Year 1

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."

Maimonides

Introduction

Welcome to Year 1. This year the children are expected to take more responsibility for their work in a structured learning environment. We continue to encourage and guide the children to let their light shine by becoming more independent in all aspects of school life.

Some good examples of important events in the year are:

United Nations Day
World book day
Performing the Easter Liturgy

Curriculum Coverage

In Maths there is a focus on knowing number bond facts to 10 and then to 20. The children will work on having instant recall of these number facts. Children are encouraged to find numbers on a number line and number square when solving problems. Children will be working on both addition and subtraction problems. There will be a focus on counting in twos, fives and tens.

In English the children will work to improve their writing skills to become independent writers. The focus will be for children to consistently use capital letters, full stops and finger spaces. Children will be learning how to improve writing by using descriptive language and appropriate vocabulary. Sentence structure is also a key area this year. Phonics is a significant part of our curriculum taught discretely everyday. Your child is encouraged to use their phonic knowledge and apply this to both reading and writing.

Our Science lessons are designed to enable children to experience and observe first-hand the natural and humanly constructed world around them. During Year 1, pupils will be taught practical scientific methods, processes and skills such as;

identifying and classifying
observing closely using simple equipment
using their observations and ideas to suggest answers to questions.

Our aim is to develop and extend the children’s scientific concept of their world and encourage them to ask deeper questions about the world around them. Information regarding our current topic can be found in our Science section.

Our ICT curriculum is diverse and cross-curricular, incorporating the new programming element of the curriculum. The children first develop a knowledge of how to use basic skills to enable them to log on, type and save documents. We then progress onto programming where the children input data into programmable toys, Bee- Bots. This year, Year 1 are extremely lucky to be given access to iPads, which will be incorporated into our curriculum.

In Humanities, we begin the year with a topic looking back at Important People in our recent history including The Beatles, Thomas Edison and Alexander Bell. In the Spring term our topics are Changes in Living Memory and Identifying Seasonal and Daily Weather Patterns in the UK. In the Summer we will be looking at our local history and using world maps, atlases and globes to identify the UK and its countries.

Our Art program is influenced by the work of artists such as William Morris and Paul Klee. We started the year focussing on self-portraits and the children were given the opportunity to draw themselves using a range of materials including pencil, oil pastels and paint. Where possible, we also explore cross curricular links where our artwork links directly to our Science and Humanity topics.

During the Spring term, Year 1 are responsible for the Easter Liturgy. This is an opportunity for the children to perform in front of an audience of Parents, Grandparents and Siblings and reflect on the importance of Easter in the Catholic calendar.

We hope that the children progress into Year 2 prepared with a high quality education where each person can develop their individual potential. We will continue to celebrate, the uniqueness of each child created in the image of God.