Home Learning

We hope that some of the links and resources on this page will help you to support your child with learning at home. If you have any questions about the resources or links, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Pick and Mix Home Learning Activities

Other Ideas to Help with Learning at Home

Please take a look at some of the guidance, links and resources designed to enable you to best support your year one child at home. Should you have any questions about this, please contact us at school or, in the event of a school closure, send an email to: Y1@burscough-pri.lancs.sch.uk.

Phonics

In year one, children take part in a daily phonics lesson. To learn a little about phonics, please download the handout from our phonics workshop for parents (see below). If you would like to find out about phonics teaching at BVPS, please visit the Phonics and Spelling page of our website.

Tips for Helping your Child Use their Phonics Skills for Reading

 

Your year one child may now be able to read many sentences fluently in their home reading books. However, when they approach an unfamiliar word, they can use their phonics skills to help them to decode the word. Here is the strategy that they are taught in class:

 

1. Look for the special friends (digraphs and trigraphs)
2. Fred talk the word (say the word in 'sound talk')
3. Blend the sounds

 

Note, where children are reading a polysyllabic word, we would encourage them to break the word down into its individual syllables. The child would follow the process above for each syllable and then say the syllables together to read the word.

 

Graphemes

 

From time to time, children may come across an unfamiliar grapheme (letter or group of letters that make up one sound) in their reading books. When this happens, we take time to review this grapheme and organise additional practise opportunities until the child is confident and secure in recognising the grapheme in words and using it in writing. You can find PDF documents containing most of the graphemes we would expect a year one child to know below.

 

Blending

 

Sometimes, Fred talk a word correctly but do not blend accurately. When this is the case, we might model Fred talking and blending the word ourselves. We would then encourage the child to try again. Other ways to support children who are struggling with blending can include:

 

• asking the child to draw the sound buttons on a word before they attempt to blend
• making the word out of magnetic letters and encouraging the child to touch each letter as they say the sound
• pegging letter cards to a washing line and encouraging the child to move the letter along the line as they say the sound
• asking the child to say the sounds a little more quickly so its easier to blend the word

 

Common Exception Words

 

Common exception words are words which cannot be easily decoded using our phonics knowledge. In class, we call these 'tricky words'. Children are encouraged to identify the parts that make these words tricky and are regularly exposed to these words. Through regular reading and spelling practise, children should be able to read and write these words from memory. Please find a list of year one common exception words below.

Tips for Helping your Child Use their Phonics Skills for Writing

 

When children are writing in year one, we encourage them to follow these steps to write a sentence:

 

1. Say the sentence
2. Write the sentence
3. Read the sentence

 

Children should remember to begin their sentence with a big capital letter and end it with a full stop. Words should be separated with finger spaces.

 

When children are writing words, they can use their phonics skills to help them. We usually encourage children to follow these steps when they don't know how to spell a word:

 

1. Say the word out loud or in your head
2. Count the sounds (e.g. brush contains four sounds: b-r-u-sh)
3. Write each sound
4. Check

 

In the case of common exception words (see document above), we would expect children to spell these words correctly despite them not following the grapheme patterns that we are familiar with. For these words, children may be able to recall and write them from memory or they may refer to a word bank until they can remember them.

 

Phonics Games and Activities

Reading at Home

 

Whilst phonics is an important tool in learning to read, children also need to develop comprehension and pleasure in reading. When you are reading at home with your child, ask them questions about the text; there are often questions in the cover of the school reading books. Below, there is a downloadable sheet of KS1 reading question prompts. Model reading with expression and encourage your child to read with expression.

 

In order to develop pleasure in reading, children should be able to make their own choices about what they read and share their preferences. Children can read books from home to supplement school books or you could visit the local library. You can find out about upcoming events at Burscough Library here.

Handwriting

We develop our handwriting through short lessons taught twice per week. We group letters into four families to help us with letter formation:

 

• Curly caterpillar letters
• Long ladder letters
• One-armed robot letters
• Zig-zag monster letters

 

You can download a poster with the letters belonging to this family below. There is also a sheet of handwriting lines with high-frequency words to download for children to practise. 

Maths

In year one, children take part in a daily maths lesson. Children learn about numbers, calculations, shapes, space and measures. You can find out more about maths at BVPS here. Please take a look at some of the ideas for how you can support your child at home with maths.

 

In year one, children are often encouraged to use practical resources to support them when adding, subtracting, multiplying (through arrays and repeated addition) and dividing (through sharing and grouping).

 

All year one children have access to Numbots. Each child has their own unique username and password and can play games which develop their ability to subitise and calculate quickly. If you are unsure of your child's username or password, please let us know and we can provide you with their details.

 

We use practical resources to help us to calculate such as bead strings, counters, tens frames, Numicon, tens frames, base ten and multilink cubes. You might not have these things at home but children can use dried pasta, straws, beads, pebbles, pens or any other resource to represent numbers.

Some Quick Ideas to Help at Home

 

• Count to and beyond 100 (forwards and backwards)
• Counting in 2s, 5s and 10s (see link to videos below and hand out from Multiplication Come and Learn with Me session)
• Recalling number bonds to 10 and 20 (see document rhymes that the children have learned in class below)
• Recalling doubles and their corresponding halves (children should be able to show you the actions for this)

Space, Shape and Measure

There's lots of fun things that you can do at home to develop your child's understanding of space, shape and measure:

 

• Bake a cake a measure the ingredients that you need (mass and capacity).
• Grow a plant and measure how tall it is each week (length).
• Measure how many seconds it takes your child to put their shoes on in the morning (time).
• Practise telling the time to the hour and half hour. Help your child to begin to recognise what time you do some daily activities.
• Look at coins and discuss how we know their values. Your child can use their knowledge of counting in 2s, 5s or 10s to work out how much money they have.
• Look for 2D and 3D shapes in the environment - go on a shape hunt!
• Make a set of directions or treasure map using language such as: forwards, backwards, left and right.

General Maths Activities

Please take a look at the worksheets and further maths activities that you could do with your child at home.

P.E.

Fundamental Movement Skills

At school, children learn and develop their fundamental movement skills through P.E. and physical activity. If you can get out into the garden or have some space indoors, you can help your child to practise these skills at home. Please download guidance for developing fundamental movement skills at home.

Dance

This year, our key focus in dance. We are teaching dance through a scheme of work called Creative Steps. Creative Steps are providing free online resources during the school closure period which you can learn about in the flyer below. Additionally, the Creative Steps team are organising online dance lessons which you can take part in at home. You can find out more about these here.

Online Safety

Online safety plays a major role in our Computing curriculum and across all aspects of our learning. It is crucial that children, parents and carers alike understand the benefits of using online technology as well as the potential dangers and how to keep safe. You can find out about online safety at BVPS on our Keeping Safe Online website page. Additionally, you may find some of the following links useful: