Joy

Welcome to the ‘Classroom of Joy!’

Joy Class is where our Year 1 and 2 children learn and grow.  The value we put on helping one another runs through everything we do and is reinforced by the pastoral work we do on the School Vision and our school values.  These are a priority as we navigate the year together.

In Year 1 English writing is always a focus, concentrating on sentences and punctuation rules which are so important in early writers; Year 2 delve deeper into genres, further developing their stamina as writers. We explore new vocabulary which will form part of our writing toolkit as we move up through the school. Children are exposed to a wide variety of texts in different contexts to build word banks and literary techniques which can then be used effectively in their writing. While Year 2 are writing daily for a number of purposes during their English lessons, Year 1 are much more engaged in the verbal process, working on simple sentence structures and letter formation. 

It is in Joy Class where children continue to learn to read and we place a great emphasis on the daily teaching of phonics and encouraging a love of books which are ever present in our classroom. We use the Little Wandle Systematic Synthetic Programme offering daily phonics, intensive reading sessions across the week and regular assessment and catch up sessions to ensure that "no child is left behind" in their reading journey.

 always, Maths permeates much of what we do and there are many opportunities for us to use our classroom based learning in the outdoors and across the curriculum as a whole. Number work is integral to our learning and we take every opportunity to practice our numbers, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division in a practical way wherever possible.

As the year progresses, children will be exposed to many and varied themes as we explore different aspects of the non-core curriculum in a way that is relevant to them: Music, Drama, Art, Science, History, Geography, Computer Studies, Design Technology and PE all go to form a broad and rich curriculum for some of our youngest children in the school.

Of course, a big part of our learning is outdoors where we focus heavily on learning behaviours as well as transition of classroom based skills in our Forest School curriculum. Use of our fabulous “Classroom of Wonder” is used to compliment learning where appropriate. We are also fortunate enough to have a developing wonderful outdoor space at the front of our classroom, where children can further apply their learning outdoors and initiate their own learning too.

As the needs and learning requirements of our learners change, we have begun integrating Continuous Provision into our daily routines this year; this is aimed at better supporting the transition from the Early Years curriculum into a more formal setting. Activities are more practical and allow time for any missed learning goals to be achieived in line with each individual child's development. 

There is always something exciting happening in Joy Class and we look forward to welcoming you as a volunteer to one of our Forest School sessions or as a Big Heart Helper!

We look forward to seeing you soon.

Mrs Sealy, Mrs Badham, Ms Lewis and the children of Joy Class,