Year 1 English Plans

Children will read and discuss Harvey Slumfenburger's Christmas Present by John Burningham. They will learn a repeated refrain orally and then adapt this to create their own individual sentences using this pattern, focussing on writing in sentences.

Use the story of Knuffle Bunny, by Mo Willems, to inspire children to write a story about their favourite soft toy. Practise forming upper and lower case letters. Use capital letters for names and to start sentences. Investigate words ending in 'le' and words containing /oy/. Some children independently read The Hamilton Group Reader, The dog and the lost mum.

Friendship is rewarding to have, but can be difficult to understand! In this unit children use The Cloudspotter by Tom McLaughlin and Imaginary Fred by Oliver Jeffers to share their ideas about making friends and justify their opinions about the activities they enjoy doing alone, with a partner or as part of a group. They learn how to write correctly punctuated statements about activities they enjoy doing. They orally prepare and write questions to find out information about new friends, discovering new information about people familiar to them. Children will know how to join clauses together using a conjunction, so they can design a wanted poster for a new friend. Children plan, write and publish a book about friendship. They rehearse strategies to read independently and write a book review. 

Imagination and mystery are the key to engaging children in writing lists and designing signs. Using the books, Not a Stick by Antoinette Portis and Billy’s Bucket by Kes Gray and Garry Parsons, children learn about the features of labels and lists, descriptive writing and designing Wanted Posters. Children become detectives and find information from other people's writing.

Use simple information texts, The Usborne Book of Big Machines, to find out all about big machines and what they can do. Begin to learn about the structure of non-fiction texts and how they are different to fiction. Make up a fantasy vehicle and write labels and captions to describe it.

Using What You Shouldn’t Do At School and I’m Mad About Pizza by Joshua McManus, children learn how commands can be informative and fun. They rehearse orally, composing questions, statements and commands, and write them using appropriate punctuation and neat handwriting. Children edit and improve their writing and read it aloud to adults and their peers. Children work collaboratively to discuss texts and to share their ideas. 

Squishy squelchy worms get the children really enjoying poetry in this unit. Read The Worm by Ralph Bergengren, and get the children to write their own worm poems before creating list poems about what they love and hate.

Motivate children to talk about humorous poems and stories and get them writing using poetry from The Works by Paul Cookson, Wouldn’t You Like to Know by Michael Rosen, The Gingerbread Man by Audrey Daly, The Three Little Pigs by Joan Stimson, No Hickory No Dickory No Dock by John Agard and Grace Nichols, Read Me First by Louise Bolongaro, The Works Key Stage 1 chosen by Pie Corbett. Children take part in skipping, chanting poems and compose their own verses to poems that include repetition. This culminates in children performing their own chorus of Batman's Exercise Video.

Funny poems are enjoyable to read and exciting to write. Children use Oi Frog and Oi Dog by Kes Gray and Jim Field to explore verbs, nouns and the concept of singular and plural. They consider how to change verbs in to the past and present tense by adding –ing and –ed. The children learn that the names of people and places begin with capital letters and investigate the effect of adding the prefix un- to words. They edit familiar poems and write their own poems using familiar structures. Children also learn how to perform their poetry on their own, with a partner and as part of a group.