As they move into Year One, the start of Key Stage 1, children leave the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum as they did in Hatchlings, Owlets, Owls and Reception and now begin to enjoy more formal, subject specific, lessons.  Children cover all National Curriculum areas including Maths, English, Science, Geography, History, DT with ART, French, Music, Swimming and PE continuing to be taught by specialist senior school teachers. 

The children are still mainly classroom based in Year One and are taught by their own class teacher.  Year One however, also has a full time classroom assistant who can work with the children in small groups either to support or extend them.

In Year One children begin to take work home to complete.  This work, which should only involve 15 minutes work per night, consists of a weekly spelling, times tables and reading.  This reinforces our strong home/school partnership.

The Year One and Two children take part in two assemblies per week; one assembly for Lower School, which is used as a forum to reward hard work, discuss issues and reinforce positive behaviour and a whole school assembly.

Themed days and trips are also part of life in Year One and Two, with popular visits to Marwell Zoo, Weald and Downland museum, Windsor Castle and many more.  

Year Two is the final year of the Lower School department and our aim is to prepare the children for the Prep School.

Phonics

Phonics is taught at the same time for all of our Lower School classes to allow us to vertically group all of our children from Reception to Year Two.  This means that the children are placed and working in very small ability groups at their own individual levels.  The lessons are fast paced, with lots of repetition, sight words, activities and lots more! The children are reassessed in a very friendly way, every 4-6 weeks allowing them to move through the groups and scheme at their own pace.  We are very pleased with our phonics scheme which is producing very happy, confident readers and spellers.