Why KS1 ?

I chose KS1 because although the app could be used to scale to other year groups, I feel that this year group is the start of school life for children and if you catch them at this critical time and encourage them to learn on their own as well as supplement the gaps in their knowledge then you can drastically alter the experience they have throughout their school life.

“It is a persistent scandal that we have children starting school not able to communicate in full sentences, not able to read simple words. This matters, because when you’re behind from the start you rarely catch up. Your peers don’t wait, the gap just widens. This has a huge impact on social mobility.”

Why are they being left behind ?

Over time various results have shown that children who go through the school system and are labelled as ‘low performance’ often leave the school system and enter into unemployment. This obviously leads to greater issues in the long run, these kids are not just being phased out at school but they are phased out in their home life also.

“Studies show children from poor households are more likely to underperform at school and to struggle to find or keep a job.”

So what do kids need to know ?

In all honesty, the scope of a child’s learning at KS1 is quite vast so I will ultimately pick a task from each subject in order to have an understanding of it’s capabilities within an app and also to show exactly how my solution will be implemented effectively.

1. English – Poem recital, correct writing of a lowercase letter, reading text and spelling words correctly.
2. Mathematics – Counting up to 100, understand basic equations, understand shapes.
3. Science – Identify a range of plants and animals, identify materials, understand habitats and the environment.
4. Art and Design – Learn about famous artists, learn different methods of creating and understand colours.
5. Computing – Internet safety, create and debug simple programs and understand algorithms.
6. Geography – understand the location of various countries, understand the use of maps, understand terminology.
7. History – Learn about the roman empire, the vikings and anglo saxons, understanding of local history.
8. Music – Knowledge of songs and chants, experiment with sounds and noises and learn to play tuned and untuned instruments musically.