2. The New Curriculum The new curriculum focuses on depth of knowledge and understanding rather than speed of progress. “As part of pupils’ progress, inspectors will consider the growth in pupils’ security, breadth and depth of knowledge, understanding and skills.” Ofsted Handbook, 2015 There is a focus on key skills for each year group that have to be ‘mastered’ before moving on.

3. Assessment Each year group now has a range of key indicators to determine a child’s level of knowledge and understanding. As mentioned previously, the new curriculum requires children to master these concepts before moving onto the next ‘level’ of work. Once a child is capable of a skill, they will be challenged to apply that skill across a variety of questions or situations to further their depth of understanding.

4. Assessment without levels National Curriculum levels for assessing Pupils’ achievement at the end of Key Stages 1 and 2 are now no longer being used nationally. The language of assessment is now: Emerging: Has achieved, and is demonstrating some skills of a specific year group Expected: Has achieved and is demonstrating a good number of the skills of a specific year group. Exceeding: Has achieved, and is demonstrating, most of the skills of a specific year group

5. Mastery Learning Objective: Know the 3 times table. A child who knows that 3 x 3 = 9 has achieved the objective. A child who can answer 3 x _ = 9 is applying their maths and has begun to master the concept. A child who can answer the following question is applying their maths in a variety of situations and has therefore mastered the concept: There are three children who all have three oranges each. How many oranges are there in total?

8. In year 1, we continue to work through the Letters and Sounds programme. The Letters and Sounds phonics programme is one of the systematic synthetic phonics programmes that the government suggests is used to teach phonics. It outlines the order in which the sounds should be taught and guidelines on daily planning. We have started to recap Phase 3 graphemes, learnt at the end of Reception. We then move on to Phase 4, which looks at CVCC, CCVC, CCVCC and CCCVCC words. In the spring term, we will move on to Phase 5 which focuses on alternative spellings and pronunciations of graphemes. This will prepare them well for the Phonics Screening Test. Letters and Sounds

9. Phonics Screening Test The phonics screening test takes place during the middle of June. This is a national screening to check that the children are meeting the expectations for reading for their age. They will be tested on 40 words – 20 real words and 20 pseudo words. They will be expected to segment and blend words accurately. During each assessment week, the children will undertake a mock phonics screening test so they will be well prepared and know exactly what to expect when it happens.

10. Homework Homework given on a Friday will be linked to Maths, English or Letters and Sounds. This piece of work will be a consolidation of the learning that has taken place in the classroom during that week. Please continue to write in the homework diaries if you wish to comment on how your child got on with the work. Additionally (not mentioned in my welcome letter – oops!), we have a number of bears living in our classroom. Barnaby and Fraser will be given to a different child each week to take home for them to explore the lives of the families in class 1. The children can write about hobbies or events which take place when Barnaby or Fraser are in their care. Jofli is another bear who will be taken away with any children who go on holiday and would like to record a diary of their time.

11. Calculation policy The purpose of this policy is to make clear the progression in written Calculations that we use in school. The methods are split into the four operations and are organised in Stages rather than Year Groups to ensure that children are using the most appropriate method for their stage of development/mathematical understanding.

12. Reading The children will continue to read in the classroom as well as at home. They will have opportunities to read individually with a teacher or helper and have timetabled sessions for guided reading. They also take a reading book home twice a week. Please ensure that you hear your child read – we recommend that the children should be able to read 90% of the book easily and the other 10% will require segmenting and blending and a little more working out. I try to read similar books that the children are taking home with them in school so that I can ensure they are reading a level that is suited to them.

13. Trips As in every year group, there are great opportunities for the children to visit different places linked to different areas of the curriculum and particular topics. Along with the rest of the school, the children will visit the literature festival in the autumn term and the science festival in the summer term. They will visit the Everyman Theatre for the pantomime and they will also visit Waitrose during Healthy Schools Week. Our class trip will take place in the summer term, hopefully during Arts Week. Last year we visited Nature in Art and had a fantastic day linking artwork to our topic of ‘Nature: Above and Below’.