Getting Ready for September: Starting Year 1 and the Move into KS1

Of all the August/September transitions in primary school, the move into Year 1 is the one that catches most parents off guard. Starting nursery is an emotional milestone, but starting Reception feels like a significant step. The shift from Reception into Year 1 is where the structure of education changes most dramatically, and it is the transition that children and parents are often least prepared for.

In Reception, children learn primarily through play. The Early Years Foundation Stage framework, which governs learning from birth to the end of Reception, places play at the centre of everything. Children lead their own learning for large parts of the day, and the classroom is designed to support exploration and discovery alongside adult-guided activities.

Year 1 is different. It's the first year of Key Stage 1, and it brings a statutory national curriculum, structured lessons, formal teaching of reading, writing and mathematics, and significantly less time for child-initiated play. For many children, the shift feels abrupt, and for parents who have not been told what to expect, it can come as a surprise.

This is the third article in our Getting Ready for September series. You can read the earlier articles here: Part 1: Getting toddlers ready for nursery and Part 2: Getting ready for Reception year.

What changes in Year 1

The most significant change is the move from the EYFS to the national curriculum. In Reception, teachers work towards seventeen Early Learning Goals assessed at the end of the year. In Year 1, children begin working towards specific attainment targets in English, maths, science and other subjects, taught through structured lessons rather than play-based exploration.

The school day feels different too. There is more sitting, more listening, more writing and more formal instruction, which is a big change for kids. The continuous provision that characterises a Reception classroom, the areas of the room children can move between freely, choosing their own activities, is largely absent in Year 1. Children are expected to sustain attention for longer periods and produce written work in a way that Reception doesn't require.

This isn't a criticism of how Year 1 is structured at all, it's simply the reality of what children encounter, and being realistic about it is more useful than being caught off guard.

The Year 1 phonics screening check

One of the most significant milestones of Year 1 is the phonics screening check, which takes place in June. Every child in Year 1 in England sits this check, which involves reading forty words aloud to their teacher: twenty real words and twenty pseudo-words, which are made-up words that test whether a child can apply phonics knowledge to decode unfamiliar combinations of letters.

The check is not a pass or fail in the traditional sense. Children who do not meet the expected standard re-sit it in Year 2. But it's a meaningful assessment that gives schools and parents a clear picture of where a child's phonics knowledge stands, and teachers are obviously aware of it from the beginning of the year.

Parents don't need to prepare children for the phonics check directly. What matters is that children continue to read regularly at home throughout Year 1, and that phonics knowledge is kept active through daily exposure to letters and words in their environment. The check assesses what children have learned through the year, not what they can cram in June, and at such a young age it's a bad idea to put 'exam pressure' on them.

What Year 1 covers

In English, Year 1 builds systematically on the phonics foundation laid in Reception. Children continue their phonics programme, learn to read and write simple sentences, begin to punctuate their writing with capital letters and full stops, and develop their vocabulary and comprehension through reading aloud and being read to.

In maths, the Year 1 curriculum covers counting, reading and writing numbers to 100, addition and subtraction within 20, simple multiplication and division concepts, place value, measurement, geometry and telling the time to the hour and half past. It's a substantial curriculum for a five and six year old, and the pace is brisk by comparison with Reception.

Science in Year 1 covers everyday materials, plants, animals including humans, and seasonal changes. History, geography, art, design technology, music and physical education are also taught, though with less curriculum prescription than English and maths.

Practical preparation for starting Year 1

The most useful things you can do this summer are the same ones that apply to any September transition: establish good routines, read every day, and keep learning present in everyday life without making it feel like school.

Keep reading every day. This is the single most important thing. Children who read regularly at home throughout Year 1 make significantly faster progress than those who only read at school. It doesn't need to be long, just ten to fifteen minutes a day of reading together, or a child reading aloud to a parent, makes a measurable difference over the course of a year.

Keep numbers present. Year 1 maths moves quickly, and children who arrive with a confident feel for numbers to twenty have a meaningful head start. This doesn't mean drilling number facts at the kitchen table, it just means keeping numbers visible and accessible in daily life so that the concepts feel familiar when children encounter them in the classroom.

Introduce telling the time. Telling the time to the hour and half past is a Year 1 objective, and it's one that really benefits from early and repeated exposure. A child who has been casually aware of clock faces throughout the summer will engage with this topic in class with far more confidence than one who encounters it for the first time in October.

Maintain a consistent bedtime routine. Year 1 is tiring. The increase in structured learning, sitting and sustained concentration takes adjustment, and a child who's well rested manages it considerably better than one who isn't. A consistent, early bedtime is not a small thing at this age.

Products that support Year 1 learning

The products most relevant to Year 1 are those that keep the curriculum's core topics present in a child's daily environment without any deliberate teaching effort.

Our Alphabet Placemat and Alphabet Poster are designed with Year 1 in mind in two specific ways. First, the images used alongside each letter are phonetically correct: the picture next to each letter represents a word that uses that letter's sound rather than its name, which aligns with how phonics is taught in school. Second, the letters are written in the style children are taught to form them in the classroom. Both of these details matter. A child who practices letter formation at home using a different style to the one their school teaches, can develop habits that need to be unpicked later. Our alphabet products reinforce what's happening in the classroom rather than working against it.

For numbers, our Numbers 1 to 20 Placemat and Numbers 1 to 20 Poster are the natural starting point for Year 1. As the year progresses, children will work with numbers up to 100. Our Numbers 1 to 100 Placemat, Numbers 1 to 100 Poster and Numbers 1 to 100 Flash Cards are all colour-coordinated and use the written word alongside each numeral. They work well when introduced mid-year as children's confidence with larger numbers grows, rather than on day one of September.

Our Number Bonds Placemat and Number Bonds Poster support one of the key Year 1 maths objectives: knowing number bonds to ten fluently. Children who can recall these automatically rather than working them out each time find addition and subtraction significantly easier as the curriculum progresses.

And for telling the time, our Telling the Time Placemat and Telling the Time Poster are both directly relevant to the Year 1 curriculum and work best introduced before or at the start of the school year, so that clock faces feel familiar when they appear in maths lessons.

The emotional side

Children who have settled happily into Reception sometimes find the start of Year 1 harder than their parents expect. They know the school, they know the building, they may know their teacher, but the change in how the day feels (more structured, less free, more demanding) can take adjustment even for children who appear confident.

Watch for signs of tiredness in the first half term, teachers are very used to it! Year 1 is genuinely more demanding than Reception, and fatigue at the end of the school day is a normal response to a significant increase in cognitive load. Earlier bedtimes, quieter after-school time and less pressure to do activities in the evenings all help.

If your child talks about finding school hard, listen specifically rather than reassuring generally. Is it a particular lesson? A friendship issue? The length of the day? Specific concerns are much easier to address, with the teacher or at home, than a vague sense that school is difficult.

What to do this summer

Read every day. Keep numbers and letters in the environment. Introduce clock faces casually, pointing out the time in conversation rather than sitting down to teach it. Maintain a good bedtime routine, and spend plenty of time playing freely, because Year 1 will ask more of your child than Reception did, and a summer of unstructured play is equally useful for their development, as well as being fun.

Our article on keeping children entertained this summer has ideas that work well for this age group, with learning woven in naturally.

Coming up in this series

You can read more about what children learn across Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 in our plain English guide to KS1 and KS2.

Browse the products mentioned in this article at educational placemats and educational posters.