Home Learning
Parents and carers are a child’s first educator and we cannot underestimate the value of a successful and collaborative relationship between home and school. Parents and carers can support their child’s education more effectively if they know what the school is trying to achieve and what they can do to offer support. Home Learning helps to link home life and school life and provide an opportunity for our pupils to share their developing skills and knowledge.
In order to fully support parents and carers to support their children with Home Learning activities, we have compiled a Home Learning booklet for each chapter. The booklets provide an overview of what Home Learning looks like for each specific Chapter and offers suggestions of a range of activities. These are available for download below.
In addition, children will receive topic related Home Learning leaflets each term with suggested activities to support their learning.
Home Learning Information
Chapter Booklets
Home Learning Booklet - Chapter 1Home Learning Booklet - Chapter 2Topic Booklets
Reception - Autumn B 2023 Learning OverviewYear One Autumn B 2023 Learning Overview
Common Exception Words
Common exception words are words that do not follow the common phonetic spelling rules children learn in Year 1 and Year 2.
Many of these exception words are used frequently, hence the use of 'common' in the name. Children are normally introduced to common exception words in their first year of school.
You can download a list of the common exception words for each year group below.
Common Exception WordsHome Learning - Online Resources
Using Espresso.mp4
Home Learning Workshops
In order to support the Home-School learning partnership, we run successful Maths and Literacy Home Learning workshops for Reception parents and carers. We appreciate that not all parents and carers are able to attend, and those that do often like to revisit the information shared, so we have made the videos of the workshops, and accompanying resources, available via a password protected link below. If you have not been provided with the password, and would like to request access, please contact spester@bluecoat-primary.org.
Encouraging Your Child as a Writer
We teach children to read and write using a phonics approach so, in addition to the phonics workshop, we also run a workshop to “Encourage Your Child as a Writer. This workshop offers advice on overcoming barriers to writing and examples of fine motor activities to support development of writing skills. The videos of the workshop and accompanying resources are available via the password protected link, and there are also some additional resources below. If you have not been provided with the password, and would like to request access, please contact spester@bluecoat-primary.org.
In the same way as we support children to segment words to then blend and read, we practice segmenting to spell. By the end of this academic year the national expectation is that most children will be able to write multiple simple sentences independently which may not be spelt completely correctly, but they are ‘phonetically plausible’ with many tricky words spelt correctly.
During the workshop we shared a number of fine motor activities to support development of muscle strength, coordination and dexterity, which are all essential to support the development of your child’s writing skills. In addition, we highlighted ways to overcome barriers to writing and a book list to inspire writing. These useful resources are available to download below, alongside a document which charts the progression from mark making to writing in developmental order.
Mark Making to WritingFine Motor ActivitiesOvercoming Barriers to WritingBook List to Inspire WritingPlay Maths
During the first half of the spring term, parents and carers of Year 1 pupils are invited to come and watch their child take part in a maths session, and to play some number games together. These are so enjoyed by the children, learning alongside their parents and carers at school. The sessions demonstrate the types of activities we use at school to develop children’s understanding of number and are good examples of home learning activities that families may wish to try out or adapt. As a little reminder, or if you were unable to attend, here are some photos from the sessions and you can also download the activities that were introduced below.
Play Maths Session ActivitiesPlay Phonics
In addition to the Play Maths, we also invite parents and carers to attend a Play Phonics session. Here are some of the suggested games and activities – some additional information is provided about how to play these games in the photos and instructions which can be downloaded below.
Tricky word bingo – make your own bingo board of tricky words for an adult to call out.
‘Get posting’ post word cards through pretend doors with matching grapheme written on them.
Teddy’s moving box – write down the objects in the box so they don’t get lost when Teddy moves house.
Please Mr. Crocodile can I cross the water? Only if you can read these words!
Phoneme families – match the different graphemes that make the same phoneme (sound).
Silly soup – only words with split vowel digraphs can go into the soup.
Spot the grapheme – looking in books and recording the digraphs and trigraphs found.
Trash or treasure? Is this a real word or not? Put in the treasure chest or the bin.
Beat the timer. Can you read all of these words before the timer runs out? (A mixture of real and ‘alien’ words.)
Make your own alien words from the grapheme cards.
Play Phonics Session Activities