HELP AT HOME

This page is being designed to give you possible ideas to help your child learn. 

If you want to see your child's curriculum go to Parents on the homepage and click on 'New Curriculum Parent Information Booklets'.

 Parent Workshops

It's been lovely to see so many parents attending our workshops over time. Please let school know if you would like further workshops.

Click here to see the Key Stage 1 Maths Power Point presentation.

Click here to see the Key Stage 2 Maths Power Point presentation.

Click here to see the handout from the Maths Workshops.

Click here to see the Grammar Power Point Presentation

Click here to see the Phonics Power Point presentation

Number Skills

You can help your child improve their number skills by asking them sums and helping them learn answers. Strong number skills help them quickly work out answers. Here are a few ideas.

1. 1. Number Bonds to 10 and 20 and Partners to 10

Does your child know their number bonds up to 10 and 20. This means any combination of adding and subtracting up to 10 and then up to 20. This is important for building up basic number skills and it is beneficial to be able to instantly recall them. You can easily do this at any time, for example, shopping, in the car, walking. You can do it for as little or as long a time as you wish. If you have an older child (year 3 plus) who does not know these off by heart then it would be beneficial to help them learn these number bonds. It is not uncommon to see an older child do much more complicated maths but then get a number bond like 17 - 9 wrong in their answer. Also practise these calculations with missing numbers to ensure that your child is becoming increasingly fluent.

 Partners to 10 , for example, 1 + 9,      2 + 8,      3 +7,      4 +6,      5 + 5

             Have fun playing card games, adding up numbers, playing dominoes or adding up dice.

  2. Counting On Key Stage 1 children count on in groups of numbers, for example, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12. How far can they go ? 

Can Key Stage 2 children count on in numbers 3 to 9 from any number. How far can they go?

  3.Doubling and Halving Numbers 

It starts with doubling and halving numbers to 10, then 20, and then up to 100. This is another area that can be practised quickly and easily at any time. How well can your child double and halve numbers?

4. Can your child add 2 digit numbers mentally by splitting up the tens and units? This is a good skill to be able to do completely in their head.(maths)

 5. Instant Recall of Times Tables and Division Tables

By the end of year 4 children are expected to know all times tables up to the 12 times table. They will learn times tables at school but they are likely to learn them more quickly and thoroughly if they work on them at home. School has purchased Times Tables Rock Stars to help this and achievements are celebrated in Star of the Week.

Written Calculations

You can see the written calculations for each year group on our website if you go to

'Our Curriculum' on the home web page and then

'Calculations by Year Group'. 

This will enable you to download lots of examples of the calculations taught in each year group in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

Reading

Reading needs our children to master the key skills of decoding and comprehension. 

Decoding means that a reader can transfer the letters they read on a page into the correct sounds and words. Children will learn to read through practising phonics and learning how different sounds and rules change when put together.

Comprehension refers to the understanding of the words and their meaning in the context of the text. Often people will think their child is reading very well because they are decoding well. If they are not understanding the text then their comprehension is not good in relation to that particular text.

How can you help?

Encourage your child to read for 10 minutes every day.

In key stage 1 children learn to read through phonics and will bring books home which relate to the phonics sounds they are learning that week in class. These books will need to be re-read in order to develop a deeply embedded knowledge of the sounds.

Check your child's comprehension ; ask your child to retell the events of the page, ask questions about the text, think about comprehension to make sure that your child is working on all parts of reading and not just the decoding.

Make choosing books from the library or bookshops really special. Children with these experiences are probably the ones racing to our school library to find the latest David Walliams book or read the latest book in an exciting series four or five years later when they are in year 5 and 6 and loving reading.

Mention the characters at other times of the day or pretend to be one of the characters. If your young child is laughing at you doing this then you are furthering their interest in reading.

Look at recommended reading lists or tips from libraries and reading websites. They will often have great ideas about books or general reading suggestions.

Some children may be interested in non-fiction texts such as magazines and newspapers, encourage this reading too.

Grammar

How to help at home

If you need some helpful reminders about different grammar, punctuation and spelling rules so you can help your child at home please access 'Mr Horsfall’s Horrible Book of Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling' here.

Here are some other examples of activities that you can do with your child that might be fun.

Homophone (same sound words with different meanings)- Have fun telling each other homophones at any time. Your child may enjoy suddenly thinking that sea and see, tea and tee, sail and sale etc  have the same sound but mean different things. If they have this dialogue with you whenever they think of one then they are much more likely to remember.

Noun - A possible way to start a child's understanding of nouns is to explain that everything that they can see and touch in the world is a noun. Wherever they are and whatever they look at are nouns. Your child could walk around touching nouns.

Verb- The children usually love acting. The verb is a command so you could shout at a verb for them to act out. For example, David walks, David sings, David crawls, David dances (David does the action each time and you remind him he is learning verbs).

Adjective- You could pick a noun and ask them for adjectives to describe it. This is also very good for their writing. Below are some examples.

Adjective      Noun

  gigantic      house

  horrible      teacher

  hungry       lion

  grumpy     daddy

  lovely        mummy

PUNCTUATION

.      ,       !      ?       :      ;      "

Think about the  following speech from a character.

                    "I am here.

             "I..I....a..am ..h..h..he..here.

                     "I am here!

Should the second set of speech marks go after the full stop or before?

Do you think the punctuation used will change the way the reader reads the sentence?

Lots of people have their own views on punctuation. Here are a few discussion points or issues for you to think about. These may be of use during homework activities or if you are teaching your child about punctuation.

Writing Punctuation

The children are learning what punctuation marks mean from an early age. In Key Stage 1 children learn about different types of sentences and how to use appropriate punctuation; statements, questions, exclamatory sentences and commands. They also use apostrophes for contraction and possession and commas in lists. As the children continue through Key Stage 2, they develop and increasing range of punctuation becoming familiar with the inverted comma (speech mark), commas, semi-colons and colons. 

How to help at home

Encourage children to use punctuation and understand the meaning of it when reading. Talk about the importance of it to the reader.

Encourage children to proof read  and edit their writing, reading as if they are the reader.

Remind children that punctuation organises their writing.

Remind children that punctuation impacts on the story and how characters do things.

Discuss how punctuation helps the reader and punctuating a few sentences may help your child. In addition, discussing missed punctuation and encouraging a checking habit may aid progress in this area.

If a child is using punctuation to impact on the reader then are less likely to forget it when they write the first time.