Thank you to the parents who came to visit our classes on Tuesday – we fully appreciate that many parents would have been unable to attend due to work, etc. It was great to see so many faces and hopefully you found the session useful.
For those that couldn’t make it, here’s a few tips for helping your child at home.
Maths
Make sure you child is confident with their x tables up to 12 x 12. Rapid recall means being able to reply to a question accurately in just a few seconds. Once we’re confident with our tables, we can start to use this information to help us tackle trickier questions. At home, practise like this…
If we know that 3 x 4 = 12
we also know that…
30 x 4 = 120 0.3 x 4 = 1.2
30 x 40 = 1,200 0.3 x 0.4 = 0.12
300 x 40 = 1,200 0.03 x 0.4 = 0.012
300 x 40 = 12, 000
Here we are using the fact but making it 10, 100, 1000 times bigger or smaller.
Make it even harder by asking your child questions that involve using this skill:
7 x 90 =
600 x 3 =
12, 000 x 2 =
Reading
Here’s a few top tips for reading at home:
- give opportunities for your child to read in their head
- give opportunities for your child to read aloud
- model reading aloud with expression to your child
- ask your child to tell you things they know (facts), think (inferences) and wonder (inferences)
- challenge your child to come up with their own fact finding questions
- pretend to be two characters from the book they are reading and have a conversation (use things you’ve learnt about the character to get across their personality
It would be great if children were reading daily. If they’re a reluctant reader, let them read whatever they enjoy – reading is reading after all. If they love reading, try and encourage them to read a broader range of things.
Finally, it really helps our discussions as a class if your child has read to their target page – this is set every Friday.
If you have any questions or concerns about helping your child at home, please do not hesitate to come and speak to your child’s class teacher.