Welcome to Year One 

2025-2026

Year 1 is such an exciting year! We build on all the skills and experiences from Reception while exploring new challenges and opportunities to grow.

Our learning is brought to life through inspiring, cross-curricular Mantle stories. These immersive adventures encourage us to ask questions, take risks, and think big.

We apply these skills every day — both in the classroom and during Discover and Do Time in the quad. Learning in Year 1 is a balance of independent activities, adult-directed sessions, and more formal approaches. But play and imagination are still at the heart of what we do, with plenty of opportunities to be creative, curious, and confident learners.

Discover and Do Time

Discover and Do Time gives children the opportunity to develop independent thinking, explore their ideas, and take safe risks in a supportive environment.

During this time, children have access to a wide variety of engaging areas, including:

• Construction

• Creative

• Writing and Maths

• Mud Kitchen

• Water and Sand Play

• Role Play

• Small World

Working alongside their class teacher, children use Discover and Do Time to practice problem-solving, seek guidance and strengthen their social, emotional, and communication skills.

This special learning time takes place in our outdoor Quad area, which includes two covered spaces where activities are set up daily. We embrace all types of weather, so please ensure children are dressed appropriately for the conditions — come rain or shine, Discover and Do Time is always on!

We do PE twice a week. One outdoor and one indoor session.

Year 1 will swim during the second half of each term.

Miss Lettice teaches both classes swimming.

Click Below for more information.

Mantle

At Woodrow, we use Mantle of the Expert, a creative approach where children take on roles as experts in exciting story-based projects. Through these stories, we weave in as much of the curriculum as possible—covering subjects like writing, maths, science, history, and art, so that learning feels purposeful and connected.

Children solve problems, make decisions, and work together, developing key skills while exploring engaging, imaginative scenarios. This approach helps them see the relevance of their learning in real-life contexts and makes every lesson memorable.

Writing in Year 1

We follow the Year 1 National Curriculum for writing, aided by The Write Stuff by Jane Considine. This approach helps our pupils build “fantastic” sentences and develop their skills in creating stories, non-fiction texts, and poetry. Our writing is often inspired by our Mantle of the Expert work, giving children real-world purposes for their writing. We write to both entertain and inform. As part of our writing we look at sentence structure and make sure that we punctuate our writing with full stops and capital letters!

Here are the texts we will be focusing on throughout the year -

Autumn 1 - Little Red Riding Hood (Narrative)

Autumn 2 - Toys of the Past (Recount)

Spring 1 -

Spring 2 -

Summer 1

Summer 2 -

Phonics in Year 1

In Year 1, we follow the Little Wandle spelling programme and have a daily phonics lesson. This consistent practice helps children master the sounds they learn and retain them in their long-term memory.

Children’s progress is monitored through daily observations and summative assessments at the end of each half term. Those who need extra support take part in daily “keep-up” sessions—short, focused five-minute activities that reinforce learning and help children apply what they have been taught.

Workshops for Parents

Last year, our phonics workshops were a great success! Parents and children enjoyed working together to practice phonemes, build words, and explore our exciting new books.

We will be running these workshops again this year and hope for an even bigger turnout. In the meantime, you can learn more about the Little Wandle phonics programme and find helpful tips to support your child at home in the information below

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If you would like to purchase the Little Wandle flash cards for your children, please click on the link below.

How can you help with phonics?

It is really important that you support your child to pronounce the sounds correctly. Please watch the videos below so that you know the correct way to say the phonemes.

Reading

We read in a small group three times a week with an adult.  Through careful assessments, each half term, we are allocated a  decodable reading book to match our phonic knowledge.  Our guided reading sessions help us to:

• read easily and fluently with good understanding.
• make sense of what we have read.
• build on what we already know.
• want to read.
• develop the habit of reading widely and often.
• acquire a wide vocabulary, an understanding of grammar.

Whole class story time

We really enjoy story time as a whole class. We get to share a range of texts including fiction, poetry and non fiction books. 

Library

We love going to choose a book from our school library. We can choose anything that interests us. We keep the book in our trays so that we can read or share it when we have a few spare moments. 

Home Reading

The books we read in guided reading are added to our Collins e-book page. We can then share these familiar books again at home. These books contain all the phonemes we know. We should be able to read them fluently.

The children will also bring home an allocated physical book and a reading record. They may change this whenever they would like to by bringing it back to school and swapping it!

Maths 

Maths in Year 1 is very exciting! We follow the White Rose Planning. 

During sessions, the children are taught how to use a variety of different concrete resources to help them represent their number work and solve calculations.

The children then have the opportunity to expand and challenge themselves further in Discover and Do time, through carefully planned activities and enhancements.

Science

Sometimes we learn science through our Mantle story. Sometimes we just do science!

These are the National Curriculum areas of study we focus on:

RE

We follow the Worcestershire Agreed Syllabus for RE.

Here are the questions we think about in Year 1:

RSE

We follow the PSHE Association's Thematic Builder. Here are the themes we learn about in Year 1:

Computing 

We have started to follow Teach Computing's plans.

Music

We follow Kapow Primary Music to explore instruments, begin to learn about aspects of composing and performing. We are also really lucky to have Miss Capron-Tee working with us over the year. She loves to sing and we love to sing with her!