Helping Your Child At Home With Reading and Writing

Infant Class Homework:

Music - Children in Reception and Year One all play the ocarina and it is vital that they practice this at home to make the most of the sessions in school. A few very short practices per week (5 minutes) are far more effective than one longer session.

Maths - Suggestions for maths activities will be sent out from time to time, but the best practice for this is practical maths such as telling the time and using money. Board games offer a particularly good way of learning number, such as counting on in 'Snakes and Ladders'.

Reading – hear them read whenever you can, but once a day is recommended, the time spent is dependent on the child’s enthusiasm. This does NOT have to be their school book.                                                                                 

Word Sets – Early readers will be provided with sets of words that need to be practiced until the child knows them instantly, rather than by sounding out. By mastering these high-frequency words, general reading will become a lot easier.                                                                     

Our policy is to hear all children read twice a week where possible and to move them on the reading scheme at what we consider to be a suitable pace for each individual. It is vital that children understand that part of reading is talking about the pictures, predicting or making up different endings and discussing the story, not simply reading the book from cover to cover. If you want your child to read more, please use your own books, comics, library books or any appropriate text. We also provide a free-choice book from our library at school, this may be more of a story book that you read to your child depending on their reading ability – all children enjoy parents reading to them and it really encourages them to want to be able to read themselves. You can use the home-school reading record to put positive comments about your child’s progress at home.

Helping Your Child At Home With Maths

Junior Class Homework:

Reading – 20-30 minutes every day (again dependent on enthusiasm). Many children at this age will read independently, but they still need to spend time discussing the book with an adult (plot, characters etc).

All children will have one school library book which they write a review on when they have finished it.  They also have one reading scheme book that has comprehension sheets to go alongside it.                                      

Target – most children will have a specific homework target relating to a particular set of times-tables.

Topic - We provide termly overviews of the topic work going on in school and these can be used to help extend learning on these areas at home.

We use a blog to share homework with the Junior children.