Butterfly and Ladybird Classes

Communication and language

The children will build up vocabulary to describe a pretend object in play based situations, e.g. when role playing a coronation a child might use props for their orb and sceptre. We will focus on using questions to understand why things happen e.g. who, what, when, how e.g. when a visitor comes in to talk to the class, to extend children’s ability to ask questions rather than just sharing information they know. We will also practise responding to questions using full sentences, e.g. I think… because… this will be consistently modelled by adults in all curriculum areas. The children will apply the use of intonation and rhythm when joining in with stories and rhymes.

Physical development

In everyday activities, we will continue to focus on the gross motor skills developing coordination and balance – this half term, the children will practice team games, including relay races, using racquets and balls, throwing and catching, as well as  running, jumping, hopping, skipping, jumping over obstacles and skipping with a rope.

The children will further develop their fine motor skills and build their ability to use a wide variety of small tools – cutlery, tweezers, pipettes, scissors to cut shapes, i.e. spirals, modelling tools for clay and play dough. We will continue to secure children’s pencil grip through writing, drawing and painting.

Personal, Social and emotional development

Children will learn about independence and build their awareness of the growing number of things they can do for themselves. We will also explore the different choices children can make if they are worried and ways of helping others. In our weekly PSHE lessons, the children will explore ways of staying safe. They will identify trusted adults who children could talk to and ask for help; we’ll learn to plan ahead to keep safer and understand and apply safety rules in different contexts e.g. sun, water, fire, railways; the children will develop a strategy to keep safer when lost. We will learn to identify common harmful substances and understand how to be safe with medicines and who the trusted people are who help them to take medicine when they need it. We will also learn to understand basic road safety skills. This half term, we will continue our learning to be able to identify and distinguish between different touches and to be able to identify how and when to tell, as well as the importance of privacy and the PANTS rules

Literacy

Children will learn to annotate pictures of monarchs with speech bubbles and thought bubbles and begin to use descriptive sentence writing for creating instructions – we will practice writing simple instructions for a familiar process in a numbered list. Children will build their ability to apply verbal sequencing using temporal connectives, i.e. First, I climbed on the climbing frame and then I slid down the big slide! The children will access a variety of high quality fiction and non-fiction texts about the monarchy and selected historical events history. We will create fact books about leaders and notice the difference between writing stories and writing information. Children will have opportunities to role play using newly acquired vocabulary e.g. role play a coronation. In Phonics, we will continue to secure all of the Set 1 diagraphs most of the Set 2 sounds. The children will continue to practise blending sounds into words at speed through reading a wide selection of ‘green words’ and ‘alien words’, as well as increase their ability to read a range of words which contain spelling patterns that cannot be sounded – ‘red words’. Children will write simple phrases and sentences with phonetically plausible attempts at unknown spellings and apply familiar ‘red words’ in their writing using their correct spellings. Our Talk for Writing texts this half term will be Somebody swallowed Stanley by Sarah Roberts and a non-fiction text How to attack a castle.

Mathematics

The children will start the half term by learning to count on and count back. This unit focuses on counting forwards and backwards from a given number in order to add and subtract. Counting on and counting back are far more efficient than some of the other methods of addition and subtraction, therefore children need to become familiar and confident with this strategy recognise, represent and manipulate numbers to 10. In the next unit of learning, we will focus on numbers beyond 10, exploring numbers from 10 to 20. Children will count to 20 and back to 0, identify one more and one less, and compare and represent numbers. This will be many children’s first encounter with two-digit numbers so it is important they understand that teens numbers are formed with a ten and some ones. The understanding of tens and ones is key to understanding the structure of numbers. At the end of the half term, the children will develop their understanding of numerical patterns. This unit introduces the mathematical patterns of doubling, halving and odd and even numbers. At this stage, children will explore the patterns and practise using the new vocabulary. Children will continue to build on this early understanding as they move through KS1 and KS2.

Understanding the world

This unit of learning introduces children to some fundamental ideas about monarchy, leadership and power. Children will learn about leaders of the world, starting from the Emperors of China; Mansa Musa, the ruler of the Kingdom of Mali; then moving onto King Charles III. They will become familiar with some key features of our monarchy including people in the Royal Family, special places and traditions. Children will begin to understand that the title of King or Queen is passed down through the Royal Family. Children will recognise the Union Jack and will understand that on special occasions the King wears a crown and sits on a throne. Children will then learn about royal building such as castles and palaces, the Royal Standard flag and coronations, and will learn vocabulary such as orb and sceptre, recognising these important parts of the coronation ceremony, especially the coronation of King Charles III. Finally, children will learn about the work of historians and explore different ways of learning about the past

Expressive arts and design

The children will study animal depictions in art, taking close look at Rousseau’s Surprised (Tiger in a Tropical Storm). The children will expand their knowledge of different art techniques and will have a go at painting real fish with ink and wax resist. In music, we will explore the work of different composers and listen to Zadok the Priest by Handel, a famous piece of music composed for the coronation of King George II. The children will enjoy instrumental activities and music and dance sessions inspired by the work of Louis Armstrong and linked to the Saint-Saëns's Carnival of the Animals and Sorcerer’s Apprentice by Paul Dukas.