Getting Yr1 next year for 1st time in many years...what do I need?!

[Caz10]

Overjoyed to be moving from Yr6 but also overwhelmed!!

I am having a mental block about how to set up an infant classroom, what I will need etc.

Could any kind R/Yr1/Yr2 teachers give me their top tips?!

Take photos of all the children before they leave for the summer holidays. Use the photos with names for:

Pegs
Special Helper display
Drawers
Register on interactive whiteboard

What equipment is already there?

I always seem to need loads of plastic pots for counters, number cards etc. I always buy the Ikea children's bowls which come in a set of 6 for £1.00

Take photographs of the contents of every drawer and stick it on the outside.

Take a photo of the way you want each area of the classroom to look so that when children are tidying up, they know what it should look like.

Think about how you want to store pencils, rubbers, alphabet cards etc.

Think about how/where you want to store water bottles.

Write names on the children's books and storage files.

Put new paper up on all display boards.

What are your whole class rewards systems? Do you need to prepare anything for them?

There's loads more, but I'll be back later.

Am a TA in Wales so this may be a bit different than England.
Ensure that you have areas set up in class ie a writing area, a maths area, finding out area, creative area ect.

We have in our year 1 class prop boxes for outdoor writing, maths etc that we take outside for outdoor lessons.

We don't have many tables as lots of what we do is practical and hands on so we have less sitting and writing than we did even 3 years ago.

In our class we have outdoor suits and wellies which need storage.

All recourses need labeling so the children can get them out.

Oooh fabulous, keep it coming! Register on IWB sounds good, how do you do that?

This is going to be such a culture shock coming from Yr6, active/outdoor learning hadn't been invented when I was last in infants! Will have to restrain myself from telling them to sit down all the time!

What do you have? Smartboard or Promethean?

A sense of humour! My friend did exactly the same move and one morning early on in September said to her year1 class. " Come on everyone, let's make a circle." and the children all looked vague and bemused!! Then she realised how far down shehad come!!

A word wall may be of use to you with tricky words on which they can take of and use when writing. With my lower ability group that I have I have a laminated A3 sheet with detatchable velcrod words on which I use with mine as I found that they could not remember the word they wanted by the time they put their pencil down, got up from their chair, have a chat on the way and then finally look on the word wall.

We use A4 and A5 white boards a lot in class.

We also have a time table and a weather chart that we look at daily.

This website www.communication4all.co.uk has some nice IWB resources including registration.
TES online has some too.

Promethean board! Active Primary software.

What great ideas, thank you (and any more gratefully received)!

RatherBeOnThePiste that will SO be me - I haven't liked Yr6 much at all, but it is easier to a certain extent.

Will have a look on that website SaliMali1 thank you.

Caz - I suspect that I have a memory stick full of promethean resources I created about 5 yrs ago when I had a mixed Reception/Year 1 class. If you send me a memory stick, I'll copy them over for you. There's no point me trying to e-mail them to you because some of the files are huge.

There's probably a newer version of ActivPrimary, but I presume it will still be compatible with resources created in an older version.

Have you got CAT? CAT me and I'll give you my address.

Patience

Make sure you know exactly what you're doing with phonics. Do you run a scheme? However, if you use Letters and Sounds, make sure you get a copy of the current teacher's plans!

Do you do a transition term from YR to Y1, with child-initiated learning and outside play?

Even if there is no transition term in place, make sure you do a percentage of your curriculum outside each week, as the children will be used to this, and will enjoy themselves more.

Massive apologies LittleFish, I am moving house atm and everything is rather chaotic! Pen drive would be AMAZING.

I have CAT and will get in touch asap after we have moved later this week.

Hope the move goes well. I'll search through my school stuff for my Yr 1 promethean stuff and wait to hear from you.