Supporting your child at home
How to support your child with writing at home?
As educators, developing children’s enjoyment of writing is a key priority. Our drive is to deliver writing sessions through a cross-curricular model with a focus on novels which link in closely with the Curriculum units that the children are studying. By studying class novels, it is important that our children are writing for a purpose.
For further information about the writing curriculum at St Chad’s, please click on this link.
Helping your child with writing at home
To consolidate the learning taking place at school, there are a number of different activities that you can complete at home with your child.
EYFS and KS1
- Play word building games, like Boggle, Guess Who and Scrabble, to help develop children’s use of descriptive vocabulary.
- Let your child write different shopping lists and use them when shopping.
- Can your child write a set of instructions for any craft or cooking activities that they complete at home.
- Let your child write their own christmas or birthday cards.
- Make up a story about one of your child’s favourite toys.
- Create different funny sentences together e.g. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
- Let your child see you as a model writer by writing different forms of narrative. Make sure that you let your child see you making mistakes so that they know that editing plays an important part of the writing process.
- Make sure you talk about a lot of your experiences e.g. places you visit and things that you might see. Can this provide you with shared writing opportunities with your child?
- Encourage your child to orally rehearse sentences before they write them.
- Try fun activities that strengthen your child’s hand e.g. cutting painting and squeezing playdough.
- Use magnetic letters to make small words and phrases.
- Cut up letters from magazines for your child to create different words.
KS2
- Help your child write a letter to their favourite author.
- Write postcards from holidays and record different events in a diary.
- Write information pages about about a hobby that they find interesting e.g. dinosaurs.
- Can your child practise their joined up cursive handwriting?
- Can your child further develop their understanding of how to effectively use a dictionary and thesaurus.
- When your child has finished a piece of written homework, make sure that they proof read their work through an editing process.
- Can your child complete a piece of writing to summarise what has been happening within the book that they are reading?
- Read the beginning of a story with your child, can they then create a piece of writing to predict what they think will happen for the story ending?
- Read a range of different stories with your child to expose them to different descriptive vocabulary, sentence structures and types of punctuation.
How to support your child with reading at home?
Helping to create a reading culture around school is important in supporting our children to develop a love of reading throughout their time at St Chad’s.
Top tips for supporting your child with reading
- Be a good model for your child. Therefore, let them see you enjoy reading a variety of different types of text such as, newspapers, books, magazines etc.
- Keep reading sessions short and relaxed with your child.
- Make sure to give lots of praise to your child, whilst they read.
- Ask a range of different questions about the text, whilst your child is reading, to ensure they have the understanding of what is happening within the text.
- Talk about the book after it has been finished and ask questions such as, what was your favourite part within the text?
- Take it in turns to read different parts of a story.
- Make sure that you take the opportunity to read to your child. To develop a love of reading, it is important that children have the opportunity to listen to stories being read to them.
Websites to help the development of reading
Please find below websites that can be used to support your child in developing their reading fluency. These websites have a range of different ebooks and activities that you and your child can use and enjoy.
What type of questions should I ask my child?
It is important to ask your child questions whilst they read to check for their understanding. Please find below a range of different types of question stems that you could ask your child.
How to support your child with spelling?
To support your child in becoming a confident and secure speller, it is vital that you are able to consolidate school learning at home. At school, children have daily spelling sessions which focuses on progressing their understanding of phonic spelling patterns from KS1 into KS2, as well as securing understanding of common exception words.
Alongside the variety of spelling patterns the children have to learn, in the new Curriculum, children are expected to spell key words as part of the age related expectations.
These key word lists can be found below:
Strategies to support the teaching of spelling
There are a variety of strategies that you can use at home to support your child with their spelling, as detailed below.
- Mnemonics – A really good strategy to support memory of difficult spellings e.g. because (Big Elephants Can Always Understand Small Elephants).
- Analogy – Making families of words e.g. night, fright, sight, slight
- Sounding Out – This is a popular strategy to use within school. Ask your child to sound out the phonemes (sounds) within each word e.g. cat (c – a – t).
- Find the syllables – children to clap out each of the syllables within the word e.g. beau/ti/ful
- Quick Spell – Give your child a time limit, e.g. 30 seconds, and see how many times they can accurately spell a particular word in the allotted time. Can they then beat their own score?
- Look, Say, Cover, Write, Check – Look at the word and say it out loud. Then cover it, write it and check to see if they have spelt it correctly. If not, identify what part of the word was spelt incorrectly and repeat the process.
- Pyramid Spelling – Please see the picture below for an example of pyramid spelling.
Activities and games to support the teaching of spelling
There are a variety of activities and games that you can use at home to support your child with their spelling, as detailed below.
- Water Words – Write several words on separate pieces of paper. Ask your child to write a word two or three times on the patio or path with a paintbrush dipped in water. Repeat with a different word.
- Flashcards – Read a word out loud to your child from a flashcard. Your child then spells out that word. If they spell the word correctly, they ‘win’ the card. If they are incorrect, the card is put to the bottom of the pile. Take it in turns to read the word or spell out the word.
- Magnetic Letters – Say a word out loud. Ask your child to make the word using magnetic letters.
- Silly Sentences – Ask your child to write silly sentences using focused spelling words in each sentence. Encourage them to underline their spelling words.
- Spelling Scramble – Jumble up the letters of a word for your child. Can your child unscramble the letters to spell the words correctly?
How to support your child with maths at home?
There are a number of ways that you can support your child with developing their mathematical understanding, as well as consolidating learning that has taken place within school.
Times Tables and Number Bonds
Learning and understanding times tables and number bonds is vitally important for all children. Your child will participate in a lot of different learning opportunities in school, but there are different things that you can do to support them in understanding their times tables and number bonds at home.
Practical ideas to support your child at home
Reception
- Could your child listen to different nursery rhymes and songs to develop their understanding of number?
- Using different objects, could your child practise adding one more and identifying one less?
- Could your child count everyday objects around the home?
- Could your child identify different shapes around the house and outside in the garden?
- Could your child have a go at measuring the lengths of different objects in the home?
Key Stage 1
- Can you go on a number hunt and identify different numbers around the environment both indoors and outdoors.
- Whilst cooking, having the opportunity to weigh different ingredients accurately and being supported in reading scales.
- Can you help your child practice counting in 2s, 5s and 10s.
- Using resources to help add and subtract numbers and objects.
- Identify different shapes around the house and outdoors.
- Measuring the height and length of different toys around the house. Could your child measure the heights accurately of the different people that live in their household?
- Tell the time with your child using an analogue clock.
- Practically using money in the home and supporting in shops.
- Use dice to practise adding and subtracting numbers.
- Order days of the week/months of the year.
- Use objects and manipulatives to demonstrate number bonds up to 10 and 20.
Key Stage 2
- Whilst cooking, could your child estimate and measure a range of different ingredients accurately using weight and capacity.
- Time – Can your child create a daily timetable of their day and discuss their routine?
- Could your child create symmetrical patterns when drawing or painting?
- Could your child have a go at completing a sudoku?
- Number fact games – What other number facts can your child create from a certain number sentence, e.g. 6 + 3 = 9?
- Can your child create a dance that includes particular directions and angles?
- Can you go on a mini-beast hunt and put your results into a line graph, bar chart etc?
- Can your child be confident with pocket money. How much more will they need, how much will be left?