Supporting Your Child

12th November 2019Mrs C Allison

After a successful Y6 Supporting Your Child Evening – a copy of the presentation and information from Wednesday evenings meeting can be found here.

 

Supporting your child at home

12th November 2019Mrs K Shutler

There are many things that parents can do at home to support their children but it is important to find a balance between school learning and extra work at home. The school day is very busy and some children are genuinely tired at the end of a week at school.

The best thing that you can do is to involve your child in ‘real life’ activities – talk to them about what you are doing and ask them to help you. However, we do recognise that some parents are keen to support their child’s learning at home so we have put together a list of ideas and links to websites which may help you to achieve this.

  1. Establish routines for regular practise of key skills, including the following: 
    • Reading together. It’s still really important that your child continues to read aloud to you. The emphasis should be on reading fluently and with expression, understanding more complex plots and broadening their vocabulary as well as building an understanding of how punctuation and grammar are used. There is never an age when this is not an enjoyable and useful way to spend 10 minutes a day
    • Times tables practice. Good times-tables knowledge is vital for quick mental maths calculations and problem solving. Not all children learn times tables in the same way; to support your child’s learning, work out what will make times tables stick in their mind, whether that’s singing them, putting them into practice with puzzles, playing games with them or writing them out.
    • Practise weekly spellings. Spelling is an area of learning about which many parents are concerned. For tips on how to support your child learn their weekly spellings see the ‘Helping with Spelling’ section below.
  2. Use resources available on the internet.There are many resources online to support with English and Maths. We have provided a list of our recommendations below.
  3. Paid resourcesMany publishers produce workbooks designed for practise at home. In school, we use the CGP revision booklets in both English and Maths to support children’s learning.There are also many ‘revision’ apps available for children to use at home on tablets.

Support with Reading

11th November 2019Mrs K Shutler
Reading support

Supporting Your Child with Reading

How can I help my child prepare?

  • Encourage them to read regularly. This should include a range of fiction as well as non-fiction texts, such as leaflets, newspapers and information books. Suggest that they try a different author or genre every couple of weeks to broaden their reading experience.
  • Reading stamina is needed for the test, so encourage them to tackle longer passages and also check how long it takes them to read different texts carefully.
  • Practice booklets with example questions can be helpful to prepare your child for giving written answers and to help them with timing issues.

Talk about what they have read. Here are some suggestions of ideas and questions to use…

Locating information

  • Skim a text, such as a magazine article, to get a quick sense of what it is about. Talk about when this skill might be useful. Remind them that close reading is needed to understand a text fully.
  • Ask them to ‘scan’ a text to find some key information. For example, glance through a synopsis of a film you are about to watch and find out the main characters’ names. Point out how we can easily find things like names and dates, due to the use of capital letters or numbers for dates.

Summarising

  • Pick out five key facts from a non-fiction book they have read.
  • Summarise the chapter they have read in three sentences.
  • Sum up the main character in three words. What evidence do they have for this?
  • Draw a timeline for the story.

Being a detective

  • What did they learn about the main character’s feelings in the part of the book they have just read? What clues helped them work this out?
  • Ask them to choose one key point in the story and write a thought bubble for one or more of the characters involved.
  • Can they predict what might happen next? Have there been any ‘clues’? Remind them that their prediction should be based on evidence.
  • Suggest that they reread the opening paragraph. Are there any clues about the time or place the story is set?

Looking at non-fiction texts

  • Was there anything special about the away the text was laid out? Did it make the information more appealing or easy to read?
  • Look at one of the illustrations. Are there any captions or labels? If not, could they add some?

Explore the words

  • Are there any words they do not know? Could they work them out from the context? How could they check? Keep a list of interesting new words.
  • Find a word that really stands out. Why is it a good word to use? Can they suggest any alternatives?
  • Find an effective description which helps convey a picture or idea. Draw what they imagine based on the words used.
  • Were there any technical or special words used by the author? Can they explain what they mean?

Changing viewpoints and ideas

  • Did any characters change as the story progressed? What were they like to begin with? How had they changed by the end?
  • Did their views about a character change as they read the book? Why?
  • When reading a persuasive text or even a newspaper article: Did the author make them feel a particular way about the topic in the text? How? Did their view change as they read more about it?
  • Does the text remind them of anything they have read before? How is it similar or different?

Value reading

  • At the heart of reading comprehension lies talking about books. You can help your child by making sure your home is one where books are valued and where reading is seen as an enjoyable and worthwhile activity.
  • Be a role model and let your child see you reading: for pleasure, for information and for purpose. Show that you read a range of different things for a variety of reasons.
  • When encouraging your child to read, try to ensure they do it at a time when they are not too tired or hungry or busy playing. Help them to see it as a leisure activity not a chore.

Selecting books

  • Provide opportunities for your child to browse books and select new ones to read. This need not be expensive: the local library, school book fairs and charity shops are all good places to browse. You’ll find some book recommendations in our Books category.
  • Discuss the covers and blurb, talk about how the books are displayed, what appeals to and interests your child and whether they have read other books by the same author as ones on display.

