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Helping my Child Learn

Mathematics

We all use maths every day, often without realising it.

We believe that every child can develop the numeracy skills they will need, both at school and throughout their lives. Helping your child feel confident about maths will give them a head start.

A good understanding of everyday maths will help your child with important tasks, such as making decisions and understanding information.

It will also help them develop essential lifelong skills such as:

  • Working out how much food is needed for the family meal and following recipes
  • Splitting the bill after a meal out with friends and working out what tip to leave
  • Converting currency rates when abroad
  • Managing personal finances, budgeting and saving
  • Working out which are the best buys in the supermarket, checking change, working out sale price of an item
  • Getting to work on time, estimating how long a journey will take, knowing when to fill up on fuel
  • Knowing if the answer on the calculator is reasonable, or if you pressed the wrong button
  • Reading data presented in a variety of forms, such as graphs and tables, scales on a thermometer or weighing scales, and interpreting statistics in the news
  • DIY jobs such as painting and decorating, or working out how many walls tiles are needed to cover an area.

We subscribe to Numbots and Times Table Rock Stars which will help your child become more fluent in their number fact recall. Short daily practice sessions are proven to help increase a childs fluency. If you need your login details please speak to your childs teacher.

Times Table Rock Stars (external website)

Phonics

Synthetic phonics is a way of teaching reading. Your child will be taught two crucial things when they are learning to read using synthetic phonics:

  1. How sounds are represented by written letters. For example, they will be taught that the letter ‘m’ represents an mmm sound.
  2. How sounds can be blended together to make words. For example, they will be taught that the sounds of the letters ‘c-a-t’ blend together to make the word ‘cat’.

At Primrose Hill we teach Essential Letters and Sounds as our systematic approach for teaching children to read using phonics.

The phonic approach encourages directly linking letters (graphemes) to sounds (phonemes), and to teach children pure sounds like abk when encountering the alphabet. So, children learn how to put sounds represented by letters or letter groups (like ch or igh) together to read words in a more straightforward way.

If you need any help pronouncing the sounds correctly, here is a good YouTube video – link here

Reading

Research shows that the most important thing you can do to help your child achieve at school is read with them. Little and often is the key!

There are three things that your child needs to learn to do:

  1. Decode words
  2. Understand what they have read
  3. Enjoy it!

Reading with your child should be enjoyable. The more fun you have, the more likely you are to instill a love of reading. Encourage discussion with your child when reading with them. They will probably ask you some interesting questions, so don’t be afraid to stop reading and explore these further.

Here are some tips for engaging reluctant readers:

  • Listen to audiobooks to get them interested in stories.
  • Show them that you love reading too. Visit the library together and choose some books for you and for them.
  • Go for something that you know will engage your child. Perhaps they are really into wildlife, so a non-fiction book may be a good place to start.
  • Ensure your child can easily access books in your home. Have shelves at child height and books in each room.

The Oxford Owl website has 250 free, tablet-friendly e-books for you to access at home. Ask your child’s teacher for their login.

You can access the Oxford Owl website website here

National literacy trust (external website)

BBC Bitesize (external website)

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