helping at home

We will value and share any research that your child carries out at home linked to our topics. The staff at Crosby Library are very welcoming and will happily order in topic related books to support. 

English

Handwriting: 

Practise letter formation and joins. It is important that capital letters are clearly distinguishable. 

All of our lower case letters start at the bottom. 

We teach all of the letters that start with the curly 'c' shape first (c, a, d, g, o, q).

We teach all of the letters that begin with the 'l' shape together (l, b, h, k, t).

We talk about our 'down letters' having their chin on the line and their tail underneath (g, j, p, q, y).

The image above helps children remember which letters are ascenders and which are descenders. 

Spelling: 

Please help your child to learn the following spellings: 

You could use the 'Look, Cover, Write, Say' method. 

Handwriting is a good strategy for embedding spellings, also try using a word processing programme with a spell checker so that your child has instant feedback. 

When learning a spelling it is helpful to learn other spellings that have the same root word (board, cupboard, cardboard, boarding).

It is often helpful to look for words within a word (separate has a a rat in).

We sometimes use mnemonics to help with tricky words:

(because = big elephants can always understand small elephants). 

For some words, it is helpful to split the syllables (February = feb/ru/ar/y), children can tap out the syllables.

It is important to use the words in context and talk about what they mean. It is good practice to give a child a sentence with a word spelt incorrectly and ask them to find and correct the error. 

Maths

Please support your child to learn their multiplication facts at home, a little practise every day is recommended. By the end of Year 4, children will be expected to recall all multiplication and related division facts up to 12X12. 

When adding, encourage your child to use the following method: 

When confident, progress to this method, including 'carrying':

Use the language hundreds, tens and ones. Help your child to recognise and discuss the value of each digit. 

When subtracting, encourage your child to use the following method: 

Notice how this example doesn't require any exchanging (you might have called it 'knocking next door'). 

In school, we will introduce exchanging practically. 

When confident, we will progress to: 

When multiplying, encourage your child to use the following method: 

When dividing, we will begin with calculations that do not have answers with remainders. 

Once confident, progress to: 

Try and use real life contexts as often as possible (shopping receipts, calculating change, telling the time, measuring for ingredients/DIY). 

Computing