Spring Term 1 (2025)

Launch

The children are going to find a penguin with a letter. This will explain that the penguin is lost and need to get back home. However, the penguin will explain that there is a problem with him getting home. He can’t go through the air due to the pollution and he can’t swim because of the litter. He asks the children to help him get home by looking after their planet.

Landing

The children are going to send the penguin home, happy with the reassurance of how to look after the world.

Communication and language

In Spring 1, we will revisit what good listening is. They will use this to have a discussion in which they will have to take turns to listen and speak. The children will develop new vocabularly and use this in different places when the opportunity arises. Finally the children will engage in non-fiction books through our reading learning journey and communication any new information they have heard and learnt.

Physical development

The children will continue to develop their fine motor skills throughout our daily dough gym and fine motor opportunities in writing and MOLE. The children will begin to understand and follow simple rules in PE. They will explore static and dynamic balances. The children will engage their core to stabilise their balances. They will then transfer these balances onto large and small apparatus and begin to use do this confidently and safely.

Personal, social and emotional

Within our PSED directed teaching, the children will think about their safety. They will discuss what is safe to go in their bodies and what is not. They will then take this thinking further to discuss what is safe inside and what is safe outside including the use of technology. Finally they will think about people in the community that help to keep them safe as well as their immediate environment.

Reading

Children will be exploring non-fiction texts as a class. They will develop an understanding that non-fiction texts are factual and they can learn new information. Children will be encouraged to respond to what they have heard and comment on it by giving their own opinions and preferences.

Writing

At the start of the half term, in writing, children will revisit identifying the initial sound in a CVC word. We will then begin to identify the end sound and the medial sounds. Once they have heard all in isolation, they will then try to write VC words, followed by CVC words.

Maths

• During the spring term, the children will revisit that all numbers have meaning, for example their age, house numbers etc and that they are represented by numerals. The children will revisit one to one correspondence (careful counting). They will carefully count objects, actions and sounds. They will recognise the numeral representations of numbers; this includes what they mean and what they are called. Children will need to know the value of each number and that numbers increase as they go up in the number system. The children need to know the meaning of ‘more’ and ‘fewer’ in order to understand the ‘one more than/one less than’ relationship between consecutive numbers. Children will also need to know the meaning of total and altogether in order to explore the composition of numbers 6-10.
• In this learning journey, the children will be revisiting common 2D shapes, we will identify the features of a circle, triangle, square, rectangle, pentagon and hexagon. The children will learn how to describe a 3D shape using edges, surfaces, vertices and faces. The children will then select 3D shapes according to their features to manipulate and build new shapes.

Understanding the world

• In science and geography, we will be exploring seasons, focusing on autumn and winter. We will discuss what we see in the seasons, how weather changes and what the differences between the seasons are. We will look though photos of our autumn term to compare to how winter looks in the spring term.
• In RE we will look at stories that we can learn something from, we will discuss our favourite stories and see if we can learn anything from them. We will then learn about some of the stories Jesus told in the Bible and how they help Christians live their lives.
• In history, the children will continue their learning about their families but begin to discuss their extended families for example Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins etc. Following this, the children will look at the Royal family both past and present. They will talk about the significant people and what their roles are or were.

Expressive arts and designs

• In design and technology, we will be exploring materials, looking at different objects and discussing the materials they are made from. We will also discuss the textures of different materials. We will then look at clay and how you can manipulate clay using your hands, a rolling pin and cutters.
• In art, the children will explore 3 artists work, Piet Mondrian, Alma Thomas and Henri Matisse. The children will look at the different techniques the artists used to create their work and then explore this technique for themselves using and range of small equipment and tools.
• In music, linking to our Chinese New Year learning, the children will listen to a Dragon piece of music. In teams they will then play instruments to make a piece of Dragon music learning when to play and stop and taking turns to build a performance.