Welcome to Year 1

Summer Term 2024

Areas of study for Year 1*

English 

In Writing, for the first half of term, the children be writing around our theme of ‘Park Life’. To help develop the children’s learning during this unit, we will be using lots of stories to engage and interest the children such as: Percy the Park Keeper, Voices in the park, Not a Stick, The Tree Keepers, Tree, and Katie and the Waterlily Pond.
Using Percy the Park Keeper as inspiration, the children will be writing their own short park keeper story.
Following our trip to Windsor Castle, the children will be writing a letter.  They will be revisiting adding -ed to the end of words to change them into the past tense. This will help to form their letter.

In the second half of the summer term the theme is ‘Oh I do like to be beside the seaside’. The children will be exploring a whole variety of seaside themed stories including a range of other cultures. In this unit they will use the popular ‘Rainbow Fish’ story as inspiration and write a suitable ending for the book.
As well as fictional stories the children will also explore a range of poetry and non-fiction texts where they will eventually write an information piece about a sea creature.

Maths

In the first half of the summer term the children will be continuing to expand their knowledge of place value up to 100. They will build on their partitioning skills looking at how numbers can be made, using the number line to find larger numbers and identifying one more and one less than a given number up to 100.
As the term continues the children will be introduced to multiplication and division. Throughout the year the children have been counting in steps of 2, 5 and 10 and during this unit they will solidify their knowledge. We will look at making arrays and how this translates to making a multiplication or division number sentence as well as grouping and sharing through concrete, pictorial and abstract concepts.
The children will also revisit money, a valuable life skill, recognising coins and notes and counting using coins.

In the final term of the year, the children will be learning all about fractions, mass and volume, and position and direction. The children will begin with identifying fractions of shape before moving onto fractions of quantity. 
Both mass and volume, and position and direction will be taught very practically aiding the children with their understanding. This will be done through a range of activities which will be available to the children in the provision. It is important that the children do this as practically as possible so they can physically see and manipulate the resources helping them to secure their understanding.

Reading

The children will continue to read books appropriate to their phonic stage with adults throughout the term. This may be on a one to one basis, in a small group or within a lesson as a shared read. They will also be exposed to engaging texts by being read high quality texts on a daily basis. They will have the opportunity to read for pleasure by having access to a wide range of books in their class reading corner and having regular opportunities to use it. They will be taught word-reading skills daily in phonics lessons and reading will be integrated into other subjects, such as reading about events and important people in history and becoming familiar with different types of book, such as atlases in geography lessons. This provides opportunities for children to practise their decoding, fluency and comprehension skills in a meaningful way throughout the day. We will also continue to spend time working exclusively on the children’s inference skills, encouraging pupils to explain their thoughts using evidence from images or text.

Phonics*

We will firstly consolidate the children’s ability to recall the different sounds up to Level 5 with an emphasis on identifying any gaps in their knowledge. We will then focus on blending sounds quickly and automatically, removing the need to ‘sound out’ individual phonemes (sounds). This term, the children will continue to practise reading polysyllabic words and learn about alternative pronunciations.
Throughout their day, children will be identifying, using and applying their phonic knowledge across all subjects. They will blend when decoding words to read and segment in order to spell words in their writing.

RE

In RE the children will continue to look at three of the main world religions. This term the focus will be on caring for our world investigating the question ‘How do some people’s religious beliefs encourage them to care for the world?’ The children will listen to The Creation Story from The Bible and the story of Noah’s Ark as well as listening to Sikh and Hindu creation stories. 
They will be looking at the similarities and differences between them and exploring a range of religious stories. They will have opportunities to express their own thoughts and feelings towards caring for our world. Through the religious stories, the children will see how the religions care for our world.

PSHE/RSHE

The focus this term in PSHE will be physical and mental health, growing and changing. The children will learn why not only is our physical health so important but also how this effects our mental wellbeing. We will look at how when we grow we change and our likes and dislikes might become different as we get older. We will look at emotions and feelings and how we can manage these when things go wrong. We will also look how feelings can make us behave and why others may behave in certain ways.

During this final term of school, as the weather (hopefully) heats up, the children will learn about safety in the home as well as sun / sea safety.
They will be reflecting on how they have grown and changed throughout the year. They will explore their feelings and emotions towards transitioning into Year 2 and reflect how these may have changed throughout Year 1. They will look at the differences and similarities they have with others in their class and the year group. 
Finally, they will complete their transition days into Year 2 and have a taste of what the new academic year will bring.

PE

This term in PE the children will be discovering the social side to physical education.  They will learn to play with others, take turns and share, work sensibly in a group, praise and encourage their peers. Through completing a variety of challenges, the children will develop skills including jumping and landing and seated balance.
In outdoor games, the children will be developing the skill of sending and receiving and how this is an important aspect of team sports.
During the second half of the summer term the children will be building on their physical skills and learning to control their movements. They will look at moving in different ways and linking movements together, performing a single or small range of skills and performing the skills with control and consistency. The children will get to take part in coordinating movements such as sending and receiving and juggling. They will also work on their agility through reaction and response movements.

