This is the Grade 1 Afrikaans Home Language (HL) revised Annual Teaching Plan. It plans the year week by week across listening and speaking, phonics, reading, writing and handwriting, starting with a six-week school readiness programme and building up to reading short texts and writing a short creative story by Term 4.
Each term is planned in weeks (45 days in Term 1, 51 in Term 2, 52 in Term 3 and 47 in Term 4) around themes, under five skill areas with set times: Listening and Speaking 3 to 4 x 15 minutes a week, Phonics 5 x 15 minutes a week, Reading (shared, group guided 2 x 15 minutes a day, and paired or independent), Writing 3 x 15 to 20 minutes a week, and Handwriting 4 x 15 minutes a week. Each term ends with a list of skills for formal assessment (SBA).
Download the ATP
What the Afrikaans HL Grade 1 ATP covers
Term 1
- Six-week school readiness programme
- Classroom rules, routines and attention signals
- Songs and talking with a partner
- Sound and name games, clapping syllables
- Shared reading and picture talk
- Visual and auditory perception skills
- Drawing pictures and copying captions
- Hand strengthening and pattern work, letters v and w
Formal assessment: Baseline assessment in the first 10 days, integrated and informal. SBA covers listening to stories and instructions, beginning and end sounds, reading picture books and own name, drawing to convey a message, copying captions, and basic patterns and pencil grip.
Term 2
- Themes: At school, Healthy habits, The weather
- Themes: My family, Safety at home, My body
- Sequencing and describing pictures
- Sound substitution and word families (kat, mat, vat)
- Onset and rime, reading phonic words in sentences
- Shared and group guided reading, sight words
- Writing news sentences and lists of words
- Letters m, n, r, h, b, p and numbers 2 to 7
Formal assessment: SBA covers telling personal experiences, listening to stories and instructions, letter sounds of all single letters, building 3-letter words, oral reading of a 20 to 30 word text with questions, writing missing words in a writing frame and two news sentences, and copying short sentences.
Term 3
- Themes: My body, Keeping my body safe
- Themes: My community, Pets, Plants and seeds, Food
- Telling a story with beginning, middle and end
- Double vowels (aa, ee, oo, uu)
- Consonant blends (sl, st, bl)
- Cause and effect in stories
- Writing news and a short poem
- Forming all 26 lower-case letters
Formal assessment: SBA covers telling a story with a beginning, middle and end, word families and 3- and 4-letter words, double vowels and consonant blends, oral reading of a 40 to 50 word text with questions, plurals with s or e, prepositions, and forming all 26 lower-case letters.
Term 4
- Themes: Homes, Finding things and places
- Themes: Water, Space, At night
- Riddles, jokes and group discussions
- Vowel sounds ie, oe, ui, ei, ou, eu
- Plurals with s and e, ten spelling words a week
- Story problems, sequence and posters
- Writing a creative story of 3 sentences
- Present and past tense, prepositions
Formal assessment: SBA covers sequencing at least 5 pictures, role play of story characters, plurals and vowel sounds, a phonics test of at least 10 words, oral reading of a 40 to 50 word text with questions, writing at least 3 sentences of own news using capital letters and full stops, and handwriting.
Source: Department of Basic Education, 2023/24 Annual Teaching Plans. DBE Circular S19 of 2025 keeps the 2023/24 ATPs in use, with some exclusions, so check with your school or district for any changes.