Help With Planing For Foundation/year 1 Class

[Guest]

Help please, I'm an NQT who's just finished my second term in a Reception/Year 1 class and I am really struggling. It's a small school so I'm the only Foundation stage teacher and I have the summer born Year 1s which make it even more difficult as I have to cover the same work as the Year1/2 class. I'm struggling with how to manage the classroom and manage to control the reception activities and teach Year 1s. Does anyone have any successful ideas.

Also I have to fit my topics around Year1/2 so does anyone have any ideas to fit with History - Famous People or Science Light and sound, any ideas very welcome - I was thinking of doing Celebrations but will this stretch teh whole term?

 

Help please!

julescc272

[Susan]

Hi Jules and welcome.

 

Ive been suffering with a migraine all day today and dont have a lot of thinking power just like that tonight but there must be a good way round this for you. I quite like the idea of "celebrations" and will try and remember to get back to you on this one asap.

 

I also like working from stories which might also fit in well.

[Guest heleng]

As they are summer born year 1's how long have they been in school? My summer borns have only been in full time for 1 term, so when I was keeping them with Reception for the first term all of them were still working within the EYFS curriculum anyway.

 

So, the way I worked it was our overriding topics were the same as the year 1 class but we followed the children's interests within those topics as much as possible. We still had whole class sessions together and then all the children had access to child initiated activities. Then I ran adult focused activities, making sure all of the year 1's took part in an activity at their level. Around the classroom within the continuous provision activities we have challenges that the year 1's are encouraged to complete and as the term progressed they were given restricted choices when accessing CI activities.

 

As they progressed and completed the EYFSP I used the National Curriculum and various strategies (Lit and Num) and used objectives from these to inform both my whole class and small group activities.

 

Hope that makes sense. Oh, and the only other thing I would say is it is very difficult to keep a topic going for a whole term. Celebrations is a good one, esp for the second half of the term but famous people would be a good one too. You could teach about Grace Darling and make lighthouses etc, Alexander Graham Bell and make string telephones etc, Helen Keller and learn sign language, Louis Braille, Florence Nightingale, Christopher Columbus, George Stephenson etc. There are loads of things you could do within the topic.

 

Helen