Support for your Child’s Learning

Supporting your child at home with their reading is invaluable. It should be an enjoyable experience for all involved, so please give your child lots of praise and encouragement.
The following guidelines should help your child’s reading skill:

• Find a quiet comfortable place to sit together (with the television switched off).
• Look at the cover. Discuss the picture. What does your child think the story will be about?
• Read the title to your child pointing to each word with your finger.
• Read the story to your child.
• Re-read the story (either immediately or at a later time whichever is appropriate) discussing the pictures and pointing to each word so that your child becomes aware of the voice print match (i.e. spoken word = written word).
• Ask your child questions about the story.
• Ask your child to read the story to you. It does not matter if they guess the sentence, use the pictures as clues, or have learnt the sentence off by heart.
• Pick out a single word, can your child find it elsewhere in the book?
• How many words are on a page?
• Does your child know the initial sounds? If so, can they blend the sounds to read a word?
• Write out words on individual pieces of paper and ask your child to match them to the words in the book.
• Play hide and seek. Hide the words around the room – your child has to find and read them.

You do not have to follow every step every time. Reading should be fun – it is better to spend ten minutes daily than one hour once a week.

Books are changed twice a week- please ask your child’s teacher for the days.

If you have any queries about reading please speak to your child’s teacher.

Provide your child with opportunities to use pencils and pens. Encourage your child to ‘mark make’ and develop good pencil control. Encourage your child to use writing in their play – ‘emergent writing’ (squiggles, lines, shapes and possibly some letters) for example, if they are playing shops get them to write a shopping list.

At meal times ask them to take food orders from the family. If your child is keen to learn how to write their name please help us by teaching them that the first letter of their name is a capital letter and the rest are lower case letters. Please use the letter formations below to help your child learn how to write the lower case letters correctly.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z        Capital letters

a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z                Lower Case letters

As with reading, try to make maths as much fun as possible – games, puzzles and jigsaws are a great way to start. It’s also important to show how we use maths skills in our everyday lives and to involve your child in this.

Identifying problems and solving them can also help your child develop maths skills. If you see him or her puzzling over something, talk about the problem and try to work out the solution together.

Don’t shy away from maths if you didn’t like it at school. Try to find new ways to enjoy the subject with your child.

Tips for helping your child to enjoy maths:

• Point out the different shapes to be found around your home.
• Take your child shopping and talk about the quantities of anything you buy.
• Let your child handle money and work out how much things cost.
• Look together for numbers on street signs and car registration plates.

Reading a range of books with your child is fundamental to fostering a love of reading. One of the difficulties parents have is finding the right book for their children to read. Here at Loxford we have spoken to teachers and children to share a list of recommended reads. This list is not rigid but is here to give you an idea of some books to read with your children.

Year 1 Reading List

Year 2 Reading List

Year 3 Reading List

Year 4 Reading List

Year 5 Reading List

Year 6 Reading List

Cbeebies
Lots of fun with your favourite BBC characters

Dinosaur Dentist
Help dino count how many rotten teeth he has!

Playground
Lots of games to play here!

Alphabet game for EYFS-KS1:http://www.bemboszoo.com/

English, Maths and Phonics ICT games:http://www.ictgames.com/resources.html

Games for different subjects:http://www.arcademics.com/games/

Maths and Reading: Year 1 – Year 6http://www.funbrain.com/measure/

Early Years

Year 2 (KS1) sample test papers 2016: Mathshttps://www.gov.uk/government

Year 2 (KS1) sample test papers 2016: Readinghttps://www.gov.uk

Year 2 (KS1) sample 2016 key stage 1 English grammar, punctuation and spelling:https://www.gov.uk

Year 6 (KS2) sample test papers 2016: Mathshttps://www.gov.uk

Year 6 (KS2) sample 2016 key stage 1 English grammar, punctuation and spelling:https://www.gov.uk

E-Safety Workshop

Ensuring children’s safety online is an increasing issue and one that we are keen to supports parents with. Recent research shows that every time a child is online, they are just three clicks away from danger.  

The Internet has changed all of our lives. For parents and carers this opens up a completely new world of things to be aware of.  

