Year 1

Blue and White Class Curriculum Report - Spring Term 2009

Welcome to a new term in Blue and White Class. Hopefully a sunny one! This letter is just to let you know what we will be doing in class this Spring. Please remember that school start at 9.15am. Children arriving after this time will miss important handwriting or reading.

Literacy

This term sees the continuation of our Ruth Miskin Literacy (RML) programme. RML is a phonics based programme which has been written for schools wishing to adopt a cohesive approach to the teaching of literacy. It is designed for children in Reception and Year One and is also appropriate for bilingual children or children with special needs in older year groups.

RML teaches children to read and spell phonetically, developing a vocabulary for talking and writing and finally write independently. All the children in Year One have been assessed and placed in an appropriate levelled group. This means that the children in Blue and White classes will be taught by a variety of people, not necessarily by their own class teacher, during the literacy time in the morning.

Numeracy

In Maths we will continue to follow the Primary Strategy to plan our lessons. This term we will be looking at Number Skills, Shape and Space, Measurement, and Data Handling. Don’t forget to give your child every opportunity to count, whether it be money for shopping, measuring ingredients for cooking or telling the time.

Science

Our first half term will focus on learning about pushes and pulls, which will link in with our topic about toys. We will be focusing particularly on different ways to move our bodies and on moving toys. Later in the term we will be focusing on growing plants and the children will have the opportunity to grow and study their own plants. Through both science topics we will encourage the children to hypothesize, predict and evaluate experiments.

ICT

Our ICT suite has shown to develop the children’s skills very quickly. Most of the children now work independently at their own computer. And every lesson, real progress is made. It seems that this is a most popular lesson of the week. We will continue to follow the government’s guidance for ICT learning. In the first half term we will be looking at use of keyboards, the children will become familiar with typing in capitals/ lower case and they will use the space bar, shift key, arrow keys and Caps Lock. We will be developing these skills through using word banks both on the computer and in the classroom. The children will consider different sources of information, e.g. books, dictionaries, internet, CD-ROMs, sound, video. If you have a computer at home, you may spend time reminding children of the correct vocabulary eg. mouse, keyboard, monitor, hard-drive and so on.

Religious Education

In Religious Education, we will be looking at the importance of symbol in religion. The children will be learning about the importance and meaning of different symbols in major world faiths, as well as festivals and rituals related to symbol. We will be following Islington Council’s recommended RE syllabus.

Design and Technology

In Design and Technology, we will be focusing on Moving Pictures in the first half term and Eating More Fruit and Vegetables in the second. The first half term will link to our work on pushes and pulls. The children will be making pictures using hinges, pop up and sliding parts. During the second half term, the children will be exploring healthy eating through cookery. This is always a popular activity and the children will learn about the various parts of and uses for plants.

Humanities

Our Humanities focus for the first half term will be History, where we will be looking at Toys from the Past. This will be followed in the second half of the term by a Geography focus, where we will look at our Local Area. If you have any old-fashioned toys from your own childhood, or that of a relative, please bring them into school for us to put on display in the classroom. If you have anything that is particularly precious, we would welcome you to come in to show the children.

Physical Education

In PE our topics are Dance and Games. These will develop skills in travelling around in a space and using their bodies in different ways, eg. crawling, hopping, rolling. These lessons are linked to science, and the children will be reminded of how things move eg. Swing, turn, drop, bounce, slide, spring, push, pull, around, up, down, slow, fast, lever, pivot. If you wish your child to wear a PE kit, this should consist of a t-shirt, shorts and suitable footwear (trainers or plimsolls). This should be left in the child’s tray and changed at half-term.

Music

Paul, our specialist music teacher, will continue to teach the children in this area. They are always very enthusiastic to take part in music sessions and will be developing musical skills through exploring different sounds.

Regards,

Jennifer Buckley & Sandra Hall
Year 1 Class Teachers