Reading aloud vs being read to

  • As children develop fluency, expect them to gradually want to read more on their own and less to you.
  • Sharing the reading, by taking it in turns to read a page aloud, can be a good way to bridge this transition and supports your child to try books that may be a little challenging for them on their own.
  • Use this opportunity to talk about unfamiliar words. Expanding your child’s vocabulary by talking about words and finding out what new words mean is a valuable way to support their reading comprehension skills.
  • When your child is reading a book to themselves, it is still important to talk about the book and develop their understanding. Try encouraging them to sum up the page or chapter they have just read, in a sentence or two.
  • Ask them to tell you about some of the characters: Can they tell you something interesting about one of the main characters? Which one would they like to be friends with? Do any of the characters face a problem? Do they have any advice for them?

Websites

This website has lots of ‘read the passage and then answer the questions’ style activities, which will be really useful practise.  It is an American website, but replicates SATs style questions pretty well.

 

Support with Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar

11th November 2019Mrs K Shutler
SPaG Support

In order to do well in the year 6, children need to have a technical understanding of how the English language works.

As well as being able to spell words correctly, use a wide range of vocabulary and punctuate well, they need to grasp the meaning of grammatical terms such as noun, verb, adjective, prefix, pronoun and adverb, know what phrases and clauses are and how to use them, understand what connectives are and how they work, know how to turn a question into a command, and so on. This terminology can be a stumbling block even for children who are otherwise good at reading and writing, and make the questions hard to understand. Check out our Grammar: Revision Guide for help with understanding the terminology.

The websites below contain tips and games to support your child with SPaG.

DfE’s guide to helping children with spelling

Most of us, even if we consider ourselves to be good spellers, make spelling mistakes at some point. What is important is that we know what to do when we get stuck and we know how to correct our mistakes.

The English language is a rich but complex language but, despite its complexity, 85% of the English spelling system is predictable. Your child will learn the rules and conventions of the system and the spelling strategies needed to become a confident speller.

Here are some of the strategies that will help your child become a confident and accurate speller:

  • sounding words out: breaking the word down into phonemes (e.g. c-a-t, sh-e-ll) – many words cannot be sounded out so other strategies are needed;
  • dividing the word into syllables, say each syllable as they write the word (e.g. re-mem-ber);
  • using the Look, say, cover, write, check strategy: look at the word and say it out aloud, then cover it, write it and check to see if it is correct. If not, highlight or underline the incorrect part and repeat the process;
  • using mnemonics as an aid to memorising a tricky word (e.g. people: people eat orange peel like elephants; could: O U lucky duck);
  • finding words within words (e.g. a rat in separate);
  • making links between the meaning of words and their spelling (e.g. sign, signal, signature) – this

Encourage your child to have a go at spelling words they are unsure of. This will give them the opportunity to try out spelling strategies and to find those that they find useful. You can help them to use the strategies outlined above and praise their efforts.

Websites

Support with Maths

11th November 2019Mrs K Shutler
Maths support

SATs Companion have compiled ways to help your child with the maths tests.

Listen to the problem

Even as teachers, we struggle to be patient with our children when they don’t understand a maths topic or get the correct answer. We end up repetitively saying “No, that’s not how you do it” and “Let’s try this again” with a wrinkled forehead and a slightly frustrated tone. But how are kids supposed to try questions again if they don’t understand the concepts?

Whether you’re working on maths homework or using online resources with your children, take a step back and some breathers (we know we all need it!). Then, have your child try to explain their thinking process. It’s easier to help them out when we understand how they’re processing the question and which part of the problem they find difficult. When you really lean into listen, you’ll be able to help your child solve similar math problems in the future.

Back to Basics

When you have a solid foundation, your learning process is often easier.. No matter what level of difficulty the questions may be, it’s all about the calculations in the end.

Help your child improve their accuracy and speed with mental maths activities. Use flash cards or have them race against the clock. Check out the websites below for some games to play online.

Make Maths Tangible

KS2 SATs Maths questions are slightly more complicated because it requires your children to use two-step methods. All the unnecessary information tends to throw off children when they attempt to solve a word problem.

If you struggle to keep your child engaged while solving problems, try rewording the problem by changing the ‘X’ amount of something to their favourite toy or candy bar. For some kids, they may need to see the objects to understand the problem. Try drawing pictures or use legos to help your child visualise the maths problem. Use the Thinking Blocks website (link below) to explore one method of visualising problems.

Familiarise yourselves with sample SATs papers

Not an easy task, as there is only one sample test paper available for the new SATs on the government website! However, it is useful to download so you can see the different styles of questions and levels of difficulty. They cover all the question styles, content and gives personalised feedback to prepare you child for the tests in May. The folder at the bottom of the page contains the sample papers and the old style SATs papers.

Top tips

Maths KS2 SATs Buster

Websites.