Today’s message features three points and links to support home learning…
Homework and spellings
It will probably be a relief to know that we’re not setting any of the usual homework tasks during this period of home learning. However, we’re still providing your child with a list of spellings to learn – you can find the list as a link on Monday’s home learning. Just like in normal times, it would be a good idea to plan in some time each day when your child learns the spellings, and then test your child, just like we’d do in school.
This is important as spelling is an area where more children appeared to fall back a bit in the Spring-Summer lockdown.
It sounds too simple, but another powerfully effective way to support your child with their spelling is to make sure they’re reading every day: the more your child is exposed to written words, the more the words will become familiar in terms of spelling.
Phonics
In the Autumn 2 half-term, we hosted a series of Zoom sessions where teachers in school guided you to ways to support your child’s learning at home. All the sessions were well-received, but perhaps the best-attended session was the one about phonics – a fundamental strategy to support effective reading and writing.
Following the session, we recorded two presentations which might help you with home learning:
Phonics video 1 – supports parents with children in Foundation 2 (Reception) who are learning phonics at Phase 2.
Phonics video 2 – supports parents with children in Foundation 2 (Reception) and Year 1 who are learning phonics at Phases 3, 4 and 5 (the Year 1 phonics screening check which is mentioned is cancelled for Summer 2021).
SATs and other assessments
Talking of cancelled assessments, no SATs or other formal assessments will take place in this school year. This includes end of Key Stage 1 and 2 SATs (and the phonics screening check mentioned above).
In normal times, we have a schedule of internal assessments that we carry out across all year groups. We plan to continue with at least some of these – they’ll help to identify any aspects of Reading, Writing and Maths that we should especially focus on.
It’s these internal assessments from the Autumn term that helped to identify that times tables and spellings were the most common two areas where pupils appeared to have fallen back on:
- for times tables, that’s why we’re encouraging Times Tables Rock Stars so much right now, and this page on our website might help, too.
- for spellings, we’re continuing to provide a list of spellings to learn, as we described above.
As always, contact us with any questions, comments or particular concerns that you may have.
