What is expected of a year one child?

[BrittaPerry]

There is a possibility that DD1 will be going back into a school from HE. She turns 6 on Sunday, and would be in year one. She has some social and personal issues, so I want to try and make the academic side smooth for her, so I'm going to start making our homeschool gradually more formal.

She is a very solid reader, and is interested in the human body so knows quite a lot about that and so obviously basic scientific methods etc as she has done experiments to help her learn. We tend to have loose themes that we follow for a while, and so she has learned quite a lot about robots, ancient Greece, the heart, snow, states of matter, basic politics, weaving and coal mining.

Obviously when I say "quite a lot" I mean for a five year old, not in the grand scheme of things.

She works through workbooks and sheets, but in a fairly informal way - she has a folder of work that I expect her to work on every day, but sometimes that can be ten minutes, sometimes all day.

She works on year two upwards workbooks and so on, but obviously I know it is easier for a parent to get them to do their best and also I can give her much more personal help and attention so she might slip down in class - it's not a race, I only give her those tasks or else she doesn't bother thinking, and I'm sure school will be teaching her other, equally valid, skills.

Anyhow, ignore my rambling. My question is: what can I do to prepare her? I'm not worried about ability academics wise, it is more that there will be different skills for classroom national curriculum style learning.

What you've done sounds terrific to me as a parent. You didn't mention anything about writing, punctuation, spelling and sentence structure. You also didn't mention anything about arithmetic. But what you did mention sounds good to me.

DD is practically the same age. I have no idea what she does at school for the most part

She writes stories and letters with some interesting spelling, they do cursive handwriting. She can read quite well and do some simple adding/doubling. She knows she should use interesting words to describe things, apparently 'nice' is a terrible word to use

AFAIK they do short spells on each thing, and try to cover several things at once, so they might use writing and maths in one piece of learning, IYKWIM. She still does some colouring in and draws lots of pictures though.

She does write, but what should I be looking for in her writing?

She does her own bus fares and bits of shopping, and I ask her little maths questions like "how old was I when you were born?" and "how many days till your birthday?" and so on, but we don't do very much maths wise, unless you count recording results of tests etc and reciting times tables. She does do education city and workbooks though, at around year two levels, but obviously we could have missed something out.

I think maybe DD needs to do some longer stretches of handwriting - she tends to try to avoid doing more than about three sentences, and often her letters aren't very well formed or are backwards etc. She loves drawing though.

google number squares and number lines.

Here you are resources.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/maths/

Can she use a number line?

Not a problem if she can't as it will be taught in yr1.

Also money, telling the time (o clock, quarter past/to and half past) are taught IIRC (as DS is now in yr3).

Number bonds to 10 (ie 6+4) etc...

Doubling numbers and counting in 2s, 5s etc. this is all stuff that will be taught in yr1 btw not what your child will be expected to necessarily do already.

number lines
adding and subtracting, some multiplication/division

when reading, punctuation - speech marks, !, ?, commas
Plots and motivations i stories - why things happen, why characters say what they do, what happens next? Get her to tell you the plot of a story she's just read
Spelling tests

Independence skills - dressing, undressing, coat on and off, toileting, getting on with people, sitting and listening, turn taking etc.

There is quite a wide range of ability still in yr 1. My DS is in yr 1 and doesn't write stories yet. He is good at telling them verbally though. He is pretty good at maths and likes solving number problems. He doesn't read much but does a lot of negotiation to try and get out of it. I am not concerned about his ability to negotiate, argue a point etc so I am not concerned about his ability. He'll get there.

There are children in his class who have come from countries where they wouldn't have started school yet so his teacher is differentiating a fair bit, like most I suppose.

She will be fine, don't worry. My DS came from a school with a much smaller class size than his new one (he has been there less than a term) and he does find it noisier. I expect your DD might notice the noise! It might be worth thinking about how the day is structured and the terms they use for things like carpet time, so she knows what they are?

What do you mean by using a number line? She can count ahead and back on one - she has the option of using a ruler (well, the numbers on one, as a numberline), her fingers, buttons or the cuisinaire blocks when I want her to use some kind of tool to do her maths. I've not overly pushed on using one or another, or doing work just in her head, although she is slowly grasping that. What should I be doing with her on a number line?

Again, with money, to what level would she need to know it? She can recognise coins, add them up and give change, but she does find it a struggle sometimes and sometimes ends up peering at the coin for a while - I've been doing a kind of game where I hand her a coin and she has to name it quickly but she finds that very difficult.

Number bonds definitely needs work.

