Year 1

Welcome to Rosa Parks Class!

In Year 1 our aim is to ensure that the children experience a smooth transition from the Early Years Foundation Stage to Key Stage One. The Year 1 curriculum builds upon and extends the experiences that children have had in Reception. Learning through play will continue to be a valued part of the school day. The children will gradually be eased into more structured learning as the autumn term goes on, so that they remain motivated, enthused and eager learners.

We teach National Curriculum subjects: English, maths, science, design and technology, history, geography, art and design, music, PE, computing, RHE, PSHE and RE. 

We use the government validated systematic synthetic phonics programme (SSP) called 'Little Wandle: Letters & Sounds Revised' for phonics. The programme is designed to teach children to read from Reception to Year 2, using the skill of decoding and blending sounds together to form words. In Year 1 we work hard to ensure that the children are prepared for their phonics screening check in the summer term. We organise parent workshops to share phonics information so that they can support their child with their phonics at home.

Our reading team works with a small group of children three mornings a week to read a decodable book that has been matched to that child through an assessment. Our three reading sessions include a decoding session, a prosody session and a comprehension session. The children then take these decodable books home to share with their parents. They also take a reading for pleasure book home each week which we encourage our parents to read to their child and discuss the contents. We encourage parental involvement during our parent reading mornings.

Homework is given out in book bags on a Friday and needs to be handed in the following Tuesday. Children are expected to learn their spellings, which are linked to their phonics learning that week, and are challenged to write them in full sentences. Reading Records are sent out at the beginning of the school year with the expectation that children read at least 4 x per week, we ask parents to sign the reading record and return every Tuesday.

In Year 1 this year we will be very busy with lots of exciting things happening. Here’s a quick overview of what we are going to be doing:

• Nativity performance
• Local area fieldwork
• Trip to the local park for our science topic of ‘Seasonal Changes’
• Tower of London trip which is linked to our history topic of ‘Mighty Monarchs and the Two Elizabeths’
• London Transport Museum trip which is linked to our history topic of ‘Transport through Time-Wings and Wheels’ and our design and technology topic of ‘Making Vehicles’.
• Trip to Saint Ignatius Church which is linked to our RE topic of ‘Families and Celebrations’.

Stay tuned for exciting updates of what we’ve been up to throughout the year

Year 1 Curriculum Brochure- Autumn 24