Help At Home

English

At Brockswood, English skills are woven into all of our subjects ensuring children make good progress and develop the secretarial and language skills needed for their future. Each day, the children learn through a mixtures of guided reading, guided writing, spelling sessions, focused handwriting, and English lessons. See below for more details on specific topics.

Handwriting

In order for children to achieve their potential, we focus on presentation skills across all subjects. Handwriting sheets are also sent home to be consolidated and practised where appropriate.

Useful websites to teach letter formation grouped into letters with a similar structure:

Reading

Our school is keen to ensure that children learn to read and develop a life-long love of reading and literature. This means providing high-quality texts, both fiction and non-fiction, and ensuring that children are introduced to these through cross-curricular projects, story-tellers, and the promotion of books and reading by teachers to children. Reading is given priority in our school.

We use a range of reading schemes in the school and we encourage children to read from a wide variety of genres, exposing them to rich language. An enthusiasm for reading and literacy is developed from the very earliest stages of the children’s education. The children are taught the skills of reading from nursery, through rigorous phonics teaching, nursery rhymes, popular fairy tales and the development of reading strategies, moving onto taught reading sessions.

This great video gives you top tips for reading at home with your child:

Take a look at the Book Trust website for ideas on engaging your child in reading. There are useful videos, language translators and book suggestions.

Phonics & Spelling

We use the Twinkl phonics programme to teach the 6 phases of phonics and follow the National Curriculum for spelling in the juniors. Children receive phonic lessons throughout the week and spelling programmes follow the structure of teach, practise, apply and assess. Throughout the school children are taught how to use dictionaries to help them with spellings and thesauruses to up-level and improve their vocabulary choices.

In June, pupils in Year 1 undergo a statutory phonics screening check. The focus of the check is to provide evidence of children’s decoding and blending skills, not to test their vocabulary. For more information about phonics and the screening check:

phonics screening check 2024 25.pdf

Writing

The children are given the tools and encouragement to become independent writers from the earliest opportunity. Throughout their journey, the children will develop their writing, grammar, and speaking and listening skills, enabling them to write confidently for a variety of purposes. All units are linked to high quality reading texts and focus on the grammar and language structures presented in the National Curriculum. Guided and shared writing are used within lessons to help children develop these skills before they apply their new knowledge to independent work.

Useful websites for both help and interactive games:

Maths

For information on how we teach addition, subtraction, multiplication and division in school, please refer to the policies below:

Useful websites for both help and interactive games:

Remote Learning

Remote Learning

In the case where we are not able to come into school, we will continue to provide lessons and activities to do at home so that your children can continue to progress in their learning.

Refer to the the Remote Learning Offer for more information about the provision, what to expect from remote education and the school’s expectations.

How do I access learning remotely?

Our remote learning platform enables teachers to post messages, give lessons and provide tasks/assignments for your child to complete and respond to.

We use two platforms for remote learning:

Nursery & Reception use Tapestry (an online journal to help record all learning).
Year 1 - 6 use Google Classroom (a digital learning platform created by Google).

Please check the platform daily to see if any new learning has been set for your child. Some pieces of learning will have a deadline for submission; children should be encouraged to complete the learning by the given dates.

We understand that parents and carers may be concerned about the amount of screen time children are being exposed to already. Assignments can be completed on paper and then a photo of the learning can be submitted on Google Classroom. For further guidance:

remote learning how to manage screen time.pdf

Guidance on accessing Google Classroom

Children have been given the opportunity to log on and learn how to use Google Classroom at school. However, below is guidance in case they cannot remember.

What is Google Classroom?

Google Classroom is a free application which allows teachers and students to communicate and can be used to organise and manage learning tasks. It forms part of Google’s G Suite for Education which is used in many secondary and further education settings as it enables distance learning. It has an uncomplicated and user-friendly interface that will help you manage learning at home at this challenging time.

Logging on

Open the Google Chrome browser.
Access Google Classroom using the following URL:

https://classroom.google.com/.
Type in your user name and password which the school has provided to you.

Instruction guides

A step-by-step guide of how to use Google Classroom and submit learning.

remote learning google classroom getting started.pdf

A Pupil User Agreement outlines the expectations of pupils when using the online learning platform.

remote learing pupil user agreement.pdf

An explanation on a specific privacy policy with regard to G Suite for Education and use by primary and secondary schools.

remote learning google classroom privacy information.pdf