KS1
In Key Stage 1, our curriculum is designed to instil high aspirations in all of our pupils and to encourage them to become resilient, lifelong learners who embrace challenges and continue to grow as individuals.
Our rich and varied curriculum gives children opportunities to develop inquisitive minds and a lifelong love of learning. We believe in celebrating every success and preparing our children for the future. We pride ourselves on giving our children a range of experiences to bring their learning to life, from hands on workshops, performances and educational trips.
In writing the children are always encouraged to write for an authentic audience and are introduced to the concept of writing to entertain and to inform their readers. Alongside their growing knowledge of how sounds are represented in writing (grapheme-phoneme correspondence, or GPCs), the children learn how to use this knowledge to write a wider range of vocabulary to support their own compositions. For children in Year 1, simple sentence structure is emphasised, along with use of spaces between words, capital letters and full stops, to help the reader know where one idea ends and another begins. For children in Year 2, they are taught how to join their ideas to create greater variety and interest for the reader. The children will also start to extend the range of punctuation applied by using question marks and exclamation marks in their writing. Children in Year 2 are introduced to using a comma to separate items in a list and apostrophes to show where letters are missing (contraction) or singular possession. A range of wider vocabulary is taught and encouraged within the children’s writing, to support more detailed description, along with the use of adjectives and adverbs to add detail to nouns and verbs. They will become familiar with a range of genres, such as narratives, recipes, letters and explanations, and enjoy playing with language whilst writing their own poetry.
Year 1 follow the phonics scheme of work, Read Write Inc, where the sounds are progressively taught, consolidated and embedded in their learning; this is developed further through whole class reading.
The maths curriculum at Springfield Primary School follows the pedagogy of Teaching for Mastery. Children in Springfield learn through the explicit teaching of small steps, operating under one learning objective. Within this, mathematical, conceptual knowledge is deepened through effective questioning. The children are exposed to a range of resources to support their learning, including practical activities, pictorial and abstract problems to develop a secure understanding of mathematical procedures. The children are encouraged to develop their learning further, through their reasoning explanations and activities- the answer is just the beginning.
Our topic based curriculum, Cornerstones, develops skills and knowledge progressively taught year on year. Each topic has a main focus to engage and excite the children throughout their learning. Each half-term, there is a subject based focus and cross- curricular activities to allow the children to apply themselves creatively and express their knowledge and understanding effectively and develop the essential skills needed.
What do our parents and carers think about KS1 at Springfield Primary School?
'My child uses phonics all the time when reading and writing. It has really helped. Great that parents understand it too.'
'My child is so happy and is learning a lot through the teaching and curriculum.'
