Help Needed In How To Teach Year 1 In A Play Based Approach

[Guest]

Hello everybody,

 

I am teaching a Reception Class at the moment, which I have been teaching in a play based approach. As I am going to take them up to Year 1 next year, I would like to continue teaching them in the same way. I am therefore looking for great ideas and would appreciate, if you could give me some guidance on how you structure your school day in Year 1 and how you teach the different subjects in particular Literacy and Numeracy. I am also interested in how you have made the transition between Foundation Stage and Year 2 and the use of adults in your classroom setting. At the moment in Reception we teach two adult directed tasks and have two adult facilitators/observers a day. We have around 6 focus activities a week, which we offer both inside and outside. I would very much appreciate it if you could send me some examples of your planning and timetables, as this would also be extremely helpful.

 

Thank you very much for all your help, advice and ideas.

 

Amelie

[Guest]

First of all congratulations on making your first post. We are currently looking at the transition between foundation and year 2 and therefore how year 1 can be adapted to so that it is not a big difference from year R but also so that they how year 2 would expect them to be!

 

Our current thinking is that the Autumn term will very much replicate the summer term in year R the only difference being that some children may be able to start working independently so when doing a focused activity after spending some time introducing it they may be able complete it independently. As the year goes on I would see the number of children able to do this increasing and so by the summer term it should be able to run in a similar way to year 2. In the past children have been given ridiculous activities for literacy and numeracy hour just so they were 'working'. There has been very little learning going on. The children gain far more from quality teaching and learning. As the saying goes, it's quality not quantity!

[chocisgood]

Hi Amelie

wow your first post and what a question! Am sure someone will be along soon with ideas, I know this has been discussed before so suggest a forum search? I have come across the Featherstone book, Making it work in Year 1 which is great. Look at the other books from this publisher for more ideas. I found the general concensus has been to look at the NC objectives you are meeting and plan in your usual play based, multi sensory approach with greater challenges.

Wishing you a fab year ahead!

[Guest]

Hi

 

We have set out our year 1 classroom with the same areas as foundation plus three challenge display areas one for literacy, one for numeracy and one for investigations. We have a teacher and full time TA every morning. We are going to do literacy first one activity led by the teacher the other by the TA and then two groups completing challenges. The challenges are openended and therefore can be completed in a number of different areas. For example it may say create a new good / evil character for a fairy tale (the challenges are written and on sound tins) The children can then choose to pain their character, make it from playdough, box models etc..

 

The idea is that the challenges will build up on skills in order for them to complete one larger end of unit challenge.

 

Hope this helps

 

Jay

[Susan]

Ive found I really needed to become familiar with the curriculum and to translate it into skills to be able to make it more child friendly. How you actually go about operating this will depend on the ethos in your school and your resources. I know Ive been more play based than previously and maybe that translates as less formal in many instances, but I am hoping to be able to make my teaching and provision even more child friendly next year.

[Guest]

Thank you soo much already for your replies. Found them extremely useful. Thank you!!