In Year 1 the children work with Ms Oliver, supported by Mrs North and Mrs Venturi. Our day usually starts with guided reading which focuses on decoding, prosody and comprehension. This is followed by phonics, which is delivered using the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised programme. We enjoy learning to spell our high frequency and common exception words throughout Year 1. We take our reading very seriously and are rewarded with reading rocket prizes, after reading five times at home every Tuesday. We also have a weekly raffle which rewards good work, as well as a termly class celebration assembly.

Our curriculum is very varied in English. We use Pie Corbett’s ‘Talk 4 Writing’ and some of the areas covered include: traditional stories, poetry, instruction and report writing. Handwriting is very important to us and we practise our handwriting as much as possible. In Maths we practice our number bonds within 10 throughout the year to help us perform more complex addition and subtraction in year 2. We work very hard at understanding and comparing numbers 0-20 and addition/subtraction within 20. Other units covered include 2D and 3D shape, measuring, fractions, counting in 2s, 5s, and 10s.

We have lots of exciting topics which we learn about in Year 1. Science topics include: animals humans, plants, materials, seasons and the environment. We take a trip to Tring Museum to learn about sorting and grouping animals. Art and DT topics include: colour, line, smoothie making and hand puppets. Geography topics include: spatial sense, UK, continents and oceans. In History we learn about Mary Seacole and Florence Nightingale and find out about them from a range of sources. We visit Claydon House in the summer to learn more about Florence. We then learn about good (and not so good) Kings and Queens and take a trip to Windsor to visit the King’s castle! We also learn a lot about parliament and prime ministers in the summer term.