Science

Our topic in Science for the first half of the term will be plants. This will closely link with our topic ‘Park Life’.
Using books such as ‘Tree’ and ‘Window’ as a starting point for conversations, the children will be taught to identify and name a variety of common wild and garden plants, including deciduous and evergreen trees. We will be making the most of our beautiful school grounds and walking around trying to identify some plants and trees.
We will also be looking at the structure of some common plants and trees as we grow and maintain the plants in our outdoor classroom.

The theme for the second half of the summer term is ‘Oh I do like to be beside the seaside’ and the children will be learning all about animals. This term, in keeping with the theme, the children will be looking at amphibians, reptiles and fish. The children will then be exploring whether these animals are herbivores, carnivores and omnivores and describing and comparing the animals.
Throughout this unit the children will continue to build on the scientific vocabulary they have already learnt.
We will also be concluding our observations on the seasons and how the weather and day varies during this month.

History

As we explore beaches and oceans the children will reflect on their Punch and Judy puppet show and have a go at creating their own.  They will explore how spending time at the seaside has changed by comparing clothing and activities from the past and today.
The children will explore a range of historical sources from photographs, illustrations and some film.
The unit will closely link with our geography unit where we will explore the landscape surrounding our beaches and oceans.

Geography

This term in Geography we will be looking at both human and physical geography. Using our trip to Windsor Castle as a stimulus, we will be using geographical vocabulary to refer to key features of the landscape.  When studying maps of the UK, children are shown where the countries of the UK are by linking them to our national parks.  They will be taught the language of what they can see such as valleys, rivers and fields. 
We will be using our fieldwork and observational skills to study the geography of the surrounding area including physical and human features.
We will use books such as ‘Window’ to help children understand the impact of humans, on the natural world leading into thinking about what we can do to help preserve our planet.
We will also continue to monitor the weather, noting the changes across the seasons.

Tying in with the second summer term’s overarching theme, the children will be using maps, atlases and globes to identify and name some of the world’s oceans as well as continents and some countries.
They will be exploring a range of both human and physical geographical features of places including harbours, towns, beaches and cliffs. As always, the children will start with familiar places to them and slowly work their way out to help them understand the scale of the world. Through our ‘Beach Day’ at school the children will learn about many of the different features of beaches and how they vary not only in the UK but in the world.

Music

In Music the children will be looking at dancing and moving to music. Using Anna Meredith’s Nautilus the children will develop their understanding of pitch, beat and duration. They will learn to interpret the music through dance and drawing and explore how one person’s interpretation may be different to someone else’s. The latter half of the term will use a singing game as a starting point for improvising rhythm and then reading and writing them in simple notation. It will also explore the musical elements of timbre, rhythm, tempo and dynamics.

After half term, the children will continue to explore music and movement. There will be a focus on call-and-response, echo singing and playing, playing percussion, developing beat skills, crotchet, quavers and crotchet rest.
The children will be using instruments to create their own percussive responses and playing simple rhythm patterns on tuned instruments. They will also be inventing new lyrics and turn new lyrics into musical phrases.

Computing

In Computing, the children will build on their skills of using the internet, gathering images of national parks of the UK, through an internet search.
The children will then be using a word-processor to practise typing, copying and pasting images and typing simple words. They may attempt to manipulate the images size and scale. They will also practise saving their document.

Art, Design & Technology

Using parks, our local area and plants as stimulus, this term the children will be creating simple drawings or shapes from observations. Building on their drawing skills, using colour and pattern and using other artists as inspiration, the children will create their own park/plant inspired pieces. 
The children will continue to use the skills they have learnt throughout the year to create under the sea themed pictures. They will look at repeated patterns in pictures and use this to help them create more complex pictures.

Alongside art, the children will be making sea creatures using the skill of sewing. They will be taught how to do a simple running stitch and practise this skill first before using it to make a sea creature.

* To teach phonics in Key Stage 1, we use the Twinkl phonic scheme, supported by Rhino Readers.
**To teach reading in Keystage 1 we use real books to inspire a love of reading, texts linked to the child’s phonic stage and when they are securely decoding text, we move on to other reading scheme books including the Oxford reading tree, Ginn and Collins.
*If you require additional information relating to our school curriculum, please ask at the school office or the class teacher.

TopTips

• Read, read and read!
• Share books with your children- you read to them, they read to y
• Discuss books and stories — characters, events, endings etc.
• Make suggestions for a different ending, new character etc
• Join the local library & encourage your child to choose their books— this helps to develop preferences etc.
• Don’t forget rhymes and poems!
• Encourage your child to write shopping lists, notes, postcards, diaries.
• Encourage correct letter formation — this will help with cursive writing later.
• Play I spy using phonic/sounds- don’t forget endings!
• Practise reading and spelling keywords.
• Have fun!