Volume 30 Issue 3 12 Feb 2021 30 Shevat 5781

Primary News

Katie Brody :Director of Studies K-6

Five fabulous tips for 2021

The new year is now in full swing in terms of all the teaching and learning that has been carefully planned by our magnificent team of educators. Here are Five Fabulous Tips to get started for the new academic year.

Tip number one – Enjoy reading the Term Overview and note down any questions

Each term, parents will receive a Term Overview. The Term One Overview was emailed to Years 1-6 parents on Monday 8 February  2021 and Year K parents are due to receive theirs on Monday 15 February 2021. Reading this prior to Monday’s ‘Meet the Teacher’ session may prompt you to note questions you could ask during the Q & A session at Meet the Teacher Night. This document is a little lengthy, but it is highly informative and offers a rich description of the teaching and learning that lies ahead for your child. If you have a child who provides you with very little detail about the learning in certain subjects, this overview allows you to prompt them using detailed information.

 

Tip number two – ‘Meet’ your child’s lovely teacher (via Zoom) 

On Monday 15 February 2021, the Primary School is holding our annual ‘Meet the Teacher’ evening via Zoom and all sessions will be recorded. An email was sent out on Tuesday 9 February 2021 with the links to each grade’s Zoom meeting as well as an information sheet that outlines the Primary School’s major goals for the year including new initiatives. Well worth a read! 

Tip number three – Download the Seesaw app and set notifications to alert you

As many know, Seesaw is a platform we use to provide parents with an insight into each child’s learning experiences at school as well as some of the work they are producing. It is an app available for download on any device and you can set the platform to notify you when your child’s teachers post a new item – you can enjoy the nachas as soon as it is uploaded.

Tip number four – Prioritise the learning of Times Tables at home (Years 3-6) 

Teachers of Years 3-6 highly recommend that parents take the time as often as possible to encourage, support and facilitate the learning of times tables with their child. Spotify and Youtube have a myriad of times tables tracks to play in the house or in the car, making studying fun, musical and memorable. The increase in speed, automaticity and confidence for your child makes the daily effort worth your while. Teachers certainly do follow up on this at school, but we can’t reinforce this enough in class to ‘make it stick’ without parental follow-up at home. There is a notable difference between those students who need to stop and work out basic multiplication and division steps compared to those who use automatic recall of times tables facts to assist them when involved in longer mathematical investigations. 

Tip number five – Establish or maintain a regular home reading routine for your child

The development of a regular home reading routine is vital for many reasons. Reading improves a young child’s fluency (‘read like a river, not like a robot’), exercises their brain, improves their concentration, teaches them about the world, widens their vocabulary, develops their imagination, helps them build empathy and it can be a fun and relaxing endeavour. If your child ‘hates reading’, they either haven’t found the right author yet or they need more positive experiences around shared reading, supported reading and independent reading.

Our new Head of Library and Information Services, Samantha Rogut. joins our teaching team on Monday and, alongside your child’s class teacher, she can certainly help with book recommendations. In addition, parents may wish to ask the Head of Library about strategies for inspiring reluctant readers and further developing very keen readers too.