Supporting Learning at Home

How can you support your child’s learning?

You can use the guides on this page to support your child to learn more at home.  Don’t forget to read the other sections here, especially Homework (with activities that provide an opportunity to participate in your child’s learning) and Our Curriculum which tells you what the children will be learning.  Another useful tool to use is our Calculation Policies, where you can see the ways we calculate, whether that be add, subtract, multiply or divide.

Probably the easiest way to help your child is to read each day. Our page will provide lots of activities to make reading an even more enjoyable and active experience for all. Children should be encouraged to read aloud and read on their own, but being read to is really important too, so don’t overlook the bedtime story!

With just four points to remember, our Handwriting Guide is easy to follow and a great way to support your child. Children have told us that with better handwriting they feel more confident and proud of their learning!

Parents often say they are less confident about supporting their child with Maths. The first rule is: don’t suggest that Maths is less important than English! Mental calculations, estimating, measuring and telling the time are important skills we use very day. Beware of saying in front of your child that you weren’t good at Maths at school – children might perceive this as you saying it’s OK to have these low expectations. Perhaps the best place to start supporting Maths is our Calculations Policies: Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication and Division where you can see methods of carrying out addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

For younger children beginning to learn to read and write, we use a synthetic phonics programme called Letters and Sounds alongside the actions of Jolly Phonics.  At home, encourage your child to listen and say sounds:

• Play ‘What do we have in here?’ Put some toys or objects in a bag and pull one out at a time. Emphasise the first sound of the name of the toy or object by repeating it, for example, ‘c c c c – car’, ‘b b b b – box’, ‘ch ch ch ch – chip’.
• Say: ‘A tall tin of tomatoes!’ ‘Tommy, the ticklish teddy!’ ‘A lovely little lemon!’ This is called alliteration. Use names, for example, ‘Gurpreet gets the giggles’, ‘Milo makes music’, ‘Naheema’s nose’.
• Teach them ‘Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers’.
• Try to avoid the ‘uh’ sound you might have learnt to say for sounds like ‘b’, ‘c’, ‘d’ – say the ‘purest’ sound you can (a ‘short’ ‘b’ rather than ‘buh’, a long ‘mmm’ rather than ‘muh’) – ask us if you’re unsure.