Welcome to Year 1

Autumn Term 2023

Areas of study for Year 1*

English 

This term the children will be practising their handwriting in English lessons. They will begin the term by writing captions which relate to our farming topic and then progress onto sentences and simple story writing. They will be looking at a range of stories including picture books, such as Farmer Duck. They will be practising sequencing events in these stories and then writing about what happens. The children will also be learning how to write instructions. As well as this, the children will be looking at poetry. They will be listening to and learning poems, thinking about the rhythm of the piece and the rhyming pattern that the poet has used. 

Maths

This term the children will be focusing on the numbers 0 to 10 and 0 to 20. They will be solidifying their understanding of the value of these numbers by sorting them, counting forward and back, and being able to find one more and one less than a number. Children will also begin looking at addition and subtraction, finding number bonds to 10 and being able to see how much of an amount is left when an amount has been taken away. The children will also be learning about time and shape. They will learn the days of the week, months of the year and how to tell the time to the hour and will revisit 2D and 3D shapes, where they will learn to identify and sort them.

Reading

The children will read books appropriate to their phonic stage with adults throughout the term. This will usually be on a one to one basis 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 will give children the chance to practise their decoding, fluency and comprehension skills in a meaningful way throughout the day. We will also begin to spend time working exclusively on the children’s inference skills in short regular sessions this term, encouraging pupils to back up their thoughts with evidence from images or text.

Phonics*

We will continue to work on the children’s ability to recall the different sounds up to Phase 5 with an emphasis on identifying any gaps in their prior knowledge. The children will be identifying, using and applying these sounds throughout the day in reading and writing tasks. They will be learning how to blend in order to decode words and to segment in order to spell words in their writing.

RE

This year the children will learn about religious celebrations and understand why they are important to some people but not others. They will look at different celebrations such as birthdays, weddings, Diwali, Baptism and Christmas. They will also discuss what they celebrate, why they celebrate and the importance of these celebrations. The children will learn that different faiths have different celebrations and begin to understand why they celebrate.

PSHE/RSHE

In PSHE and RSHE lessons this term, children will begin by learning what a growth mind-set is. They will consider what their goals are and how they can achieve them by looking at how people have achieved their goals in the past. They will also look at different types of families and learn how different people’s families are similar or different from their own. They will also look at what to do when they feel worried and recognise the difference between being hurt emotionally and being hurt physically. The children will discuss personal safety and the difference between appropriate and inappropriate touching. As well as this, the children will think about how they can ensure that they are kind and respectful to one another within school.

PE

In PE lessons this term the children will be practising a range of gym skills. They will be working on making shapes with their bodies and travelling around a space in a variety of ways. They will be focusing on following instructions in a safe way.
The children will have the opportunity to use a range of equipment from the benches to the bars and ropes.
In the second half of the term we will be continuing with gym with a focus on learning why exercise is important for our physical health and wellbeing. We will be exploring the way our bodies change when we exercise and how it makes us feel.

Science

This term the children will be learning about the human body. They will be identifying the different parts of the body, understanding what the five different senses are and which parts of our body are used for each sense. They will also be looking at different types of animal, what they eat and the differences and similarities between their bodies. We will also be looking at materials and their properties; naming, identifying and describing them.
We will be exploring plants and the different parts of the plant we can eat.

History

In history lessons, the children will be learning about the Gunpowder Plot and Guy Fawkes. They will be learning the story of Guy Fawkes and will discuss the connection between what happened to him and what happens on Bonfire Night today. We will also learn about The Great Fire of London. The children will get to know the events that led up to the fire and what happened when the fire itself started to spread. We will then focus on the fire service at the time and compare it to the fire service in Britain today.

Geography

In geography lessons this term, we will study food and farming. The children will be learning about where our food comes from and which countries supply the UK with food. In addition, they will look at different foods from around the world. They will have the opportunity to create maps and explore aerial photographs of farms and the landscape which surrounds them.

Music

In music lessons this term, the children will be listening and appraising a selection of music with different beats. They will be learning how to use body percussion in order to replicate the beat of a piece of music. We will also be rehearsing songs for our Harvest Festival.

Computing

In computing lessons the children will begin to understand what an algorithm is. They will then write and debug their own simple algorithm in order to control a ‘Bee-Bot’ effectively. The children will also learn about what the internet is and how to search for images safely using a search engine.

Art, Design & Technology

In Art lessons this term, the children will continue to experiment with colour mixing. When painting they will begin to make conscious decisions as to which primary colours to mix in order to make a secondary colour. The children will also be considering how to draw simple forms from observation using a pencil and will be taking inspiration from Thomas Sydney Cooper’s drawings of animals. The children will be applying both of these skills to create works of art based on farmyard animals. In Design and Technology lessons the children’s learning will link to Geography and they will be learning about where fruit comes from. We will be taking inspiration from bonfire night and creating rocket fruit kebabs.
 

* To teach phonics in Key Stage 1, we use 'Letters and Sounds' supplemented by 'Jolly Phonics'.
**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!