Newsletter 18.10.19

I really hope you enjoy your visit to open doors today.

We are certainly looking forward to seeing you all and of course at next week’s parents evenings. I hope you find your appointment next week really useful and that you have plenty of time to find out about.

• Behaviours for learning – (readiness to learn, effort, resilience, collaborative skills, independent learning etc).

• What learning is going well?

• What the next steps in learning are… (through sharing some key targets).

In the last couple of weeks, I have had a handful of children and parents ask me about homework.

Some thinking that they don’t seem to have any, some checking how much or how little etc 

Our 3 main drivers for homework are to:

1. Reading every day
2. Practice spellings and look for spelling patterns
3. Practice counting / number bonds (+/- to 20) / x tables

These 3 things are so key to a child’s confidence and development and need by far the most repetition to become a natural part of a child’s skillset.   We do know that it is great to have the occasional challenge or project too and these may be added into a year groups’ curriculum where appropriate. 

I also thought the following document may be really useful for us all. It demonstrates: the key agreements we are developing at school, how we hope every child embraces school life and how as parents you can support your child’s development.  It is this ideal partnership that we strive for that creates the best possible chances for your child.

As I say, this is an ideal and what we strive for. Things are bound to wobble though, as many many things can get in the way. We as a school will make mistakes, a child has a bad day, or you go on holiday and don’t take a book to read. These things are inevitable, but imagine if we managed this ideal 150 times in a year. This would mean that a child might read 300 times that year just on school days (150 in school and 150 at home), practice counting or number bonds/times tables and spelling 300 times. These are quite some figures when we reflect on them.  Imagine if it was even higher, maybe 200? The numbers become even more significant!

Definitely food for thought.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Chris Evans