Curriculum Overview

Phonics 

At the beginning of the autumn term we will cover the first two units of SoundsWrite. We do this through word building and reading sessions. At the end of the second unit, your child will bring home their first school reading book. 

English 

For the first part of the autumn term, we will look at the book ‘The Something’ by Rebecca Cobb. We will explore the illustrations and children make predictions about what could be in the hole. We use the ideas to create our own class, non-fiction book about garden animals. 

In the second half of the autumn term, we will use the book ‘Star in the Jar’ by Sam Hay as the stimulus. Once again the children are encouraged to think about the illustrations and explore the ideas within the story. They learn to identify the different parts of the story – opening, build-up, problem and ending. Finally, the children create lost posters to find our pet star. 

Maths 

Pupils will build on previous experiences of number from their home and nursery environments, and further develop their subitising and counting skills. They will explore the composition of numbers within 5. They will begin to compare sets of objects and use the language of comparison.   

PSED 

In our first HeartSmart unit, we will get to meet the character Boris the robot and listen to his story. The children will think about how they can be ‘heart smart’. 

RE 

In this unit children will explore what Christians believe about God and creation. This will begin with an introduction to the old testament and the Creation story. They will move on to gain a deeper understanding of God as a good ‘creator’ of the universe. They will gain an understanding of why Christians thank God at harvest time. We will learn about why Christians use the word ‘God’ with care and respect. During this term we hope to visit our local church Holy Trinity. 

PE 

At the beginning of the autumn term will be an introduction to PE. This will include learning how to move safely in a space. Learning how to stop safely and with control and using equipment safely and responsibly. Children will learn to work individually, with a partner and as part of a group. 

Topic 

In the first half of the autumn term, our topic will be ‘All about me’. Children will think about their bodies, the different parts and what they can do. This offers lots of opportunity to physically move around, to orally rehearse key words and to assess how confident children are at naming and describing parts of their bodies. We move on to learn about different families and how we grow and change over time. Children will have the chance to think about what they might do as an adult. As we continue with this unit, the children will find out about our local area and people within our community that help us, such as doctors, police officers and shopkeepers. We conclude this topic by talking about the changing seasons. 

During the second part of the autumn term, the children will learn about Transport. Our topic begins with a broad overview of different types of transport and why we need to transport people and things around the world. There is lots of scope within this first week to find out and encourage children’s interests, to assess how confidently they can talk about different kinds of transport and therefore to know which children may need scaffolds, support or stretch. Children will learn about the importance of safety when we use transport, or when we are around transport, e.g. crossing the road. This is particularly important to consider at this point in the year when the evenings are getting darker and children are likely to be out and about in the dark. Children will use torches to explore reflective materials and think about why some clothes and bags have reflective strips on them and how that can help to keep us safe.