Topic Overview
All Around Me
Key Question?
How can I make a change at Archibald?
This term, we launch our exciting whole school curriculum topic: NE3 and our City. Across all year groups, children will be exploring the rich geography and history of our local area, deepening their understanding of the community we call home. As part of this journey, every child takes part in a ‘planning and decision making’ challenge—identifying a local issue or gap and proposing thoughtful solutions, whether imagined or actionable. Through this empowering task, we’re helping our young learners realise that although they may be small, their voices matter, their ideas count, and their opinions deserve to be heard.
Geography & History
We will predominantly be geographers this half term and begin by looking at what Geography is, how to be a good geographer and the skills needed to do this. We will begin by focussing on the geography of Archibald First School by exploring the building and grounds and taking photographs of the surrounding area. We will use these to investigate physical and human features to help us further understand the concept of place.
Key Vocabulary:
- aerial view
- fieldwork
- direction
- local
- community
English
In Year 1 we want to encourage the children to be ‘brave writers.” We will continue to strengthen our fine motor skills each day through a variety of fun activities and explore sentence structure with basic punctuation, adjectives to add detail and applying sounds from phonics. We will look at different forms of writing including short narratives, instructions and labels.
We will read with each child twice a week in a small group with their peers. We encourage children to not only read words, but to discuss text by predicting what might happen next, retelling the story in their own words and considering if it is similar to anything else that they have read. As we return to school, we will focus on applying the sounds learned in reception into words. Children will be encouraged to both segment and blend, to support reading.
Key Vocabulary:
- Full Stop
- Capital Letter
- Finger space
Phonics
Phonics continues to be taught daily in Year 1. At school we use the Little Wandle program and there is a great part of the website just for parents/carers: https://www.littlewandle.org.uk/resources/for-parents/ Take a look at the following resources:
Maths
This half term our main focus will be the place value of numbers. We will work together to sort, represent and count numbers, before looking at one more and one less of a given number.
The children will begin to compare numbers using the symbols for greater than, less than and equal to ( >, < and =). We often look at these symbols as greedy crocodiles eating the bigger number as a starting point.
We will also look at addition this half term, working practically and using part-whole models. We will look at fact families and the relationship between digits, before learning our number bonds to 10, both practically and via song!
Websites:
- Log onto Numberbots - your log in has been sent home
Key Vocabulary:
- Place Value
- More than / Less than
- Equal to
- Least/ Most
Science
To start the year, we will think about what it means to be a good scientist, and explore the skills we hope to develop. The children will have opportunities to explore the science curriculum through weekly tasks and experiments. They will develop their identifying and classifying skills by through labelling the human body and exploring the five senses. Each week we will explore one of our five senses in a fun and creative way to deepen our understanding. We will carry out experiments to see what might impact our senses and how they are used.
Key Vocabulary:
- Senses
- Body Parts
- Human
- Healthy
- Alive
Computing
During computing, we will start the year by completing our Digital Literacy lessons, ensuring we know how to stay safe online. We will write simple facts about ourselves and take photographs using the iPad and an app called Book Creator to share ‘all about me’.
Art and Design Technology
Each half term the children will have a week dedicated to art and/or DT. During art week, we will collapse the curriculum and deliver a full arts week.
Art: The children will think about what art means to them and look at exploring their very own sketch book and how to record their original and imaginative ideas.
Design Technology: In DT we will create our own puppets! The children will explore different textiles and design their own puppet before creating it. They will use a variety of skills such as cutting, stapling, gluing and pinning to join materials together and then decorate it in their own style.
PE
This half term we will be developing our agility, balance and coordination skills through a variety of fundamental activities. The children will also have a Forest Fun session each week at Forest School. This will involve lots of exciting activities to develop their curiosity led by Mrs Johnson.
- Class 3 PE days: Wednesday and Friday
- Class 4 PE days: Monday and Wednesday
PSHE and Religious Education
PSHE
Our big question this half term is 'Who looks after me?'
The children will think about people who care for them, and the role these different people play in their lives. We will explore what it means to be a family and consider how families are different. The children will also learn about the importance of telling someone, and how to tell them, if they are worried about something.
Religious Education
This half term in RE, the children will explore expressions of belonging. The children will consider which groups they are a part of, such as school, a family, group of friends or extra-curricular club.
We will visit All Saints Church to explore the features of a church as a place of worship for Christians. Date TBC
Our Values
Please Instagram us @archibald_1st if you see your child being #AFSCurious #AFSCaring #AFSCreative or #AFSCourageous
If you would like any further details about this half term's curriculum, please speak to your child's teacher.