Key Stage 1 Curriculum

Seedlings Class

From September 2014 the school started to deliver a new curriculum in line with the new national initiatives. For full details see the National Curriculum Framework.

Developing independence, and an ability to remain focused, becomes a key feature to a child's learning as they move on into Years 1 and 2. This is a crucial stage in a child's development of knowledge and skills in subjects such as maths, writing and reading. In KS1, writing is taught through the 'Talk for Writing' approach and involves children imitating and internalising a text type, innovating a shared writing piece and eventually inventing a new 'Hot Task' piece of writing with a particular writing focus. Our maths approach follows the national framework guidelines and focuses heavily on arithmetic for the first term with the children then able to apply these skills to reasoning and maths problems, when appropriate.

Much of the curriculum is taught through cross-curricular links based around class topics and opportunities to learn in many different ways are provided. Communication with parents continues to be highly valued and we seek their involvement at the end of each topic with an end product event. These events are an opportunity at the end of a topic for parents to view children's work, see a performance or take part in some joint learning tasks. Each term the children's work will be focused around specific topics ; the children complete two smaller units and six topic units across a two-year rolling cycle with topics like Home and Away, Famous for five minutes and Blast off to the future. Children continue to take part in inspiration days and end product events with parents actively encouraged to join in learning throughout. The topic learning overviews for each unit of work in Year 1 and 2 are available at the bottom of this page.

Members of staff continually assess and monitor children's performance to ensure that each child is given adequate support and challenge where appropriate.

Reading in KS1

At Cossington Reading is taught in three ways at Key Stage 1. The skills of decoding words are taught daily for twenty minutes through the phonics scheme (See section on teaching of phonics). Understanding and comprehension of texts is taught daily through guided reading sessions and within English lessons. These lessons teach children how to search for information in texts, answer questions about what they have read, understand unfamiliar ideas and learn strategies for working out the meaning of unfamiliar words. Finally children practise their decoding and comprehension skills through reading one to one or in groups with adults. This may be the class teacher, LSA or other school based adult. We also request that children practise reading at home at least three times a week with an adult to secure the skills they have been learning in school.

At Key Stage 1 children take books home from our Key Stage 1 library and are given opportunities to change their books regularly through the week. In Year 1 the books are matched to the phonetic ability of the child. Once a child can read fluently (usually by the end of Year 1), they have access to banded books in the library. The library is banded into colours based on the difficulty of the text and children are directed by the teacher to what colour is appropriate for them to select books from. The colour bands contain books from a wide range of reading schemes including Oxford Reading Tree, Big Cat, Project X and Bug Club. Children receive a reading diary for parents and teachers to communicate what children have been reading and how reading is progressing in class and at home.