Learning and Fun for Key Stage 1

After the success of their Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 3 resources – with lessons downloaded more than 1000 times – the Platform team celebrated the new academic year with the launch of six new resources for Key Stage 1.

In the last academic year, members of the Platform team delivered in-school education sessions to over 1600 students across the Early Years Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1, taking almost 1000 of those children on follow-up train trips.

In light of the team’s engagement with this age group, and following requests from teachers, Learning Development Officers from Platform spent the summer holidays working hard to develop an online offer that could complement their in-person package.

Will Grace Grey Catch the Train?

With the focus of much of the Early Years Foundation Stage being on the teaching of phonics, the team felt it was important to develop a resource that could be utilised in a phonics’ lesson (with a focus on – you guessed it – trains).

In this lesson, students are introduced to mischievous rabbit – Grace – who doesn’t quite seem to understand that she can’t be late, because the train won’t wait!

With this lesson focusing on long and short ‘a’ sounds, there are now plans to develop further resources, in this style, featuring other sounds.

Marvellous Maths

Two other resources released as part of the Key Stage 1 launch were Maths focused: Train Splitters and My Name’s Bond…Number Bond.

With a heavy emphasis on using train-themed pictorial representations to consolidate understanding of subtraction facts and number bonds for the numbers 0 to 20.

PSHE and Humanities

Also released as part of the Key Stage 1 launch was Words from a Window – a lesson that uses the beauty of views from train windows to develop an understanding of expanded noun phrases; Rail Trailblazers, a PSHE lesson which explores the concept of empathy through the stories of marginalised individuals who changed the rail industry; and Holiday Histories, which helps students explore changes in the British seaside from Victorian times to now.

Soo Jackson – Learning Development Officer at Platform – said, “Younger children are welcomed aboard with some tailor-made train-themed resources to motivate them in their learning.  They can revise phonics with Grace Grey the naughty rabbit or solve mathematical puzzles which would equip them for a job in train scheduling in later life!

They can explore the issues of equality and discrimination with some real train drivers, or take a trip on a train and let their imagination go wild as they travel through the countryside!”