As we are edging closer to the end of the academic year, we thought it would be a wise idea to talk about reports. Reports, do exactly what they say on the tin, tell you (report to you) what your child has achieved (attained) throughout the year. Every school has a unique way of reporting back to you this information, but hopefully by deciphering the key terms, this blog post should help you understand how your child is doing academically. 

If your child is in Reception, then you are likely to have seen these terms in your child’s report. The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) curriculum is slightly different to the rest of the school and therefore it is assessed in a different manner. Throughout the year your child’s teacher will be assessing your child’s development and attainment against 7 key areas:

• Personal, Social and Emotional Development
• Communication and Language
• Physical Development
• Literacy
• Mathematics
• Understanding the World
• Expressive Arts and Design

Alongside these areas of learning, your child’s learning behaviours will also be reported upon. In reception we call these the ‘characteristics of effective learning’ (CoEL) and they focus on HOW the children learn rather than what they know. There are 3 characteristics that have been identified by the EYFS: playing and exploring, active learning and creating and thinking critically. 

At the end of the year, in your child’s report, you may also notice the term ‘Good Level of Development‘ (GLD). If your child has met the expectations for the end of the year across 5 of the 7 key areas they will have achieved a ‘good level of development’. 

The 7 key areas (listed above) have three end of year outcomes:

• Expected – your child has made expected progress throughout the year
• Emerging–  your child has not quite met the expectations (is working below the expected level)
• Exceeding–  your child is working above the expected level

For your child to achieve a GLD during their foundation school year that must have achieved an expected or exceeding judgment in the three prime areas of learning (personal, social and emotional development; communication and language; and physical development) as well in Literacy and Mathematics. 

For a more in depth read on the EYFS framework and it’s assessment during the Foundation year; click on the button.

If your child is in Year 1-6 then you may see the term ‘ARE’ in their report. ARE stands for Age Related Expectations and these are a set of objectives that the National Curriculum has set out for each year group. Your child’s teacher will assess whether your child has met these objectives for the year group and will state this in their report using the following terms:

• Working Towards – not yet met the objectives for that year group
• Working At – meeting the objectives for that year group
• Working at Greater Depth – mastered the objectives for that year group

This school’s website lists the ARE for each year group for reading, writing and maths. 

Phonics

During the summer term, your child will have taken part in a Phonics Screening assessment. This is a tool used to help teachers assess how well your child can blend the sounds that they have learnt across Foundation and Year 1. There is a total of 40 real words and non words that you child will have had to read and in order to pass this assessment they will have had to read 32 of them accurately.

SATS

Just a little note about SATS here as you may be getting these results too in a letter or separate section on the school report. SATs (Standard Assessment Tests or End of Key Stage Assessments) are tests which children sit in Year 2 and 6. The results are given using the same language as we have talked about above; Working Towards, Working At and Greater Depth for Reading, Maths and SPAG which is spelling grammar and punctuation. These are tests that children will have taken in school during May. Teachers give an assessment for Writing as there are no writing tests. 

Year 2 tests work slightly differently to Year 6 as they inform teachers decisions about your child’s assessment and they are marked in school. If your child is Working Towards, don’t panic. There may be many reasons for this and we would advise popping into school if you have any concerns. Your teachers will be able to talk you through any areas which your child found difficult and give you ideas to help at home or explain how they can offer extra support in school.

Year 6 SATs are sent off to be marked and the results are given as scaled scores. Don’t let this confuse you, I’ll give you the basic version beacuse it is, in fact, very confusing!! Basically if your child scores 100 or more then they have passed and get ARE (Age related expectation for year 6) and if they score lower than this then they are Working Towards. The score helps you to see how far off they were, for example 98 is very close to 100 and your child is probably very ready for Secondary School. As with the above comments please don’t panic if your child hasn’t passed or got a low score, pop into school and have a chat to their teacher if you would like to find out how to help them at home. The tests only measure part of your child’s knowledge on one particular day and there is so much they miss; sporting ability, kindness, loyalty, empathy, listening skills, artistic creativity and the list goes on. There is lots of controversy about the testing of children at a young age, but that’s for a whole other blog post at another time!!

For now, we hope you have received a report which, with these little jargon busters, makes sense and is a true reflection of your child’s unique personality and values all of their qualities. Any questions, as always contact us via social media or in the comment section below.

Handwriting takes a very long time to develop and as with lots of other learning how quickly children pick it up and how ‘easy’ they find it to learn is dependent on their strengths and interests. Children aren’t expected to develop their own style of handwriting until they are in year 5 of Primary school, so no need to panic, but the sooner they feel confident to write neatly and at a reasonable speed then the more time they will have to be able to focus on what it is they are writing. It is a very personal thing, I’m sure you know lots of adults who have beautifully neat writing or those whose writing you can hardly read! Handwriting is a process and it’s learning begins from the baby years. Before even thinking about forming letters or numbers for writing, it’s about developing strength and co-ordination in their hands.

