Primary Years Programme
Teaching and Learning
At the heart of all the Primary Years Programme are the transdisciplinary themes and the units of inquiry. This term, every year group inquired into 'Who We Are'.
Here are the units of inquiry the class chose from:
the nature of the self;
beliefs and values; personal, physical, mental, social and spiritual health;
human relationships including families, friends, communities, and cultures;
rights and responsibilities;
what it means to be human.
Nursery
People learn and care for the others.
The nursery pupils have been exploring what it means to be part of the nursery community. They have developed their awareness of the ATL’s (Attitude to learning) for learning as well as developing an understanding of how to name emotions and talk about the emotions they see around them in their play with others. The children have been exploring their learning profile attributes through the use of the Julia Donaldson stories that link to them. For example; being a communicator like the ladybird from ‘What the Ladybird heard’. The children have also been developing their risk taker skills through exploring the text ‘The Gruffalo’. During this the children explored how to think about risks, for example when building with the large blocks, how if we place them on the floor this can help others keep safe. The children have also looked at the idea of community through looking at their families and our nursery family. The children have developed their language skills to communicate their ideas of family and how they enjoy learning in their play.
EYFS
People learn and care for the others.
Reception have been learning about what a caring member of our community looks like. We have been inquiring into our feelings and emotions and can now communicate with our friends and adults as to why we feel certain emotions and what we can do to self regulate and make positive choices again. We have been learning about how we can show we care for members of our wider community through the stories ‘The Smartest Giant in Town’, ‘What the Ladybird Heard’, ‘The Smeds and The Smoos’, ’Zog’, ‘The Gruffalo’ and ‘Room on the Broom’. We know that people show they care for each other during different times of their life and we were particularly interested in learning about the Christian Wedding Ceremony. We wanted to be reflective and thought about how we can show people we care by writing cards to each other- just like the animals did to show George they cared about him in ‘The Smartest Giant in Town.’ We have started to think about how our community cares for each other as we learnt about the importance of the Police and how they care for us as well as members of staff at school.
Year 1
Humans makes sense of the world by being connected.
Year 1 has been learning about how humans make sense of the world by being connected. They initially researched what made up their identity through understanding that identity goes beyond physical features. They then considered what makes someone important and how these people help them to be the best person they can be. This then leads the children to think about how humans and animals use their senses to be connected to the world around us. The pupils in Enterprise and Jubilee classes went on a learning walk in the local community to test out their science skills by using their senses to connect to their surroundings. This learning was supported by the story 'Little Red Riding Hood' who met a wolf on her travels to Grandma's house. The children were able to identify that the wolf used his senses in the story to try and trick Little Red Riding Hood. Willow also became part of our learning and the children learnt how Willow uses her senses. They were surprised just how similar humans and animals are! Our inquiry ended with a special visit by Paul from the Guide Dog Association, who is blind and has a working guide dog to help him to connect with the world around him. The children were intrigued by the gadgets Paul uses in his everyday life, from a talking microwave, bells, talking alarm clock etc. This was a great learning experience for the children to understand potential barriers that some people may experience, as a result of having an impairment and/or a disability.
Year 2
When their basic needs are met, animals and humans thrive
Year 2 has been investigating the basic needs of humans and other animals. They began their inquiry through looking at the differences between living and non-living things and then identifying what living things need to survive. We then explored the four basic needs of our school dog mentor, Willow, and how these are fundamentally the same for all animals. We used our writing skills to create a fact file for Willow, detailing her basic needs. From there, we looked at how we meet our basic needs and explored our local area to see what it provided. Using our map skills, aerial photographs and our own first hand experience from our walk, we identified how the local area meets our need through shelter, housing, food from shops, water from pipes in to our homes and oxygen from the trees. We wrote a recount of our walk and practised using conjunctions to join our sentences together. In our final part of our inquiry, we have explored how our basic needs influence our lifestyle choices through the stories 'Avocado Baby', 'Oliver’s Vegetables' and 'Daisy Eat Your Peas'. We have looked at how eating healthy has a positive impact, as well as looking at our digital health and how this can affect our rest. We need to help our bodies and mind repair and recover.
Year 3
Choices and habits can promote a healthy and balanced lifestyle.
The pupils in Year 3 have been learning about how our choices and habits can promote a healthy and balanced lifestyle. We have explored nutrition and how having a balanced diet can impact not only our physical health, but also our mental wellbeing. We even planned, made and evaluated healthy sandwiches to demonstrate this knowledge. We wrote instructions so that others could make our sandwiches, where we focused on using adverbs and conjunctions. We used the book ‘The Colour Monster’ to understand our emotions. We explored what these emotions could look like, how they made us feel and when we felt them. We considered what people in the past would have done to promote a healthy and balanced lifestyle, finding the similarities and differences between what we do today. In our final inquiry, we even thought about how we could influence communities to make better lifestyle choices by discussing the benefits of being part of communities.
Year 4
Humans require different things for good health.
Year 4 has been learning about the different things humans require to have good health. We explored the different areas of health, what affects each area and how we can improve them. We focused on mental health looking at different artists who created pieces based on their feelings and mental health, creating our own self portraits using different mediums. We explored physical health within different experiments and projects such as looking at what healthy food our body needs and making our own pizza. From there, we investigated the changes our body goes through when participating in physical activity and what can happen when we are not active. We explored the eatwell plate and digestive system to show what our body needs for fuel and energy, creating our own menu for a balanced diet. We also learnt how being healthy changes over time. The pupils wrote some fantastic explanations to describe these changes.
Year 5
Our rights and responsibilities connect, help and protect people.
Year 5 has learned how rights are only upheld when people understand their responsibilities. We created a class charter where we considered the rights of the members of our class and our responsibilities if we are to ensure this happens. We read 'A Kind of Spark' and considered how neurodivergent people have been treated in the past and now. We learned that Draco, a Greek lawmaker, sentenced all wrong doers to death. We then looked at how the Romans built on this idea but had a greater range of punishments. We also learned how they relied on the gods for some punishments. A police officer visited to share information about the development of the police force and what the job is like today. We also inquired into aspects of the British Empire from the Tudor period until after the second world war. We discussed how and why some people are remembered through memorials (link to class book) and we discussed how attitudes can change over time which leads to some statues now causing difficulties. We then considered people that we felt were supportive of human rights and deserved a memorial. We created our own memorial poems. We found out that the problems and the way people were treated leading up to and within WW2 led to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. When we reflected on these rights, we noticed Article 22 (Everyone has the right to a home) was not available to everyone. Year 5 held a Halloween Treats Stall to raise money for a local homeless charity and then wrote newspaper reports to share in the school newsletter.
Year 6
Mistakes can lead to development
This term, Year 6 has been learning about how mistakes lead to developments. For the first two weeks, the children were investigating what makes animals and humans and why they are the way they are. They compared the views of creationism and evolutionism, going into more detail about the life and work of Charles Darwin and how he contributed to science today. Following all of this, they took off on the Voyage of the Beagle, stopping in many of his locations, exploring the landscape of the Galapagos and the Samba of Brazil. The following line of inquiry lent itself to Victorian punishment, again linking in to how mistakes lead to developments. We made a comparison between Victorian and our modern day behaviour policy. The children then looked at the British colonisation of Australia through convicts, overall being able to summarise that without the convicts, Australia might not have the 26 million people population it has today. Finally, we looked at the rights of women and how they have changed through the ages. We then debated how all of these mistakes had had a positive or negative development on society.
