Welcome to Key Stage 1

CLASS CURRICULUM  

Welcome to Apple, Cherry and Pear Class. We have three mixed year 1 and year 2 classes at St Mary’s.  We love to ‘Enjoy, Excel and Explore’ and we strive to be brave change-makers to make a difference to the world we live in. We enjoy making connections with one another, within our partnership with St Helen’s (Alveston), with our past as we learn from those that have gone before us, with our local community and across different subjects to fully immerse ourselves in our learning.

Our values are at the core of what we do every day and we enjoy talking and learning about these during collective worship. 

Autumn Term

During the Autumn Term, the children will be exploring the Big Question of ‘How can we help a person or animal who doesn’t have a home?’ whilst our Global Theme is Identity and Diversity. The children will compare similarities and differences between peoples in local setting and also in wider contexts and focus on what contributes to self-identity and belonging. Throughout this topic, our brave-change maker skills are empathy and managing change. This means the children will focus on talking about identity and diversity using an awareness of and concern for people’s feelings. The children will aim to demonstrate an interest in and concern for others outside their immediate circle and in a context different to their own. In addition, the children will describe feelings about changes in their own lives and locality.

During Term 1, the children will focus on self-identity and how to live a healthy lifestyle, including eating a balanced diet and investigating how to remove germs to have good hygiene. The children will learn about the human life cycle and how we change as we grow, describing differences between life stages. Following this, the children will create a timeline to order significant events in their own life and use historical terms such as ‘then’, ‘now’ and ‘past’ to make comparisons. Using maps, the children will go for a walk in the local area to find out what homes are like in our community, whilst learning about how homes have changed through history. The children will take pictures to observe and describe. During Art, the children will learn about print artists Ben Nicolson, Claude Flight and Paul Klee. They will create their own print to create homes and houses. 

As our mini product outcome at the end of Term 1, the children will lean to make bread, make harvest soup and contribute to whole school Harvest Festival. They will also create videos all about themselves using clips.

During Term 2, the children will identify what is a ‘need’ or a ‘want’ when it comes to a house. In addition, the children will explore how different homes are needed for different people’s needs, as well as the affordability of different homes. Following this, the children will learn about what it means to be homeless and investigate whether homelessness is the same or different across different cities in the UK, thinking about challenges they may face. The children will learn about how charity work can make a difference to help people to survive homelessness and find out about the interesting work of UWE Bristol architect students who have recently engaged with a competition to provide solutions. As a result, the children shall consider how we can make a difference as brave change-makers.

Throughout Term 1 and Term 2, In Science, children will be learning about animals including humans. They will investigate similarities and differences between animals and put animals into different groups. Children will learn about their senses and investigate questions such as Do people with big hands have big feet?

As our maxi product outcome at the end of Term 2, the children will share their nativity performance with a wider audience in the community, in addition to playing a key role in promoting the shoebox appeal to provide Christmas gifts to vulnerable children and families.

You can also use class dojo to keep up to date with the learning taking place in your child’s classroom.