Helping at Home

Just as children begin to crawl, talk and walk at different times so they will learn in reading, writing and mathematics at different speeds and reach targets and goals at different times. Some children learn quickly and progress through the early stages of learning easily and then slow down and others start slowly and speed up!
Family involvement with children’s learning has an enormous impact and long lasting effect. Making time to talk and listen to your children, read to them, play with them and show them how you react to and behave in different situations all form part of their development.  Some more ways you can support your child’s learning are:

• Get to know your child’s teacher. Share any concerns and ideas and get feedback on your child’s progress.
• Attend parent-teacher discussions and any other opportunities to share in your child’s learning. Sometimes this needs advance planning particularly when both parents work as it may be necessary to leave work earlier than usual or ask for time off.
• Read school newsletters and attend school events if possible.
• Talk to your child regularly about what they have learned at school and what they are finding easy or hard.
• When you ask how school was today try and phrase this in a way that your child can’t  answer just yes or no e.g., What was the best thing about maths today? How did you….?
• All children are different: accept that your child’s proudest moment may not always be purely academic. It may be learning something in art or music, helping other children in our school in some way or having the confidence to put themselves forward and challenge themselves.
• Ask about homework set by the teacher and what you can do to help.
• Have your say on any school consultation issues/topics.
• Get to know who is on our school’s board of trustees and vote in the 3 yearly elections.
• Talk to your child’s teacher about helping at school if you have time.
• Join a parent group like Friends of the School who organise events and fundraisers to support the school. This can be a great way to meet other families too.
• Read to and with your child whenever you can. Your reading to them means they can experience language that they can’t read independently but they do understand. This builds their oral and written language capability hugely.
• Use ideas from our Home/School Partnership in Maths page
• Read the Ministry of Education leaflets Supporting Your Child’s Learning