Home Learning - Your questions answered

Yr3 – Question – Can I just check what the green exercise books that were sent home are actually for? My daughter has written a Hansel and Gretel story in hers, and wants to practise handwriting, but I want sure if it was anything specific?

Yr3 – Answer – Good afternoon, Thank you for your email. The green exercise book is mainly for doing the writing tasks in. The autobiography project can be done in it, or if you prefer you could just do the more formal writing tasks, such as writing sentences in the past tense etc in there, and then do the finished autobiography in a different format.

Your daughter can certainly practise her handwriting and spellings in there as well ( perhaps not the eyes shut activity!!). Use the book in whatever way works best for you. As we go along there may be other tasks set with a different focus that you can also put in there.

I hope that helps. Any other queries feel free to email.

Yr 4 - Question – Good morning, My son has been logging onto Time Table Rockstars during this week, but he only seems to be being tested on his 10 x table. Is this correct, or is it something we are not doing here at home? On another note, he has spent some of his creative time, compiling a PowerPoint presentation, which I have attached as I have not shown him anything to do with PP, so was really impressed that he knew how to add all the special affects to her presentation!

Thank you, hope all is going well at school.

Yr4 – Answer - Good afternoon, It is lovely to see that ***** has been able to apply his skills learned in school into a Powerpoint. Very well done *****! Keep it up. 🙂 With regards to Times Table Rock Stars. The children have all been put on' automatic mode'. At some point ***** should have played a Gig. The Gig assesses which table a child needs to focus on. This is then replaced by the Garage 'tile'/image until he is ready for another 'Gig'. This may take some time as he will need to be proficient in speed and applying his knowledge with division calculations as well. ***** needs to keep playing Garage and in time he will be asked to play another Gig which will then hopefully allow him to access a new times table.

I hope this helps. Please do not hesitate to contact us if this does not make sense... I can request help from another colleague who might be able to explain better than me.

Yr5 - Question - I'm trying to look at various websites to have a structure to their home schooling plus working full time myself it's going to be tough. To be honest I'm getting very confused with the amount of resource there is and not being a teacher it's quite scary to see through it all to know what to focus on.

Will you provide us with a structure timetable each week? I know you have given us a timetable with general info like use mathletics, but what times table should the kids be learning each week? For English I'm worried as writing an autobiography is a good idea but I would love to see examples and so I can help them. I'm concerned that they will miss the core knowledge particularly in english without having more specific exercises.

Like many I'm a keen parent wanting to support their learning but extremely worried that I'll do this adequately enough and seeking some reassurance we will get support with weekly timetables/exercises to use.

Yr5 - Answer- Thank you for your email. On the School website there is a home learning page. If you scroll to the bottom of the page there is a link to a suggested daily timetable with suggested times for each activity. Please use this to help plan and structure your day around things that you, and your children, need to get done. We hope you find that useful.

On the same home learning page , under the English Section, there is a step by step guide to autobiographies as well as some examples to look at. This was written by some of our teachers, and can be used daily to help teach and structure the work – I suggest looking at the next day’s the night before, I do this so I get it sorted in my head first.