Curriculum
At Windmill Hill Academy, we are ‘Inspiring Passionate Lifelong Learners who strive to make a positive contribution to their community and the world around them’ by providing them with a broad and balanced to inspire and motivate pupils to have high aspirations; provide them with the tools to become assessment-capable learners; and be socially responsible within the school and wider community.
To keep you updated and informed, you will receive parental overviews at the start of each half term. These will outline our new learning, including our history and geography which will be linked to our whole-school learning concept. The project overviews, class timetable, knowledge organisers and home-learning menus are also available for you to view on both our website and class dojo.
Continuous Provision
In Year 1, we provide continuous provision opportunities to enhance the children's learning. Throughout the week, the children also have a range of learning challenges linked to our curriculum subjects, which helps to promote an interest and passion for these areas. During continuous provision the children will be investigating and taking initiative as they self-regulate their learning in both the the indoor and outdoor learning environment. There will be plenty of opportunities for children to enhance their skills while covering vital elements of the national curriculum. Each area has a different focus with varying levels of challenge to give the children ideas of how to develop their curriculum learning.
Behaviour
As a school, we have achieved the Silver Rights Respecting Schools Award and we are now working towards Gold. This means that we actively discuss the children's rights with them and how this relates to how we behave. See our behaviour policy for more information.
As a class we also discuss and write our own class charter. See copy attached below.
Visible Learning
As part of our Visible Learning journey, our aim is to help develop pupil’s understanding of their own learning and of how to become more efficient learners. So, if your child comes home and tells you they have been in ‘The Learning Pit,’ don’t panic, it is all part of their learning.
To support the children in understanding, using and developing our learning sails we have visible learning characters who they can relate to. These are; Curious Clive, Self-aware Sophie, Connecting Connie, Resilient Tenacity Tom and reflective Ralph.
Pupils will become increasingly familiar with the 'learning sails' which contribute to making a good learner. Please take the opportunity to ask your child what these mean and when they have demonstrated them. (See below for more information)
Our School Vision
Inspiring Passionate Lifelong Learners who strive to make a positive contribution to their community and the world around them.
Our School Values
- Respect and Kindness: We learn how to learn and play together by being considerate of others’ feelings, wishes and rights.
- Honesty: We speak the truth and act truthfully. It forms the basis of trust in our relationships with others.
- Resilience and determination: We promote the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties or challenge. We encourage all to be very determined and show determination despite a challenge.
- Curiosity: We inspire all learners to have strong desire to know or learn something and questioning their learning experiences to find out more.
Class Enrichments
Where possible, children will be engaged in enrichment activities throughout the year. In order to support and enhance their learning, we will plan opportunities that best match the learning in the classroom. This may include: enrichment days and trips. In order for trips to take place, we really appreciate and value parent help.
PE
Please ensure your child your child comes into school in their PE kit on PE days. See timetable and ClassDojo for the days this half term.
Wild Tribe
Throughout the year, there will be opportunities for Wild Tribe activities but there will be regular sessions for each year group at different times of the year. During these times, please make sure your child has a set of old clothes, a waterproof coat and a pair of wellies. There may also be other opportunities that we have to use the school garden and outdoor areas but we will contact you at the time if any additional clothing is required for these activities.
Phonics
We teach early reading through the validated systematic, synthetic phonics programme 'Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised' which we have just purchased and implemented.
Right from the start of Reception, children will have a daily phonics lesson which follows the progression for Little Wandle Letters and Sounds and this continues in Year One to ensure children become fluent readers.
We follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised. Four new phonemes and their corresponding graphemes are taught (GPCs) each week and they are then used in the final lesson of the week to review the week’s learning. Children will also learn tricky words during these sessions.
Year 1 begin the Autumn term with 3 weeks of revision of phases 2, 3 and 4 before learning phase 5, which will be completed by the end of the year. (please see the overview here for what this progression looks like).
Half termly assessments take place through Year 1 to help inform future teaching and help identify children who have gaps in their phonic knowledge and need additional practice. Daily assessment of learning also takes place within the classroom so staff can quickly identify any children who are in danger of falling behind and provide the appropriate daily ‘Keep Up’ intervention.
YEAR 1 LEARNING CONNECTION BLOCKS
Autumn Term 1 - Who is the greatest history maker?
Autumn Term 2 - Natural Elements - What is the geography like where we live?
Spring Term 1 - Civilisation and British Values - How do we know so much about what happened in the Great Fire of London?
Spring Term 2 - Environmental - How does the weather affect our lives?
Summer 1 - Discoveries - How do our toys and games compare with those of children in the 1960s?
Summer Term 2 - Culture - What do we find at places where the land meet the sea?