Mixing Year 1 and 2 - I'm a bit worried about it.

[Tinkjon]

From a Reception class of 45 children, DD is one of about 12 who are going to be put into a year 1 and 2 mixed class next year. I have no worries about her academically but I'm not sure how it's going to work socially. DD struggles at playtime anyway so I'm quite worried about her in a class of older children who she doesn't really know(and she's one of the younger ones in Reception). For one thing, 6 new children going into a well-established class where all the other kids have known each other for 2 years - are they going to feel left out, or even worse, be ostracized? How are they going to make friends, surely the friendships will be set from the previous 2 years? Also, is the difference in Year 1 and 2 children markedly different, socially - will they be talking about stuff and playing games that DD won't understand? I suppose all kids are different though, so there must be some on her level, even if they are a year older? And her handwriting is appalling, although spelling is fab - will she be able to keep up with Year 2 work if her writing is so bad? She can easily make up a story and type it out with some pretty good spelling, but she couldn't hand-write more than a short sentence, and you'd barely be able to read it either (backwards S's, P's the wrong way round, one letter 4 times the size of the previous one etc!) Do they do much writing in Year 2? Her teachers know how bad her writing is, so I suppose I just have to trust that it will be ok for her, or they wouldn't have put her in the class.

I would talk to her teacher about all of this, but I'm not supposed to know about it yet

"She can easily make up a story and type it out with some pretty good spelling"

My 7 y.o. DS2 can't!

She'll be absolutely fine- trust me. 12 is a decent number of DCs, enough to ensure 'critical mass'. My DS1 has only ever been in one 'pure' year group out of 5 years (and in the same class as only 4 other DCs from 'R' to 4!). It really isn't an insurmountable divide between the years and a serious advantage she'll have, seeing as with the numbers game your school, like ours, is 'playing', she'll know different DCs in different classes when inevitably they get mixed around in 1/2, then 3/4 etc.

Poor handwriting when coupled with obvious 'talent' elsewhere isn't an indicator of a problem ahead, imo.

My children's school does mixed classes on a fairly regular basis and it's not been an issue with us (although I thought it might be). How big is that class that she is going into? How does the class of 45 work - I am very surprised a class that big has been allowed with the no class under 30 rule. ds did so much better when he moved from a single yr3 class of 35 to a mixed yr 3/4 class of 25. dd had a mixed y1/y2 class for two years (different children) and did just fine both when she was an older and a younger child. The only problem she had was with friendships in the first year, but I think that's because she was mourning her best friend who left after reception, and because there were too many alpha females in that class (of which dd is one, she just likes to find more malleable girls to play with ).

Don't worry that your dd will be expected to work at yr2 level, the yr1 children will still be doing yr1 level work, and will probably be grouped together. You should ask how they decided to do the groups - our school which did mixed groups because the intake was too small (also 45) initially had one mixed class and one straight class per year, and then moved to mixing all the classes (so this year they had three yr1/2 classes and three yr3/4 classes) and although we were all unhappy about this it actually seemed to work much better.

"12 is a decent number of DCs, enough to ensure 'critical mass'."

Oops, I actually meant that these 12 go into 2 classes, so each class will only have 6 children from Reception. Teslagirl, what do you mean by 'playing the numbers game'? Do they have to be seen to have a certain number of children in each class and this is how they do it, or something?

Nooka, I'm not sure how big the classes are. The Re3ception class of 45 is split into two registration groups, each with a different teacher, so I suppose that's how they get around it (though it's still just one class, in reality).

Thanks for the reassurance, both of you!

DS's school has mixed classes, it works surprisingly well IMHO.