Two years ago we had a “ Eureka” moment of integrating Nursery and Primary one to try to better meet the needs of individual learners by better customising their learning styles. The catalyst was work we were doing with our Nursery and P1 children developing thinking skills. We found that the Nursery children were better at this than the P1s. We asked ourselves why. After discussion we felt this was partially because the working style in a traditional P1 class was not conducive to developing these skills. We decided that Nursery style active learning should come to P1! The challenge was persuading parents. First we developed our 1nery - an integrated Nursery and P1. Although often challenging, the new approach paid dividends. The four principles of CfE were achieved by staff and children to a much higher degree and everyone was happy, including our very discerning parents. The next step was to integrate the 1nery concept with P2. A year later everyone involved is even more enthused, excited and thoroughly convinced by the initiative. Most of all the children are happy and achieving to a much higher degree. This workshop will explore what we did, the challenges and the rewards. | 