2022 Autumn Term (Year 1) - Lower School - St Thomas of Canterbury Junior School

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2022 Autumn Term (Year 1) - Lower School

Curriculum
Curriculum Advice for Parents

Welcome back to the beginning of a new and exciting academic year! We hope that this information will give you helpful details of planned work for this term. Please assist your son/daughter in exploring and discussing these areas. We trust you continue to find the homework diary useful and intend to continue to suggest activities in it.
 
 
All year groups will be having English and Mathematics lessons every day. The most important way to help your children is to read with them on a daily basis. The more you read together the better they will do in school and (this is not an overstatement) in life! “Families that read together succeed together!”
 
 
We will also continue to suggest spellings and times tables to learn in the homework diary too as this type of work is very important, especially in Year 4.  Please continue to refer to the homework diary for general expectations, such as those relating to uniform (summer uniform expectations are in place until October half term). Thank you!
Examples of areas we plan to cover

Art & Design
This half term, we are looking at Steven Brown's animal art. We will develop our line drawing and painting skills in order to create our own colourful animal artwork in his style.

D&T
In DT, we will be designing, making and evaluating an Ancient Egyptian themed quiz board, making use of the knowledge of electrical circuits from our science lessons.

Computing
We will be recalling the steps for logging onto the school's network; developing our understanding of networks in general and how to use them safely. We will also be exploring coding through our Purple Mash software with a particular focus on '2Logo'. Your child can access this on their Purple Mash account at home too.
"https://www.purplemash.com/" \l "app/tools/2logo"

Geography
The children will learn about what makes our planet unique. They will develop their knowledge of important places in the world and their geographical features. The children will learn about the International Space Station and the findings from their various experiments.

History
The children will be learning about Ancient Egypt - researching and studying the way the people of this ancient civilisation lived and learning about the key events, people and places of the time.

Music
This half term, we will be working on our composition skills using graphic scores in the shape of pyramids to link with our history topic. There will be opportunities to play a range of percussion instruments.

P.E.
During outdoor PE lessons, the children will develop their fundamental movement skills. They will consolidate their application of FMS such as hopping and dodging. These lessons will help the children to meet social, emotional and thinking whole child objectives. The children will develop their fundamental movement skills during indoor PE lessons through gymnastics. They will learn a wide range of travelling actions and include the use of pathways. They will develop more advanced actions such as inverted movements and explore ways to include apparatus. Swimming lessons for 4P, 4DW and 4B will begin on Friday 16th September 2022.

PSHE
We will be thinking about the importance of valuing who we are and those around us. The children will learn about being part of a team and becoming a citizen. They will also learn about rights, responsibilities and democracy.

R.E.
To begin the year, we will be exploring the big question ‘What do Christians learn from the creation story?’ After this, we will be exploring the concept of philosophy and how different groups of people (including Christians, Hindus and Humanists) may make moral decisions.

Science
This half term we will be studying living things and their habitats. We will have the opportunity to explore our school environment and considering how animals are adapted to their environment. In the second half of the term we will be learning about electricity. Through practical experiments, we will explore electrical circuits. We will also learn about electrical safety.

Spanish
We will be focusing on conversational skills, for example, for example greetings, introducing ourselves, and asking questions of others, as well as counting to 100, and learning vocabulary linked to family.
You may like to talk to your child about these topics. The prospectus (which details how the different subjects are taught) is available for download by clicking here.


In addition, you may also wish to:


: research ideas at the local library and help your child to develop his/her library skills;

: search the internet for relevant websites and activities;

: watch relevant television programmes that may support their work, or visit a museum or place of interest;

: simply talk to your child about what they are learning!

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