Five to seven year olds can say far more than they can write. The best Key Stage 1 lessons here use technology to close that gap.
Year 1 make new-animal versions of Handa's Surprise in Book Creator and read every page aloud. Year 2 groups retell The Gruffalo in Seesaw voice notes and check the sequence. Year 2 write fruit kebab instructions with step photos and share them with families.
Simple sorting and matching tasks suit this age too, and many are honest Interactive Replace: naming the material of twelve classroom objects in a picture quiz, or dragging animals into woodland, pond, ocean and desert. When the teacher regroups children from the live responses, as with Year 2 placing numbers on a Seesaw number line, the same kind of task becomes Interactive Amplify.
One lesson reaches well beyond the classroom: Year 2 compare today's playground weather with a partner class in Nairobi on a live call.
Art
The teacher zooms slowly into The Starry Night on Google Arts & Culture so the class can see the swirls and thick dabs of paint, before children practise the same marks with oil pastels.
Computing
Each child programs their own ScratchJr version of Aesop's race, setting speeds and a sleep for the hare, then tests and debugs it until the tortoise crosses the line first.
English
Each child writes and draws their own four-page version of Eileen Browne's Handa's Surprise with new animals and fruits, then records themselves reading every page and listens back to fix missing words.
Groups write a sentence describing the forest that grows in Max's bedroom in Where the Wild Things Are, post it to a private class Padlet on the board, then improve it after the class compares every sentence.
Groups drag six pictures onto the digraph they hear (ch, sh, th, ng, ai or ee) in a Seesaw activity, and the teacher projects contrasting responses.
Groups of Kindergarten children post words with the /ai/ sound to a class Padlet on the board, and the teacher sorts them by spelling as they arrive.
Small groups record a turn-by-turn spoken retelling of The Gruffalo in Seesaw, then the class plays two back against a picture story map to check the order and spot missing events.
Geography
After walking the classroom, each child draws a bird's-eye map of it in Microsoft Paint with rectangles for tables and a key for the door, windows, sink and book corner, and the printed maps are used in a hunt next lesson.
On a January morning, Grade 1 read the playground thermometer at the same moment as a partner class in Nairobi, then compare readings, clothes and questions on a staff-hosted Teams call.
History
After hearing extracts from Samuel Pepys's diary, each child types their own one-page diary entry as a Londoner on 2 September 1666 in Book Creator, and the pages are printed for the Great Fire display.
Maths
Teams of three answer ten picture questions on one more and one less in a teacher-run Kahoot, and the teacher stops the game to re-teach counting back when the class splits on 'one less than 20'.
Pairs play the first level of PhET's Fraction Matcher, saying why two cards match before they press Check, and use the smiley face or the number line to decide their next move.
Children drag six two-digit numbers onto a 0 to 100 line in a Seesaw activity and record why 47 goes where it does, while the teacher watches responses arrive and pulls a group for a Dienes re-teach.
Music
The teacher plays a swanee whistle, chime bars and a drum into Chrome Music Lab's Spectrogram, and the class watches the sounds appear on the board as rising, falling and smudged shapes.
PE
Before practising underarm throws at hoops, children watch a short coaching clip at half speed on the hall screen, paused at step, swing, release and follow-through, and hold each position as a statue.
RE
The teacher tells the parable of the lost sheep from Luke 15 using eight illustrated slides, and the class then talks about how the shepherd felt and why the story matters to Christians.
Science
Children open the teacher's Book Creator template and drag four word labels onto a photo of a sunflower, drawing a line from each label to the part, after pulling up a real sunflower in the school garden.
After handling real objects, pairs answer a twelve-question Microsoft Forms quiz, choosing wood, metal, plastic, glass or fabric for photos of classroom objects, and the teacher reads the answers after school.
Groups drag twelve animal pictures into four habitat zones on their own copy of a Microsoft Whiteboard board, adding a sticky note that gives one reason each animal is suited to where it lives.
Lessons that look Passive Replace but sit in another
Useful counter-examples when you are checking your own lesson placement on the PICRAT grid.
This page is one of a growing set of PICRAT examples by cell, subject and grade. Page maintained by Andy Perryer.