Mixed Age Planning - Introduction

Mixed age planning is now available in the Renewed Framework.

 

There are many small primary schools in East Sussex that have mixed age classes.

We have put together planning for a variety of age group patterns, YR/1, Y1/2, Y2/3,Y3/4, Y4/5 and Y5/6. Inevitably, we will not have covered every possible pattern, but we hope these ideas may help you. They are not meant to be definitive planning proformas, just examples.

The NLS framework is based on two year cycles so that objectives can be closely linked between age groups. It may be that teachers will wish to operate a two year rolling programme or repeat a medium term plan for two years using different texts and differentiating tasks. We have also provided an exemplar of a rolling programme model in this document.

The word level objectives, especially those for phonics and spelling, are ordered in systematic steps and it is vital that every child makes this progression. It may mean dividing whole class teaching times between the two main groups in the class or using an additional adult to support differing ability groups. For this reason we do not include the word level objectives in the exemplar planning unless they are linked to text or sentence work.


We are grateful to two of our Leading Literacy Teachers, Sylvia Berhane and Barbara Gill who both contributed their mixed age planning ideas.