She can do 1, 2, 5 and 10 times tables, we have been working on 3 and 4 but she isn't quite grasping them yet.

She has a watch and can sometimes tell the time, but does struggle sometimes if she isn't expecting to be asked and will still ask me the time rather than look herself.

One of the reasons we took her out of school was that she hated all the noises and smells, wasn't integrating with the other kids (but she can do it in smaller groups like HE classes, rainbows etc) and was having toileting issues (which is still a weak skill for her, not through lack of trying)

I'm hoping that if the academic side is good for her, it will help her get used to the overwhelming sensory side of things - we do have quite a quiet house as I don't like more than one sound at the same time either so we never have the tv on unless we are sat looking at it, only have one instrument being practiced at once, etc. She does cope out and about though - most days we go to group actvitites and go to big museums etc twice a week too. They are a lot more quiet than when the schoolkids are there though, obviously.

She is very good at following rules if they are clear and specific, and in fact is more likely to get upset by other children not following the rules - this has been known to make her panic and cry, which would be an issue in school, so I need to get her used to that.

Terms and phrases is a very good point - I will ask the school about those and we can start to casually use them.

A number line (at a basic level) will have a line with numbers 1-10 drawn on it and the child will be asked to do 4+4 for example....

So they need to know they start at the number 4 and do 4 "hops" to get to 8. They then count from the number they were on and add on the hops to get the answer. This works in subtraction too.

Number lines are important as they use them a lot (DS uses one in yr3 for harder division problems).

Money wise - she sounds fine, there will be kids who cannot do what she does.

I read with yr1 kids in my DC school and a lot of them ate still at a basic level.

Yes, to spelling tests. They start in yr1 (but generally have a common sound in them ie/igh/i-e)

Why does she have to go back to school? (If you don't mind me asking.)

Me and her dad have split up, and we have moved towns, into a street with a school on. With all the splitting up and moving, she has had a couple of months where I haven't been able to do as much with her as I would have liked, especially on the social side, so we are thinking she should try the school at the end of the street.

If it suits, great, she can stay there until either we decide to HE again for whatever reason or she gets too old to go. If it doesn't suit, she will have met local children and made some friends, and we will be more settled and able to go back to doing more child focused HE things. So it is win win really.

I'll miss her terribly, and she won't be able to do nearly as much stuff, but I'm sure there will be different fun stuff for her to do at school.

It will also give me a chance to catch up with my work and study if I also put DD2 in nursery for a few hours a week. (We've always used nurseries as they are much more informal and you can send a child part time - school is too all or nothing really)

It might be worth seeing if there is a local brownies/rainbows group she can join too...

It sounds like you have done a fab job of HE your DD and she will do well (fingers x)..

Well, in practical terms I think your daughter is quite well prepared. You might find it easier to home-tutor your daughter alongside school than a lot of parents do, because your daughter is used to being taught by you. I've heard of so many children rejecting their parents' advice because they're not the teacher.

From what you have said it sounds like she has learned lots being HE with you. I really don't think you need to worry about her being behind, though there may be gaps in what school has covered but she will have done more than children in school on some others.

Ability within the class will vary a lot so they will be able to tweak her work to suit her.

If you feel she still has issues with sensory stuff it may be worth meeting up with the SENCO before she starts at the school to discuss how they can support her best? Rather than waiting until she starts and having problems crop up?

I think she sounds not dissimilar in terms of what she can do to my daughter (she is also in Y1 and is at the higher end of her class in terms of attainment). The only thing where she sounds like she might need some more practice is writing. However, there will be lots of children in Y1 who aren't writing more than a few short sentences and plenty more who haven't necessarily got letter formation down pat yet so I don't think she will be unusual. And she will have lots of opportunities to write at school so I am sure she will get on fine.

My DD also hates noise and worries about people not doing what they are meant to, and her school have really worked with her to help her not be so worried by eg the chaos of the lunch hall. It would probably be worth mentioning this kind of thing to her class teacher before she starts if you can.

I have a daughter in Y1, and honestly think you don't need to worry about the academic side of things at all. There is a huge variety of abilities, but only a few of the children are working at Y2 levels on anything - so I would bet your dd will be one of the more advanced children in that respect.

If the school is one with an ethos of good pastoral care, building a good relationship with teachers/TAs etc so they can get to know your dd and her specific areas of sensitivity/need would be great - if they know she's going to need time and support to make the shift to school education, they should support her through it.

Wishing you well, she sounds like a very able little girl and you sound like a lovely Mum. And great from me that she knows how to learn from her Mum - you won't have the battles with homework!