Are there any special considerations for teaching year 1 students?

Meeting emotional and physical needs

Year 1 teachers need to be mindful that Year 1 students (or those aged 4-7), being young as they are, will need more emotional help as well as support than older learners. Give them lots of love and care and create a happy and supportive environment for them. 

Also, factor in regular breaks during teaching time. You can use breaktime to allow your little learners to play indoors or outdoors (depending on the facilities), as well as allowing them to have nutritious snacks and drinks. This will keep them focused for learning to the best of their abilites during teaching time.

Making learning fun and engaging

Young children have a much shorter attention span and can get bored very quickly. You will need to make your lessons, fun, enagaging and interesting for them. Vary the activities that you use to teach the textbook, and deliver the curriculum using interactive and dynamic teaching methods. 

Use the workbooks, as we have designed each activity to be fun, really hands-on as well as a good educational complement to the textbook Islamic studies lessons (you can read how to use the workbook effectively, here). 

You can also use some of the following ideas:

• You can use the storyboards from the workbooks and copy them into a large format to use in class as learning aids. 
• Use storytelling as a method to teach some of the lessons. You can also incorporate role-plays to get children to retell stories and/or get them to work in groups and act out parts (as follow on activities).  For example. some children can be the whale while you teach the the Story of Yūnus (as). Give it a try and see how much they enjoy this!
• You can use nashīds combined with actions as a way to teach some lessons. You'll find we have included some in the Year 1 textbook to get you started. 

The Schemes of Work for Year 1  provide loads more ideas for all the chapters in the textbook. Also, if you want to learn more skills, you can attend our training sessions where we run specific workshops for those who teach young learners. 

Finally, do not forget to make sincere duʿāʾ for all your students and treat them with kindness and care!