Transition From Fs To Year 1

[Guest hollyc]

have had a meeting today with our attached advisor from the LEA who is wanting to find out how schools in our area prepare FS children for Y1. Spoke to her about what we do, but has got me thinking am I doing enough? and are the Y1 teachers really understanding what the Fs curriculum is about!

Am really keen to explore this and imporve what we are doing.

 

what are other schools out there doing? We are in an area where quite a few of our children will not have achieved the early learning goals, and where they ideally need in Y1 to still be working from the FS curriculum.

 

any ideas or comment gratefully received!

 

Holly

[mundia]

hi there holly, Im not sure if Ive welcomed you before, so if not, welcome on board and thanks for posting.

We have discussed the transition times in one way or another before. You will find those discussions here

 

and here

 

hope that helps

[Guest]

Hi Holly

this seems to be a cause for concern everywhere! We are always adapting our procedure, but this year this is what we have tried: After February half term, we moved from free choice and free flow movement from activity to activity to children choosing an activity and staying there for ten mins. Since the Easter break we have introduced the literacy and numeracy strategies - whole class intro, followed by all children working on literacy activities (or in numeracy, numeracy activities) for a period of approx 15 mins, then free choice before the plenary. As always some children are ready to work like this, others are not, but hopefully this is allowing those that are ready to develop whilst the others are not under too much pressure! In the afternoons we revert to our previous style - convering all areas of the the curriculum in a free flow way, including the outdoors. Until now we have had a completely play/experiential learning environment and we feel most of the children are ready for more structure to their day.

Hope this helps - I'll be interested to see how this conversation develops!

JackyP

[Guest hollyc]

Hi jacky

glad to hear I'm not the only one feeling concerned about this issue. At the moment the children have a free play board where they can choose from a selection of activities. we then take out groups to work on focused activities. at the moment we do a literacy and numeracy input and the children then all complete and lit and num task throughout the day. After half term we will start doing more of a lit/num hour, with all the children doing some sort of lit/num activity at the same time. i feel that some of my children are ready for this now and will cope just fine in Y1. however i do have a small group that will really struggle. do you know what your y1 teachers do to ease the children in gently?! we have got some staffing issues at our school at the moment and as yet i don't know who the y1 teacher will be in september so it is hard to liase. our advisor was keen to make the first term of Y1 much more play based for those children who need it.

 

Holly