Curriculum Overview – Autumn 2014
I would like to take this opportunity to welcome your child to Year 1. Moving into Year 1 will be a big change for your child as the opportunity for them to play reduces significantly over the first term, as they embark upon more formal learning opportunities.
Topic – Superheroes
In Year 1 we follow a creative curriculum approach where as many subjects as possible, including literacy, are covered within one theme. This half term our topic is Superheroes. Our topic started when we discovered a package, covered in slime, left by the evil Slime Man. He has stolen our class rewards and we had 1 hour to find them. We followed a trail of slime all around school and eventually found our rewards next to the drain where we suspect Slime Man must have escaped down. We designed our own traps to capture Slime Man if he came back to our school. As we move into the topic we will look at parts of the body and materials linked to science. The children will investigate their senses to see if they have superhuman senses like many of the superheroes they know and love. They will also help to design a new outfit for traction man and new rockets for Batman using their knowledge of properties of materials. Later in the topic we will look at the Geography skills of mapping in order to help Batman find his way to our school and find a new safe place around our school to build his new lair. Finally we will link our work on superheroes to real-life superheroes. This will include a visit from the fire brigade. Children will be asked to think about people in their lives that are heroes to them and why.
This half term will finish with a DT week. Year 1 will design and make a vehicle for the superheroes they designed earlier in the half term. They will explore wheels and axles and use this knowledge to make their own vehicle.
English
In Year 1 we follow the Read Write Ink programme for phonics. Children will receive a structured and systematic phonics lesson every Wednesday, Thursday and Friday for an hour each day. This will be taught in small ability groups, based on their reading ability. They will also receive a shorter sound based lesson every Monday and Tuesday in these same groups for half an hour each day.
On a Monday and Tuesday, those children who are ready, will also be taught English as a whole class. Those who are not ready for the National Curriculum will continue to receive an EYFS based curriculum in a small group with a teacher.
In whole class English lessons the theme of superheroes will be continued. We will be introducing your child to a variety of types of book including fiction, non-fiction and poetry. The main focus of this term is to encourage children to become independent writers, writing simple sentences that make sense with full stops and capital letters becoming more accurate. In order to encourage this, the children will be read various superhero stories and poems to write labels, descriptions, potions and postcards. They will design and label their own superhero and write a description of him/her. After reading some poems on superheroes they will write their own verses in a similar style and create an acrostic poem in groups.
Reading books will also be sent home each week. These can be changed on a Tuesday and Thursday each week providing they are returned to school and signed by the parent/carer. Children should be changing their book at least once a week. The more that you can practise reading with your child the better! Short sessions every day is ideal!
Maths – During the Autumn Term
Pupils will be taught to represent and explain what happens when counting forwards and backwards in ones and can compare two measures and describe the relationship. They will also explain how they know one more or one less than any given number and read and compare numbers under 100. They will also be taught the means to solve addition and subtraction problems using their knowledge of one more and one less and number bonds to 10 and 20. In Geometry the children will learn to recognise and identify 2d shapes in their environment and justify their thinking. We will continue to use Maths Makes sense to cover some aspects of the New Curriculum including addition and subtraction using cups and counting Ty for place value.
Science
As part of the new curriculum much of the science is included within our new topics. For example this half term we will look at parts of the body, our senses and properties of materials all within the topic of superheroes.
It is necessary to teach some areas of the new science curriculum discretely. This term the children will be learning all about animals. The children will learn about common mammals, birds, reptiles, fish and amphibians. They will be introduced to the terms carnivore, herbivore and omnivore and learn about different animals in these groups. At the end of the topic children will learn about how to look after and care for different animals.
They will also take part in a range of fun investigations to help them develop their science investigation skills like predicting, observing and recording results as well as talking about what their results show.
ICT
Our main focus in ICT is to develop the children’s independent use of the computers. They will learn how to open different programs, word process ideas, save and print their work. They will also explore a range of tools in Colour Magic to create pictures linked to our space topic and learn how to add simple texts to this.
RE
In RE the children will learn about the Bible and why it is important to Christians. They will also be finding out why Christians care for each other and why we give gifts at Christmas.
A little extra information:
I would also like to stress the importance of the valuable work that you do at home with reading books, spelling lists and homework. Thank you for all your efforts, this is of great benefit to the children and I would encourage you to continue as often as possible.
PE: Our PE day is currently a Friday
Homework:
Homework learning logs and Sound Homework will be handed out each Wednesday and are to be returned to school for marking the following Monday. Please choose an activity each week from the selection glued into the front cover of your child’s learning log.
