Hello and welcome to Year 1.
The class teacher in Year 1 is Miss Akhtar and our teaching assistants is Ms Ramsey, Miss Adams and Mrs Sou. In Year 1 our focus is to ensure we build on the children’s learning from the foundation stage by ensuring the children have a smooth transition into their new class. At Cromwell we feel this is essential for children’s wellbeing.
This year in Year 1 the topics we will cover include ‘The Great Fire of London, Plants, Weather and Where food comes from?’ just to name a few of our amazing topics.
In English we look at a range of genres of writing including, stories, narrative, character descriptions, information texts, instructional writing, lists, recounts, poems, non-fiction, and fiction. When we look at these genres, we always look for opportunities to use creative role play which develops their speaking and listening skills.
In Year 1 the children continue with their daily Phonics sessions in ability groups. They will also continue to have weekly Phonics homework and books sent home to ensure they can review and practice reading sounds and words within a simple text. The books sent home will be from the Ruth Miskin scheme which is ‘Read, Write Inc. There will be new sounds we have learnt and old sounds we have reviewed uploaded on class dojo for children to go through and review to embed their reading. All children will take a Phonics screening test in the summer term, so Phonics is an important part of their Reading.
Within Maths we look at a variety of topics such as addition and subtraction, place value, shape and length and height just to name a few.
In Year 1 we work on counting forwards and backwards from and to 100. We practice Reading and Writing out numbers in numerals to 100 and from 0-20 in words. The children identify one more and one less than a number. They learn about measurement using standard and non-standard forms of including length, weight and capacity. We focus on addition, subtraction, division and multiplication and learn the 2s, 5s and 10 times table. An important aspect of Maths within Year 1 is to develop the children’s vocabulary in all the topics they look at and cover over the year. When looking at a range of these topics we often ensure we use a practical element, so children can learn through experience.
Science is an exciting subject in Year 1 as children take part in many hands-on experiments which they always thoroughly enjoy. This year we will be looking at ‘Plants’ and how they grow. The children will look at the life cycle of a flowering plant alongside parts of a tree. The children will also learn about ‘Seasons’ and how they can identify the different seasons by taking part in scavenger hunts to look for key features to identify this. We will teach the children about why and human body needs exercise and look at why a balanced diet and have good hygiene to ensure we can be both fit and healthy.
In addition to our core subjects, we also teach ICT, Music, KUW, PSHE, Art and Design, RE, Design and Technology and PE. Within these subjects we continue to incorporate a hand on approach, and we have outside experienced individuals come in for example every year we have sports coaches come in and work with the children in PE to develop key skills in sports such as basketball. We also have dance lessons and Yoga sessions which supports the children emotional development and wellbeing.