In Year 1, we will be exploring the question: ‘Who do I want to be?’.

The children are excited by our enquiry question and have come up with lots of ideas which we are all excited to explore!

Literacy, Language and Communication

Through Literacy, Language and Communication, we will be exploring exciting new books such as ‘The Tree Keepers flock’ and ‘Goose’s Autumn’. We will be using these books to write our own set of instructions about how to make a bird feeder, as well as creating our own poem.

Every afternoon, we undertake language rich reading and spelling activities. We read individually and in groups. We will have opportunities to develop our confidence in speaking as well as broadening our vocabulary and offering ideas related to our topic.

We hope to visit the library this term and listen to visitors speak about their jobs and role in the community.

Our role play area is being developed into a magical, enchanted garden! We can go through the magic gate and be who we want to be, using dressing up costumes, props and resources to be who we want to be.

Science & Technology

Using the book, ‘The Tree Keepers’, we were left with a challenge to find a way to look after ‘Scruff’ as he came to visit our outdoor area. We have been designing bird feeders and also thinking of ways to improve our outdoor learning.

We have followed instructions to plant bulbs and will be tending to theses over the next few months, making observational drawings and finding out what bulbs need to grow and flourish.

Our STEM area will provide challenges through independent missions that are linked to the books that we will study this term.

Expressive Arts

We have already started designing and making bird feeders, and we are now thinking about what we want our Role Play area to look like. Our idea of having a secret, magical garden is based on the ‘Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ and also ‘The Secret Garden’. We will be sharing these stories to create a special place that we can explore our enquiry question ‘Who do I want to be?’

We will be looking at printing as we mix paint and print onto canvas to develop the ‘brick work’ for the garden walls. We also hope to look at artists that paint flowers and we will definitely be including the daffodil in our garden and looking at the significance, and importance of the daffodil to Wales.

Humanities

We have started looking at how important our families are and diversity within families and the community. Children have been bringing photographs in of their family and talking about who is in their family. We are focusing on where we live and where Wales is in the United Kingdom.

We see address events that happen in the news during our in class ‘Picture News’ sessions. Children are beginning to recognise, and identify the shape of Wales as a country. Our map in the ‘Cwtch Cymraeg’ area allows children to identify and locate important places in Wales such as Blaenavon, Cardiff and the mountain areas of Brychan Brycheiniog and Eryri.

Mathematics

Autumn Term will focus on concepts such as writing numbers, number sequences, and place value. Children will be collecting data and recording as simple tally charts and bar graphs and naming and sorting 2D and 3D shapes.

We will be counting in 10s, 5s and 2s and children will learn times tables using objects and resources to support learning.

Health and Wellbeing

We will be promoting health snack and the importance of hand washing as a priority this half term. Time each day is also allocated to mindfulness and the pupils will experience times to reflect and focus on mindful thinking. Children have two sessions of PE each week.

An activity basket is provided in the outdoor learning area for children to explore each day.

DCF

We have started using iPads and Chromebooks every day to enhance learning in mathematical development and spelling. Each child will have a short session every day on ‘Teach Monster to Read’ and Maths Interactive Games that support number work.

Children will be leaning about the importance of internet safety and the need to take a break from devices. We will be using various drawing apps to create designs and record ideas. Children will be learning how to save their work into a file.

We also have lots of fun activities planned that use coding. The Bluebots and Beebots will be used for programming.