Strength and co-ordination –

All of the activities that babies do to develop grip strength and co-ordination will help them with their handwriting as they grow up. Practising big movements such as grabbing, throwing, catching, arm movements are called ‘gross motor’ skills. ‘Fine motor’ skills are things like pinching sequins and pom poms, using pegs, posting and lacing activities which focus more on the smaller and more detailed movements. Lots of pre-schools and schools especially in Foundation/ Reception class will have daily sessions or activities out all the time for this practise. The learning comes into the ‘Physical development’ part of the curriculum. You might hear the phrases ‘finger gym,’ or ‘funky fingers’which will be fun and playful activities set up to help your child develop strength in their hands and what we call ‘pencil grip’ – where they are able to hold a pencil, pen or painbrush effectively.

Pencil grip –

Pencil grip will develop at different times for children. Some will have mastered a ‘tripod grip or grasp’ where they use three fingers when they are around 3-4 years old and for some children this takes much longer. All of the above strength and co-rdination learning will help to get ready for developing pencil grip. 

Below is an idea of the stages which your child may go through when developing their pencil grip. As you can see a good tripod grasp can take until they are 7 years old. Schools may offer extra help for your child to develop this, they might call it an ‘intervention’ and should talk to you so you know how you can help at home.

Here’s a little video idea to help develop the tripod grasp. Lots more ideas on our instagram, facebook and pinterest pages.

Writing Letters or ‘Letter formation’

Children will learn to write lower case letters first. Often this happens alongside phonics teaching so they might not learn the order a,b,c,d they might start with s,a,t,p,i and n. 

Schools and pre-schools will have different methods for teaching letter formation. I will go into cursive and pre-cursive a little bit but I don’t want to bore you to tears! Many children will learn letter formation in the same way you and I probably did. Some letters start from the middle and some at the top. You might have learnt ‘one armed robot letters’ and ‘caterpillar letters’ or something totally different. I would advise asking your school or pre-school which method or ‘scheme’ they use so you can copy this if you want to help your child at home.

What is pre-cursive/ cursive writing?

Below are two ways to form letters. The top row is probably how you learnt to write them and it is still how lots of schools and pre-schools teach. Children writing in this way won’t join their letters until they can form them all, usually in year 2 or later. The letters start in different places, some at the top and some in the middle. In the picture the coloured dots show the starting position for forming the letter.

The second row of letters shows ‘pre-cursive’ formation. This is where all of the letters start in the same place (see the dots again.) Some schools will use this way of writing and it can seem really alien if you haven’t used it before. There is lots of research to say this way of writing is helpful. It means children don’t have to learn another way of forming letters when you start to join letters together because when you join you have to start all letters from the end of the last letter which is mostly on the line. It also means all letters start from the same place and this can be helpful for children who get letters the wrong way around. To counteract this, there is lots of research to say this way of writing isn’t helpful for very young children. I know that’s a bit of a pain and we’re not advising either way is better. Teachers will do what they believe to be best in each setting so really it depends on what your school has chosen but hopefully it’s useful to know the different ways.

The video below shows a being written in pre-cursive first and then in print.

Want to practise at home?

Some children will love mark making, drawing, writing, developing find motor skills and all of the activities involved. But as with everything some might hate it or find it really challenging and need some help. Our advice for practising at home is to keep it fun and low pressure. Children are always likely to do more and learn if they don’t realise it’s learning, if it’s packaged as play! Practise those gross and fine motor skills with everyday items:

• string penne pasta or beads onto spagetti (dried!) or onto laces 
• pegging activities – helping to put the washing out gets two jobs done at once!
• using squeezy bottles with water, make shapes and letters on a patio if it’s sunny
• playdoh – great for developing strength
• Anything arty with sequins, stickers pom poms etc helps the fine motor development
• Mark make or write with loads of different objects – this can really help children who don’t want to write. Try feathers dipped in paint, chalks, novelty pens, sticks, anthing you can think of that isn’t a pencil or pen but that can be held like one!

Here are a few resources and apps that you could use to help at home too if you fancy it!

Apps:

Resources:

If you do want to buy some letters and numbers to use at home here are some we like. Lots of shops sell letter and number formation wipe clean books which can be great if your child likes these. Remember to check which sort of letter formation the school teaches so you can match this.

Hopefully this has helped out with some knowledge about handwriting development and ideas to help at home. Check us out on instagram, facebook and pinterest for more!

