[UPBEAT INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC]
Hello and welcome to Little Learners. In today's video I wanted to talk about transition from
Reception to Year One. I've had this video requested by quite a few of you so I thought
it would be a good time to sit down and talk about it. Before we get started don't forget to
click that like button if you find the video helpful as it really helps out the channel
and subscribe if you want to see more videos like this one.
So I have mainly done the transition from Reception to Year One from the Reception side
so I will be talking lots about what you can do in Reception but also what you can do on the Year One
end to help that transition. It's really important that Reception teachers and Year One teachers work
together for this transition to be as seamless as possible. So why is it so important to think
about the transition from Reception to Year One? For many children they will just be moving to
a different classroom within the same school and so it doesn't seem like that big of a deal,
but it's really important to remember that going from Reception to Year One
means moving from the Early Years Foundation Stage framework to the National Curriculum. These are two
very different things. As children move into Year One they will no longer be focusing on areas such
as Personal, Social and Emotional development, Roleplay, Being Imaginative, of course Year One teachers
encourage all of these skills in their children but they do have to follow the national curriculum.
The way children learn in Year One is also very different to a Reception set up, so if you've
seen some of my other videos you'll know that in early years we have quite a free flow environment .
There will be lots of different activities and children are able to choose whatever they want
to do, they have outside learning, inside learning, everything is just free flow and they can do
whatever activity they want. There is also a great deal of learning through play because that is what
early years is really centreed around. Moving on to Year One learning is different in most schools,
children no longer have this free flow learning and it is much more likely that they will be
sitting at tables doing more traditional learning, what you would think a classroom would look like,
children sitting at tables working individually or in groups. Now this isn't to say of course that
all of the really good practice in EYFS is completely lost when children go to Year One
because really good Year One teachers will implement some of this into their teaching
and we will get onto that in a bit. So hopefully you can see that this is quite a big jump and
an adjustment for children so it's important that we tackle the transition period really carefully.
So what can you do to help children with this transition? It's really important that children
get to go and see their new classroom environment before the new year starts, so this might be
children going from their Reception class to their new Year One class, meeting their teacher and
having a little bit of a chat with their teacher and being able to engage in their new classroom
environment. You might want to do that a couple of times so that children get a bit more used
to their new environment. This usually happens as a school-wide thing, so Reception children go and
meet their new Year One teacher in their new classroom, Year One children go to meet their
Year Two teacher in their new classroom, and so on. For children with special educational needs,
children who are quite anxious, or any other children that you might identify who would
benefit from an extra visit. An extra visit is a really good thing to do, you might even want to do
a visit every couple of days, maybe with a teaching assistant just going into the new classroom seeing
their teacher and talking about anything that they are worried about, or just being able to look
around the classroom and really get their bearings. Schools may also want to have a 'meet the teacher
evening' where parents can come and meet the new teacher talk about any concerns they have with
the transition and just to put everyone's minds at rest, really get all of those questions out in
the open that parents will be worrying about all the way through the summer. For children who you
think this transition will be quite difficult for you may also want to start a transition booklet.
This is something that children can put pictures in, so you might want to take photos of them when
they go and meet their new teacher, photos of their new classroom, photos of the teaching assistant and
the teacher that they will have next year, put those in the transition booklet, children can
write or draw in the transition booklet about their new classroom and they can take this home
over the summer to look at to remind them about what they're going into in September. Of course
you can do this with all children in your class if you have the time, but it can be really beneficial
for those children who are a bit more anxious or struggle with transitions. From the teacher's
perspective you want to make sure that Reception and Year One teachers are being collaborative in
this transition. Make sure you're meeting up to not only talk about children's attainment and
what your children's next steps might be, but also about your children's personalities, talk about
the students in a way that shows that you really know them and get across to your Year One teacher
what you really want them to know about these children. And of course for Year One teachers,
ask any questions you might have and write down these really important things that the Reception
teacher is telling you because they will help you in the long run. When children get to Year One
it can be really helpful to have a kind of transitional few weeks or maybe even a half term
where you start off with your classroom environment being a little bit more like a
Reception classroom, so you might have a couple of tables where children can free flow between them
and then some tables where you're doing more traditional group work, also implementing some
outside learning is really good not just because the children are used to having outdoor play
and learning but also because that can really enrich your teaching anyway. Then as the weeks
go on you can start changing your environment a bit more to looking a little bit more like a
traditional Year One classroom. Of course you may find that having an element of early years in your
Year One classroom is really beneficial to you and your children, so do what's best for your class but
I really would say that having this transitional environment is vital to helping children feel
comfortable in their new setting. So what might a Year One classroom look like when you're trying to
implement some of this early years practice? Well you might have a small world play table set up as
well as an activity table that has some kind of phonics on it, some kind of maths play on it, that
children can free flow between. You might also have a sand or water tray just outside your classroom
if you are able to so that children can get some of that outdoor play and then you will also have
your tables that are more traditional learning, so sitting down doing a task that a teacher
has directed them to do, you'll probably also have a role play area which often is only open
at certain times of the day or the week for Year One children but perhaps in the early
stages you might let children have free reign of that area too. On the Reception side of things
to help with the transition into a new environment it can be helpful to
start getting children used to the idea of sitting down at tables and doing directed tasks,
so you might want to start doing that in the last few weeks so that children get used to this way of
learning, of course it's not natural for us to be doing a lot of that in early years and that's fine
but this can really help children understand what learning will be like when they move up to Year
One. I really hope this video has been helpful, if you do have any questions please leave them below
and I will be happy to answer them. Do give this video a like if you found it helpful or useful
as it really helps out the channel and don't forget to subscribe and click the bell
so you never miss a future video. Thank you so much for watching and I will see you next time.
[UPBEAT INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC]