Dear Parents and Student of Room 6
Listed below is a range of activities that you can regularly include in your Home Learning. It is important that you help your child develop good strategies and habits to continue their learning at home. Do not assume that they know when is the best time to engage in Home Learning, the best time in my opinion is all the time.
- Home Learning can include lots and lots of regular discussion on any items of interest / family history / current events that catches your family’s imagination.
- It doesn’t matter what your child reads, as long as they get a balance of reading to you, reading with you, and reading for themselves. Books, magazines, comics, newspapers, model aeroplane instructions, the back of the Weet Bix packet … whatever: it doesn’t matter. As long as kids are doing something that they are interested in, they will read it, enjoy it, and be all the happier and better off for it (so will you). The students have a reading log to record their daily reading along with thoughts and opinions, help them to fill this in and check out the tips or gaining a better understanding of what we read.
- Spelling practice is not just lists of words (which the pupil may never otherwise use) set by a teacher: it includes crosswords, word-finds, word puzzles, secret codes, Scrabble – all of which can be easily found. We use Spellingcity.com as part of our class programme and this is linked off the class blog. Have your child write you a letter, you'll soon be able to develop a set of words to learn as part of their Home Learning.
- If your child has trouble with basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, division; don’t rely solely on the practice that he or she will get at school to improve the situation. If you sit with your child a couple of times a week and work through some practice examples that you have set together, the practice will be far more valuable than facing five set questions in a class homework sheet. Why? Because it will be individualised to your child’s needs. Because you will be sharing the experience. Because you will be able to provide instant and positive feedback. Try regular use of the Mathletics Internet based programme that the children are using in the classroom.
- Regular sharing and reflecting on student's learning through the monitoring of their E-Portfolios. Ask your child to share their work samples on their blog or log in to their email accounts to see how their assessments are going.
- Dot to dot puzzles; colouring-in activities; jigsaws; cutting out pictures and words to make up puzzles / scrapbooks / messages – these are the mere tip of the ten-thousand-things-that-are-of-more-benefit-than-a-homework sheet iceberg.
- Home Learning can include outside the home experiences; all those Sport practices, clubs and family excursions and holidays.
The children will receive an assignment based Home Learning task at the beginning of a term. It is up to your family to decide whether you include it as part of their Home Learning.
Kind Regards
Linda Sweeny
