Class 1
Our class is made up of Reception and Year 1 pupils with Mrs Swift as Class Teacher and Miss Sidwell and Miss Moorley as Teaching Assistants.
This class page is designed to give a brief overview of what we are covering in class. We share more detailed information about what we get up to using the Class Dojo app. Parents can request login details via their child's class teacher.
Class 1 Topics
Our topics 2023-2024:
Autumn Term 1 2023:
'Who makes the rules?: People Who Help Us'
Welcome all new starters to our class and school and welcome back Year 1s to class 1.
This term's topic is 'Who makes the rules?: People Who Help Us'. We will be:
- learning all about rules and people who help us at home, in school, in our country and in the past.
- discussing the importance of rules and making some of our own for in class.
- learning about people who have helped us in the past, including the life and work of Florence Nightingale.
- writing labels and captions about people who help us.
- learning to write Rainbow Grammar sentences, including determiners, nouns and verbs (please see the Knowledge Organiser below for examples).
- investigating drawing different lines in art to draw a self-portrait and learning about the artist Leonardo da Vinci.
- learning all about seasonal changes in Science.
Please see below for this term's Knowledge Organiser and Learning Journey.
Our focus author this term is... Julia Donaldson! We will be reading lots of texts in class by this very popular author.
Knowledge Organiser - People Who Help Us
Autumn Term 2 2023:
‘Improve Our World’
This term's topic is 'Improve Our World'. We will be:
- learning all about being responsible and improving our world.
- planning how we can improve our school garden area.
- being creative, reusing and recycling items to improve the area.
- role playing in our flower shop and recycling centre role-play areas.
- focusing on the story 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt.'
- retelling, story mapping, using actions and role-playing the story.
- learning all about adjectives, prepositions (when and where words), exclamation marks and using the conjunction 'and' when writing a section of the text.
- writing labels and captions for our garden areas.
- changing the text using our improved garden areas.
- learning all about materials in Science.
- learning all about spending, saving and sharing money in PSHE.
Please see below for this term's Learning Journey.
Our focus author this term is... Jill Murphy! We will be reading lots of texts in class by this author.
Spring Term 1 2024:
‘Living in the Past'
Our new topic this term is 'Living in the Past'. We will be:
- learning all about our history, including timelines.
- learning all about the history of toys.
- learning all about the history of holidays.
- writing a non-chronological report about the areas we have learnt about in history.
- designing, making and evaluating our own toy vehicles made from junk modelling items in Design and Technology.
- learning all about programming Beebots in Computing.
- learning all about being safe in PSHE.
Please see below for this term's Knowledge Organiser and Learning Journey.
Our focus author this term is... Nick Butterworth! We will be reading lots of texts in class by this author.
Knowledge Organiser - Living in the past
Spring Term 2 2024:
‘Famous People - including Space'
Another topic we like to cover is 'Explorers and Space'. In this unit, we enjoy:
- finding out about explorers.
- taking part in role play in the 'space station'.
- researching and finding out about space using books, the internet and atlases.
- learning about different space explorers including Yuri Gagarin, Neil Armstrong, Helen Sharman and Tim Peake.
- writing letters to space explorers.
- creating paper mache planets sculptures and exploring mixing colours to decorate them in art.
- learning all about the human body and senses in Science.
- continuing our work on numbers and place value to 50 and addition and subtraction in maths.
Please see the Knowledge Organiser below for this term's key topic learning and the Learning Journey outlining the sequence of teaching for this topic.
Underneath that is this term's Knowledge Organiser for Science all about the human body and senses.
Summer Term 1 2024:
‘Danger!’
This term's topic is 'Danger!' We will be:
- learning all about how to stay safe.
- reading fiction and non-fiction texts about keeping safe.
- focusing on rhyme.
- writing our own poetry including writing rhyming couplets linked to staying safe.
- focusing on painting in Art including looking at the work of Piet Mondrian, exploring using different tools and mixing colours.
- creating our own safety signs using primary and secondary colours.
- reading and writing our own instructions linked to our learning in class.
- learning all about plants in Science.
- learning all about 'growing up' in PSHE.
Please see below for this term's Knowledge Organiser and Learning Journey.
Our focus author this term is... Martin Waddle! We will be reading some texts in class by this author.
Knowledge Organiser - Danger
Summer Term 2 2024:
'Amazing Africa!'
This term's topic is 'Amazing Africa!' We will be:
- learning all about Africa - recognising it on a world map and knowing it is a continent.
- comparing the UK and Africa.
- writing postcards about our learning all about Africa.
- making own own sandwiches in Design and Technology.
- reading and writing our own animal stories linked to our learning in class on the text Handa's Surprise.
- learning all about animals in Science.
- learning all about 'changes' in PSHE.
Please see below for this term's Knowledge Organiser and Learning Journey.
Our focus author this term is... Eric Carle! We will be reading some texts in class by this author.
