinning this theme will be the big idea of 'wonder'. The work we undertake and produce will link to this big idea and at the end of the topic we will also have a WOW day, where the children can make gingerbread men, make shields and swords or tiaras and wands, and create their own story book.

During our English lessons we will be looking at Talk 4 Writing to learn a variety of fairy tales through pictorial representations and actions. We will be looking at the features of a journey/quest story based on the Three Little Pigs as well as a warning story of Little Red Riding Hood.During the Autumn term, we will also focus on learning some poetry, writing a persuasive piece of work and instructions. During our English basic skills lessons, we will focus on handwriting and spelling. letters and Sounds will be taught daily throughout Year 1 and we will use every opportunity to practise applying the sounds we know into our writing. We will be practising our reading skills 1:1 with a teacher or a TA and focus on segmenting and blending sounds together to read words. We will also be practising reading high frequency words by sight in order to become more fluent readers.

Our daily Maths lessons will be based upon layered target steps. Targets this term will include place value, rapid recall of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, formal written methods of addition and subtraction and 2D and 3D shapes. Our maths basic skills lessons will focus on reading and writing numbers to 20, counting forwards and backwards to 100 and one more/less.

Our PE lessons will focus this term on moving and handling a ball which will lead onto team games. In gymnastics, we will be practising different ways of moving and rolling which we will then put into a sequence to perform to the class.

In computing, we will use Discovery Education for the children to explore how to create their own codes. They will learn how to make objects move in different directions and disappear. We will also be creating our own fairy tale pictures using the tools and techniques on TUX Paint.

Mrs Powell will be teaching Music, where we will learn new songs and how to play tuned instruments. We will be using Charanga where you can log in and practise at home!

Spring Term 2019

Our theme this term is 'Wonderful World'. Throughout this topic we will be doing a range of activities related to geography, science and history. The children will be making their own passports, learning about the continents of the world and local places in the UK. We will also be learning about the seasons and the weather. The children will undertake an investigation to gather information about rainfall every week and evaluate their results. After February half term, the children will be learning about plants and animals. This will include planting their own seeds and learning what they need to grow.

When we have our computing sessions we will use 2Publish to create an information file about a variety of animals. We will learn how to create and copy pictures and add information text. Then, we will learn how to create and copy pictures and add information text. Then, we will learn how to store, retrieve and edit our work on the school server.

The children will be spending time in Forest School this term. They will explore their environment through play and learn more about their wonderful world.

In music this term we will be working through a unit called 'In the Groove', with a focus on listening to and identifying Blues music, keeping the pulse with our bodies and various instruments.

The focus of our PSHE sessions will be keeping safe. We will start with looking at Internet Safety and the children will create and display posters to promote keeping digitally safe. Later in the term, we will learn about keeping safe in the world around us such as stranger danger, the use of the emergency services, road safety and identifying safe places.

For information about the other areas of our curriculum, please look at the Spring Term 2019 Curriculum Letter below.

Summer Term 2019

This term, we will be focusing on the 'big idea' of responsibility. We will be looking at what responsibility means to us and the different responsibilities we have in school and at home. During this term, we will also be learning about Space and how we are responsible for looking after our world, how great teamwork leads to successful missions and how taking responsibility for recycling will lead to a brighter future. During our work on space missions, we will be looking at the responsibilities of team members. Then we will be learning about the importance of recycling and using our own recycling to create junk model rockets. We will also have our Wow day this term and a visit from the Planetarium so the children can learn more about space.

The daily maths teaching will provide the children with a range of targets based upon a specific maths topic. This term, maths targets will include: place value, time, position, addition and subtraction and multiplication and division. The children will also develop their skills to apply and evaluate these mathematical skills in a variety of contexts. Our maths basic skills lessons for this term will focus on recognising, finding and naming 1/2 and 1/4 of a quantity and representing and using number bonds and related subtraction facts within 20.

In our English lessons we will be using Talk 4 Writing to learn a variety of texts through pictorial representations and actions. The first story we will learn is 'Superworm' and the children will create their own defeating the monster story. We will also be using our research on planets to write a non-chronological report about one. After half-term we will be focusing on portal stories and writing our own adventure. Letters and Sounds will continue to be taught daily throughout Year 1 and we will use every opportunity to practise applying the sounds we  know into our writing. During our English basic skills lessons, we will focus on using and applying nouns, adjectives and verbs and using prefixes and suffixes.

During the Summer term, we will be continuing Book Club. This is an opportunity for the children to read in a group and gain a deeper understanding of different texts.

Within our Computing unit we will be using PowerPoint to create our own presentations about Space. We will be learning how to retrieve, create, store and edit our digital content. later on in the term, we will use iPads to use ScratchJR for coding.

PE sessions will work on our basic core movements and we will also be practising our athletics ready for sports day.

We will be visiting Forest School again in the first half of the summer term. This is always an exciting time for the children!

Music will continue to be taught by Mrs Powell using our music scheme Charanga. Our focus will be rhythm and pulse as we learn some new songs.

During our PSHE sessions we will talk about the big idea of 'responsibility'. There will also be a focus on financial capability where the children will learn about the value of money, their pocket money and saving. In the second half of the term we will learn about living in the wider world, where we will learn about local and global communities, focusing on tolerance and respect.

GALLERIES

HOMEWORK

LETTERS & DOCUMENTS

• Curriculum Letter - Autumn 2018
• 1R Meet the Teacher Presentation
• Curriculum Letter - Spring 2019
• Curriculum Letter - Summer 2019