Year 1 Curriculum Letter for Summer Term 2015

Dear Parents / Carers of Elephant and Rhinoceros Classes,

ENGLISH
During our daily English lessons, we will support the childrens developing reading and writing skills
through some Julia Donaldson book Room on the Broom and The Gruffalo to begin the first theme of
The Great Outdoors and later on Robots. These themes will additionally provide the children with
opportunities to look closely at some non-fiction texts and poetry. As part of their work on Information
Texts, the children will be focusing on the theme of The Great Outdoors and collecting information on all
the fun things that you can experience outdoors. They will then experience a Camping Adventure
(hopefully outdoors in the school grounds) which will help them focus on writing an information text all
about Camping in the Great Outdoors.
The overall focuses for our English learning are stories with familiar settings, information texts/booklets and
traditional rhymes.
PHONICS
During daily Phonics lessons, the children continue to work through the phonics phases of development.
Phonics homework will continue to be given to the children each Friday and should be returned the
following Wednesday. (Although children may bring their homework back to school earlier than this if
they like.) We have really seen a great improvement in the spelling and writing fluency of those children
who consistently put a high degree of effort into their homework and spelling sets. Thank you for your
continued support with this.
At the end of Year 1 every child undertakes a statutory phonics reading assessment known as the Phonics
Screening Check which assesses whether children have met the expected standard by summer time.
Parents are informed of their childs results in their end of year report. Children are very well prepared
for this assessment and most actually enjoy doing it. This check takes place during mid-June.
MATHS
Our Maths work will continue to be broken up into weekly blocks. Some of our summer term blocks include
fractions, shape, time and multiplication and division. Our fractions work will mostly focus on halves and
quarters of shapes and numbers. We will be naming and describing properties of 2D and 3D shapes in our
shape week. We will be looking to consolidate earlier work on time by telling the time on oclock, half past
and perhaps some quarter past clocks. Finally, our week on multiplication and division will look at sharing
and repeating addition problems using practical apparatus or diagrams.

MENTAL MATHS
Our half termly mental maths assessment will focus on quick fire questions. These include doubles,
number bonds to 10, addition, subtraction, 1 more, 1 less (than numbers to 20) and counting in twos, fives
and tens.

COMPUTING
Our weekly computing lessons will focus on experimenting with simulations and computer games. Children
will choose appropriate problems and break them into smaller problems/individual steps using the
programme Scratch 2. Once the children have experienced breaking down a problem in a game, they will
be ready to begin simple dress up programmes and create codes to change their characters.
GEOGRAPHY
During Geography this term the children will look at different maps of the local area. We will find our
school on Google Earth and use this to complete a treasure hunt around the school grounds. The following
week we will concentrate more specifically on our KS1 playground where we will draw our own messy map.
In the final week we will look at our local area and discuss the facilities available to us. This will be

finished off with us writing a persuasive letter to try and convince the council to build a new park for the
children of our school.

DESIGN TECHNOLOGY
Design and Technology this term focuses on Structures, stability and strength. The children will have the
opportunity to design a slide for a small world character. They will, evaluate material and ways of fixing
and strengthening their designs to make them fit for purpose.

PERSONAL, SOCIAL, HEALTH EDUCATION

PSHE follows our theme of People who help us. AT the start of this half term the children enjoyed a
visit from Mrs Williams from the NHS dental service, who helped them learn all about Caring for our
Teeth and introduced the children to a range of healthy snacks and drinks.

MUSIC
Our Music curriculum continues to help children as they develop musical awareness through Charanga
Musical School. In addition to this, we continue teaching the children how to play the musical instrument
the Ocarina. The children will also explore how they can experiment with and create various musical
patterns during our Robots theme later on this term.
ART
Our Art focuses on the development of skill from previous terms. The children will use The Great
Outdoors and Robots themes as a starting point for new art work. Their skills will be extended and
enhanced through the use of different media and materials and exploring newly acquired skills, linked to
tones and shading from last term.
PHYSICAL EDUCATION
We are very fortunate this term as we have a specialist gymnastics coach coming in to help us with our
strength and flexibility. This will be done through creating different shapes with our bodies, travelling
exercise and rolls. KS1 sports day will take place in early June. Therefore, we will also be practicing our
running, throwing and jumping events.

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
Our religious Education this term focuses on learning about the faith of Judaism and focuses on Special
Places, routines Special meals and shared family occasions.

Thank you for taking the time to read this letter.

Kind regards,
Mrs. Harris, Mrs. Watts and Mr. Aguilar