The school teaches pupils E-safety as part of the curriculum but pupils need to be empowered to keep themselves safe. It is essential that parents are aware of the risks and what they can do to develop a culture of E-safety in the home as they have a vital role to play in helping to keep their child safe online.  

Please see below the recent E-safety workshop carried out on Tuesday 11^th October 2022. Additionally, there is a parent guide, parenting in the digital world, which will detail some of the current topic and issues surrounding E-safety.

Loxford Primary School E-Safety Workshop

Parenting in a digital world 

Reading is a priority within Loxford Primary and it is important that parents feel supported when reading with their child at home. The school teaches reading every day as distinct reading lessons. We teach children to comprehend by teaching them the skills required to read, through our 7 reading dogs. Due to the children being familiar with the reading dogs at school, we thought it would be important to teach parents about the different reading dogs and how they can use the skills taught by each dog to ask their children questions when reading at home.

Reading for pleasure is ensuring that children enjoy reading and think positively about reading. Children who read for pleasure are more likely to achieve above the expected standard of their age for reading. We encourage reading for pleasure at Loxford by allowing the children to have independent reading time everyday, various author sessions and by celebrating world book day. Parents can also encourage reading for pleasure by reading often to their child and by making reading an enjoyable experience at home. 

Please see below the recent reading workshops carried out on Tuesday 18^th October 2022 and Wednesday 19^th October 2022. Additionally there are handouts that contain a recommended reading list, a questioning book mark for parents to use, as well as a comment bank for ideas to comment into their child's reading record. 

KS1 Parent Workshop

KS2 Parent Workshop

The purpose of this presentation is to share with you what will be happening in Year 2 with regards to both statutory and teacher assessments. Children will sit tests but these scores are only used to support teachers’ on-going assessment (as we have mentioned before). These assessments will provide information about how your child is progressing compared to children of the same age nationally. 

KS1 SATs workshop

Summary 

This workshop was about the Standardised Assessment Tests that are given to children at the end of Key Stage 2. The SATs take place over four days in May starting on a Monday and finishing on a Thursday.  The SATs papers consist of:

Spelling, punctuation and grammar (paper 1: Grammar/ Punctuation/ Spelling) This paper is dictated to the children by the teacher and consists of 20 spellings. 

Spelling, punctuation and grammar (paper 2: Spelling test) This paper tests the children's knowledge of grammar and the English language and last 45 minutes. 

Reading This paper is split into 3 or 4 sections and tests the children's retrieval, inference, summarising skills and their understanding of vocabulary. This test last 1 hour. 

Maths (paper 1: Arithmetic) This paper tests the children's fluency skills and consists of 40 questions. The test lasts 30 minutes. 

Maths (paper 2: Reasoning)  This paper tests the children's understanding of word problems and lasts 40 minutes. 

Maths (paper 3: Reasoning) This paper tests the children's understanding of word problems and lasts 40 minutes. 

There is no writing exam as writing using evidence collected through Year 6 and is then assessed by their English teacher. 

How are the SATs marked?

After marking each test, the external marker will convert the raw score to a scaled score. Even though the tests are made to the same standard each year, the questions must be different. This means the difficulty of the tests may vary. Scaled scores ensures an accurate comparison of performance over time.

Scaled scores range from 80 to 120.

A scaled score of 100 or more shows the pupil is meeting the National Standard.

Supporting your child

Top Tips:

• Don’t use past papers as they are used in school to prepare the children.
• Attend any SATs meetings at school (or read any literature sent home).
• Talk to your child’s class teacher if you have any concerns rather than worry your child.
• Encourage your child to talk to their teacher or a trusted adult (including yourself) about their anxieties. Don’t forget that a small amount of anxiety is normal and not harmful.
• Give your child a quiet, distraction free space to complete homework or study.
• Give your child time to go outside and reduce screen time.
• Ensure your child is eating and drinking well and getting a good amount of sleep.
• Plan something nice and fun for the weekends before and after SATs. This will help them to relax before the SATs and give them something to look forward to after.

UKS2 Maths Knowledge OrganiserSPAG glossarySATS survival guide for parentsSATS Parent Workshop