Knowledge Organiser - Africa
Our topics 2024-2025:
Autumn Term 1 2024:
'Know your place: Scarcliffe'
This term's topic is 'Know Your Place: Scarcliffe'. We will be:
- learning all about where we live and where we go to school.
- learning about the UK and mapping our local area (school grounds and village).
- using maps to follow directions and describe positions and begin to read symbols.
- going on a walk around the village and taking photographs using an iPad.
- beginning to write labels, captions and sentences for photographs taken on our walk.
- constructing houses out of junk modelling items in Design and Technology.
- reading and writing letters/postcards comparing places.
- learning all about seasonal changes in Science.
Please see the Knowledge Organiser below for this term's key topic learning.
Our focus author this term is... Pat Hutchins! We will be reading texts like 'Rosie's Walk' and 'We're Going on a Picnic'.
Autumn Term 2 2024:
'Traditional Tales: Once Upon a time'
This term's topic is 'Once Upon a Time'. We will be:
- learning about traditional tales.
- sharing traditional tales by listening to them, reading and watching them.
- focusing on the stories of The Three Little Pigs and Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
- learning to retell stories through drama and role play.
- writing stories based on our focus texts.
- learning about the beginning, middle and end of stories.
- creating a class library of our own books.
- listening to sounds in music and linking them to parts of a story.
- printing in art to create a setting.
- creating digital artwork linked to a setting in computing.
- learning all about everyday materials in science.
- learning about the Christmas story in RE and recording a KS1 nativity.
Please see the Knowledge Organiser below for this term's key topic learning.
Underneath that is this term's Knowledge Organiser for Science all about materials.
Our focus author this term is... Oliver Jeffers! We will be reading texts like 'The Day the Crayons Quit' and 'The Incredible Book Eating Boy'.
Spring Term 1 2025:
'Dinosaurs'
This term's topic is 'Dinosaurs'. We will be:
- finding out about the history of dinosaurs, names of different dinosaurs, what they ate, fossils and Mary Anning!
- reading fiction and non-fiction books involving dinosaurs.
- researching and writing fact files about dinosaurs.
- taking part in role play in the 'dinosaur museum'.
- digging for 'dinosaur' bones and fossils!
- working with malleable media in art and making our own fossils and bones.
- programming Beebots and making our own dinosaur themed mats for them to explore, in Computing.
- completing our work on numbers and place value and addition and subtraction to 20, in maths.
Please see the Knowledge Organiser below for this term's key topic learning.
Our focus author this term is... John Burningham! We will be reading texts like 'Mr Grumpy's Outing' and 'Get Off Our Train!'
Spring Term 2 2025:
'Superheroes'
This term's topic is 'Heroes and Villains - Superheroes'. We will be:
- focusing on the story 'Supertato'.
- writing our own superhero stories, thinking carefully about characters, settings, problems and resolutions.
- creating our own comic strips using Book Creator.
- researching, using tools, designing and making our own superhero sculptures in Art using playdough/clay.
- learning all about the Human Body and Senses in Science.
- learning all about 'medicines/drugs' in PSHE.
Please see below for this term's Learning Journey.
Our focus author this term is... David McKee! We will be reading lots of texts in class by this author.
Summer Term 1 2025:
'Weather and Our United Kingdom'
This term's topic is 'Weather'! We will be:
- naming different weathers and answering questions about the weather.
- keeping a weather chart.
- explaining features of a hot and cold place.
- explaining how the weather changes with each season.
- identifying clothing depending on where we are in the world and different seasons.
- recapping and extending our learning about the countries of UK and towns and cities from our Scarcliffe topic in Autumn 1.
- taking part in role play in the 'Weather Station'.
- writing a weather report to inform.
- presenting our weather reports and recording them.
- creating a digital book using the 'Book Creator' app all about the weather, including sound effects.
- learning all about plants in science.
Please see the Knowledge Organiser below for this term's key topic learning and the Learning Journey outlining the sequence of teaching for this topic.
Summer Term 2 2025:
'Healthy Bodies; Healthy Minds'
This term's topic is 'Healthy Bodies; Healthy Minds'! We will be:
- exploring, designing, making and evaluating our own healthy fruit salads in D.T. including safety, hygiene, washing, feeling, chopping and pouring skills.
- writing instructions for how to make a healthy fruit salad (and instructions for how to grow a sunflower, linked to last term's science learning, as well as writing instructions for our own games too!)
- learning about the changes to our bodies and the way that we feel when we exercise in P.E.
- discussing our feelings, how we can help to deal with them and who you can talk to in P.S.H.E.
- learning all about the importance of physical exercise and a healthy diet for good health in Science as well as ways to keep healthy and safe (such as tooth brushing, hand washing, screen time, sleep routine and being a safe pedestrian.)
Please see the Knowledge Organiser below for this term's key topic learning and the Learning Journey outlining the sequence of teaching for this topic.
