Autumn Term
Branch 1- In this branch, pupils will encounter the God who creates and calls a people. They will explore revelation of the Christian belief that all that is comes from God, the Creation accounts in Genesis, and scientific explanations of the process of Creation. They will explore the call of God and his covenantal relationship with his people first through Abraham and Moses, then through the narrative of the Old Testament.
Branch 2- The prophets speak of God reaching to his people, calling them back into a relationship with him. In this branch, pupils will explore the Christian understanding of the teaching of the prophets as they point to the fulfilment of God’s promise in a messiah, Jesus Christ. They will explore the expectant waiting for the Messiah through the Advent season and how this speaks to Christians today as they wait for Christ. Pupils will encounter the story of the nativity of Jesus and the mystery of the incarnation.
Our learning in the Autumn term...
“All about Art...All About Me”.
Through this curriculum we will be looking at traditional tales, familiar stories and unfamiliar stories. We will look at nursery rhymes and all the different characters and settings within these. Alongside this, we will look at how we are the same and different to our new friends and we will create pieces of art to show this. We will also be using our senses to explore the world around us. We will look at other festivals and celebrations over this term, including Diwali.
PRIME AREAS OF LEARNING
Communication and Language
The development of children’s spoken language underpins all seven areas of learning and development. We support the children in learning new vocabulary and developing their spoken language through using ‘My Turn Your Turn’ and stem sentences modelled by the adults, role-play activities, lots of discussion and opportunities to ask questions. We learn new words each week in our Drawing club and we learn about rhyme and rhythm with our poetry and music lessons. We celebrate others' use of language.
Personal Social and Emotional Development
Children’s personal social and emotional development is crucial for children to lead healthy and happy lives. We support them to learn and develop their personal social and emotional skills through developing strong and supportive relationships with the adults in the class and their peers. Through stories and activities including ‘Circle Time’, they will identify and name emotions, and are supported to reflect on and self-regulate their feelings and behaviours. Adults in the classroom will model behaviour daily and teach the children the school rules of ready respectful and safe.
Physical Development
This half term the children will learn fundamental skills.
We encourage the children to get changed for PE themselves from the first half term, although we do allow them a couple of weeks of learning all the new routines first!
Please could you ensure that every item of PE kit and school uniform is clearly marked with your child’s name. As you can imagine – when 30 children are getting changed, it can be very difficult for them, and us, to match items of clothing with the correct child if it is not named. Thank you for your support with this.
Next half term we will look at fundamental and key skills, allowing children to:
- Move safely with increasing control and coordination.
- Travel in different ways, speeds and directions.
- Negotiate space and avoid obstacles.
- Start and stop on command.
Our children benefit from continuous provision and have access to the reception outdoor area freely in afternoons. Children practice, develop, and progress in gross motor skills with a range of physical development activities.
Physical Development is also about the development of fine motor skills, including holding a pencil correctly in order to write. The children participate in lots of activities which develop their fine motor, including threading, lacing, picking up small objects with child tweezers, dough disco, scissor skills.
SPECIFIC AREAS OF LEARNING
Literacy
Children are taught to read and spell through daily phonics – Read Write Inc. sessions. They will learn and practice recognising and sounding letters, use ‘Fred talk’ to read and ‘Fred Fingers’ to spell.
Weekly read write inc homework will be set on the school website and your child will be assigned a group that matches their class work.
We will focus on many familiar texts and traditional tales this year, which we will use to inspire our writing. We will be using Greg Bottrill's drawing club to aid our writing, vocabulary, love of stories and comprehension.
Children will perform their own stories using the tales toolkit format and we will connect this to our drawing club book and the new language we have learnt.
Mathematics
We follow the ‘Power Maths’ Scheme which focuses on mastering key skills which will allow children to gain a secure understanding before moving on, thus building the foundations for future learning. Throughout Autumn term, there is an emphasis on ‘number sense’, ensuring a solid grasp of numbers 1-5, including their composition – looking at the parts that make the whole number.
We will be looking at simple pattern's in our environment and then we move on to simple repeating patterns which will aid children when finding pattern in number.
We use the CPA (Concrete, Pictorial, Abstract) approach to mathematics, enabling children to develop a deep understanding of mathematical concepts and providing the best opportunity for them to master each area of learning. Concrete resources are used throughout most lessons to help children explore and make sense of new ideas before moving on to pictorial and abstract representations. Children work collaboratively with a learning partner, creating a supportive environment where they can discuss their thinking, learn from one another and build confidence without feeling under pressure. This collaborative approach encourages mathematical reasoning, communication and resilience.
Understanding the World
We will support the children to make sense of their physical world and their community through the stories that we learn in class. Through our traditional tales, we will look at similarities and differences of now and the past by looking at settings, characters and our own experiences. We will find places we read about on a map and create our own maps in class. We will be looking at our world and how this is similar or how this differs from our friend's worlds. We will provide the children with STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematical) activities and allow the children to investigate these where appropriate.
Expressive Arts and Design
Our Art focus this half term is to explore a range of art materials and create our own sculptures, paintings, models and drawings, all about ourselves. We learn about colour mixing primary colours to make secondary colours and how to make different shades of colour.
A lot of time is spent, this term, teaching the children how to use the different art material correctly in order for them to be independent learners in future terms.
In Music, we will use the Charanga Music Platform to learn to sing along with nursery rhymes and action songs, to listen and respond to different styles of music, to play classroom instruments, and to demonstrate the learning that has taken place through sharing and performing.