Simply……

Breaking down words into their sounds (segmenting)

Combining sounds to read words (blending)

Blending is a technical term used by teachers when they are teaching your child early reading skills. During a phonics session, your child will initially learn single sounds relating to a single letter (or grapheme). They will learn, according to what phonics scheme your child’s school follows, a sequence of sounds and when they have learnt enough of these sounds, will be taught to combine them or push them together in order to read short words. Sounds tricky hey? It’s painful! Blending can take a while for a child to master and the key to success is to encourage your child to keep practising their sounds and slowly they will learn to blend them. The trick is, again, to feel confident with the sounds that the children are reading so you can help them blend or combine them to read a word. Watch out for those tricky words though!!

Our top tip with blending with your child when you are reading at home is just to be extremely patient. Let them have a go before you tell them the correct pronunciation! It can take a while to even read a page when children are learning this skill but just doing a little at home can help boost your child’s confidence.  If your child has made a mistake or is struggling with a word- perhaps read the sounds out for them and ask them to blend them together. Let them get it wrong and let them work out that they’ve done it wrong.

Alphablocks is just fantastic! Check out this video that demonstrates the blending process.

A selection of online games to support Blending

These games work well laptop or desktop but may not be phone or tablet friendly, sorry!

The read with phonics website has some brilliant games and works on your phone and tablet. To play all of them you need to pay an upfront cost (currently £7.99 but I’d say worth it for some great content if you like online games. The ‘build a phonics word’ game models blending really clearly!

Segmenting- funnily enough- is the exact opposite.  Children will need to learn how to do this in order to spell and subsequently write sentences. Your child will need to hear the sounds within a word and then break these sounds down and put them in the right order. Again, sounds outrageously complicated and it is really tricky, but through practise your child will grasp this quite easily. 

 During my daily phonics sessions I often say a CVC word and then ask the children to break it down into the first sound that they can hear when the word is said out loud, then the last sound that they can hear in the word and then – when they are ready- the middle sound. It is a gradual process and for those children that are new to reception you might want to just focus on the first sounds that they can hear when you say words. Have a practise when you are out and about; spot animals and see if you can work together to find out what sound is at the beginning of their name.

Towards the end of the reception your child will be asked to segment words when they are writing and match these sounds to their corresponding graphemes and this is the strategy that they will learn as they move through the school.

Here is a selection of online games to support Segmenting

Forest Phonics is mobile friendly!

The ‘teach your monster to read’ website (links below) has some great content too. Free access to a certain amount is in the teacher area. The songs are really catchy and help with remembering those letter sounds. The mini games have several options for blending and segmenting and it’s all mobile friendly!

To put it simply these are words that DO NOT sound out.

The more exposure your child has to these words, the better they will become at recognising them in a text or using them within their written work. As mentioned a million times before, reading is everywhere; on the back of your child’s favourite cereal, at the supermarket, at the park, road signs…everywhere! If you know what you are looking for you can easily spot these words and help your child recognise them.

All of our posts and stories this week will be based on tricky words and we aim to provide you with lots of interesting activities to help support your child at home. If you haven’t already, please give our Instagram page a follow. We REALLY appreciate your feedback- let us know if there is anything that you are stuck with.

Happy tricky words week!!

.

                  Digraphs are two letters that make one sound

Want to find out more?

Digraph is yet another new term that I doubt any of us have ever heard of! I certainly hadn’t come across it before phonics lessons. To put it simply, it’s just two letters that together make one sound. These are harder for children to spot whilst reading and your child will only be taught these after they have learnt Phase 2. This typically happens during your child’s reception year at school and could be recapped during year 1.

Rain is a fine example of a word that contains both digraphs and single sounds. Reading the word out loud you can (maybe you can, or maybe you can’t but hopefully after reading this it will be a can) hear 3 sounds: R , ai  and n. So the r and n are the single sounds, the ai is a digraph; it’s two letters that are making that ai sound. So your child needs to spot that those two letters that are sitting side by side are making that sound rather than the single sounds that a and i make. You may notice the dots and line underneath the word; the dot represents a single sound and the line represents a digraph. We use these ‘sound buttons’ a lot at school to help children distinguish between single sounds and digraphs.

Here is a list of all the digraphs that you child will be taught during their first few years at school.

Still confused?

Phonics is particularly hard to get our heads round! We recommend that you listen to a few Youtube videos that identify each digraph and familiarise yourself with these. These are a few of our favourites:

https://youtu.be/aNcBWSBxSp0

https://youtu.be/akIN2ohJ2uE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fI-WbhuVOXI

As ever, we will be posting stories on our Instagram page that will provide you with some activities for you to try out at home. If you have any questions, queries or concerns please contact us on our page or in the comment section below.