Welcome to Year 1! We hope you had a wonderful Summer holiday! We can’t wait to share all of our amazing learning with you!

At the start of our term, our main focus will be introducing the children to the school’s learning skills. These are central to our life at Bailey’s Court and are what makes us a very special school. They are:

• Showing creativity
• Showing resilience
• Showing curiosity
• Taking responsibility
• Team work
• Effective communication
• Able to make connections
• Being independent learners
• Being ready to learn

We will also be introducing the children to Gem Power. Gem Power is aimed at developing the children’s resilience and confidence. The gems are:

• Diamond – Bouncebackability (resilience)
• Emerald – being a learning supporter
• Ruby – conquering concentration
• Sapphire – taking responsibility

The children will have the opportunity to earn gems for the class throughout the year and these will lead to rewards!

We will also be introducing our Reading Rewards, where the children can earn free books for being amazing readers. The initial target is 30 reads. Hopefully we can give out some free books by the end of term!

Now the children have entered Key Stage 1, their learning will be based on the National Curriculum. This means that they will be explicitly learning subjects such as History, Science and Geography. We will be discussing what these are with the children, understanding why we learn them and the concepts for each subject.

In English we will begin by building our understanding of captions, lists and labels. We will then explore the book ‘A Super Power Like Mine’ by Dr Ranj and begin to write simple sentences. Following this learning, we will then use the story ‘Coming to England’ by Floella Benjamin to inspire our sentence writing. This book will also be used to introduce ‘Black History Month’ in October. Our final book of Term 1 is ‘Seasons’ by Hannah Pang. This will be used to develop our understanding of Non-Fiction. We will end this unit by writing a short fact file about a chosen season.

In Maths we will be developing our understanding of place value, including identifying one more/less, counting in 2s, 5s and 10s and using the language of more/less/equal. We will also be exploring the properties of 2D and 3D shapes.

In History we will be exploring the question ‘How am I making History?’ and exploring the key concepts of chronological awareness, similarities and differences and sources of evidence. To do this, we will be answering these questions:

• What is my history?
• How can I find out more about myself?
• How are special events remembered?
• What was it like for children in the past?
• What have I learnt about childhood in the past?
• How am I making history?

In Science we will be exploring Seasonal Changes. We will be exploring the key concepts of Scientific knowledge and understanding, science in action and working scientifically. To do this we will be learning about these areas:

• Wonderful weather 
• Seasonal activities
• How do trees change?
• Daylight hours
• Observing over time
• Weather reports

In Religion and Worldviews we will be developing our understanding of different beliefs and developing respect for each other. We will be learning about different creation stories (including Christian, Jewish, Hindu and Scientific) and sharing what we believe. We will be answering these questions:

• Respectful beliefs – What do I believe?
• What is creation?
• What might some Christian and Jewish people think about creation?
• What do some Hindu people believe about creation?
• What do creation stories suggest to some people about God?
• Where did the World come from?

In Computing we will be learning about simple coding and will be introduced to the ‘Be Internet Legends’ programme of study where we will be finding out how to stay safe on line. Our focus for this term will be ‘Be Sharp’.

In PE we will be building our gross motor skills through team building games and will also be learning how to be cheerleaders!

In Jigsaw we will be covering the topic ‘Being me in my world.’ We will be introducing the children to Jigsaw Jack and exploring our Rights and Responsibilities.