Foundation stage and Year one

1. Foundation stage and Year one The Great Fire of London

2. Organisation • 2 classes – 3 teachers – 2 job sharing • Each class has reception and Year 1 children • We use a flexible team teaching approach for Literacy and Numeracy • Daily Routines – which teach children to be independent, self-sufficient and feel safe and secure

3. Environment • Purpose built for young children • Encourages and helps children to be independent in self-care and resource selection • Allows children to work in a variety of ways e.g. on floors, tables, in adjacent rooms, outdoors – this enables them to create their own work space

4. The Curriculum • Planning and assessment ensures that each child progresses at an appropriate and acceptable rate. • Children are introduced into a safe and secure environment • They become socially integrated because of the mix of ages and abilities. They learn from and with other children. • Through their practical experiences they develop social skills and learning skills through play, investigation and exploration

5. The Outdoors • Good use is made of the Outdoor Environment, which includes a pond, sand pit and bikes. • There is a wet weather kit available which allows daily access for all children. • Children have been on walks and collected sticks to create a journey stick so that they can recall and talk about their journey. • Digital pictures have been taken on a digital walk which allows the children to use ICT for a specific purpose.

6. The Fire of London • Combined teaching about the subject with practical experiences which allowed the children to ‘feel’ and ‘imagine’ what it may have been like to be alive when the Fire of London happened. • The children baked bread; made houses, pretended to be fire men without modern equipment, worked together to put out the fire. • This topic or theme allowed the children to develop empathy and improve their listening, talking, sharing, turn-taking, independence and learning skills in a thoroughly enjoyable and interactive way.

7. We built London.

11. We set up a bakery.

14. We created the burning houses.

19. We tried to imagine what it would be like to put out the fire without a fire brigade.