English
Helping your child at home
We recommend children read for at least 20 minutes every day in Year 3 and 4 and 30 minutes in Year and 6 and it is recorded daily in the Home School book. They must be able to decode most new words outside of their spoken vocabulary and efforts should be made to introduce children to new words to increase their vocabulary. Although a lot of children are confident reading independently, we would recommend parents ask questions about what they have read to check their comprehension. To support this, we recently provided each child with a book mark providing examples of different questions which can be asked to assess their understanding and support the development of reading skills. A copy of the book mark can be found below. Each year groups homework classroom will highlight each week the reading skills focus for the week.
Spelling
Advice on how to support your child to learn spelling
When you come across a new word ALWAYS use the
LOOK - THINK - COVER - WRITE - CHECK method to memorise it.
LOOK carefully at the new word. How can you break it into smaller bits? Do any of the smaller bits remind you of the patterns of letters from other words?
THINK about the parts of the words which might cause problems - double letters for instance, or a vowel that isn't pronounced as you would expect.
COVER the word and close your eyes. Try to see it in your mind's eye.
WRITE the word down without looking back.
CHECK to see if you're right. If not, look carefully at where you went wrong and try again.
More Hot Tips
* Whenever you have to copy a new word from the whiteboard, from a book, or from the dictionary always try to write the whole word in one go.
Don't keep looking back after every few letters.
* Try finger-writing: while you're THINKing about the word, pretend to write it with your finger, on your desk or on your hand.