Parent Blog: 1st March 2021

Welcome to the Katie Jayne’s Parent Blog Issue Number 2.

Normally we would be saying ‘well done for getting through half term’, but now we are shouting from the roof tops; ‘well done for getting through another lockdown’. Guidance was issued on February 16th to state that the return of all school children would commence on Monday 8th March. YOU DID IT! Well done! There have been many times when you thought you would not make it or that you beat yourself up about that lost lesson due to internet connectivity or the inability to help with that really hard math homework. You did the absolute best that you could and nobody could be prouder…

Speaking of being proud, Katie Jayne Tutors received the tremendous news that, for a second time this year, Katie Jayne Tutors has won an award bestowed upon the company for its magnificent work with regards to the tuition of children. This award is proudly sitting on Katie Jayne’s shelf in the office and was awarded to Katie Jayne Tutors for being ‘The Tuition Company of the Year 2020/2021’ and because we are so proud we shall dedicate a section to this award and to the staff and teachers that make such an accolade possible later on in our blog.

So what do we have in store for you this month? We shall be looking at ‘Hush Hush tips for school entrance’ in our Knowledge Station, ‘Where is my child at?’ which looks at what your child should be doing at what stage in their academic life and how you, as a parent or guardian can help them along the way. We also discuss tough issues that affect our children and talk to one of our teachers in our ‘Meet the Teacher’ section. We have listed a number of articles that hit our ‘Educational Desks’ that we feel parents may be interested in. Then to finish off, articles or information of interest in our ‘Guardian Angel’ section looking at GCSE and A Level plans for 2021 and finally, this week we highlight The Woodland Trust in an article that we hope you will find interesting.

Don’t forget we are always looking for those wannabe writers to come forward with an interesting article, whether that be from your child or from you, so feel free to drop a line to Sam – info@katiejayne.co.uk We really look forward to hearing from you.

Enjoy the read!

Sam

Tuition Company of the Year Award!

We asked Katie why she thought Katie Jayne Tutors had been blessed with its second award in four months, here was her response:

“We are all completely thrilled to have been chosen for the Tuition Company of the Year Award. Our aim is always to try and achieve the best results we can for our students and it is an added bonus to achieve such heights as a company. As Founder of Katie Jayne Tutors, I would like to thank all of the wonderful teachers that I work alongside, our students who strive to improve and our parents who invest a huge amount of trust in us as educators, with something that is most precious…an education! Thank you to Corporate Live Wire and LTG for presenting this award to us.”

For those of you who might not have heard of Corporate Live Wire & LTG we shall add a link to their informative magazine in our next issue. Below are details of the rigourous criteria we had to work through to be considered for this award.

For the last 16 years we have been running national and international awards under the Corporate Live Wire and LTG business platforms. In 2018 we introduced our regional awards to recognise smaller, independent businesses that are extremely successful and hard working on a local level. We ask each nominee to submit supporting information for their chosen category and once the allocation of nominations are met all businesses with in that particular category are then passed onto our panel of industry expert judges who will then ultimately pick a winner. Alongside the questionnaire publicly sourced information is used such as reviews, testimonials and information provided on the company’s website and social media platforms. The 2020/21 South West England winners publication will be available in print and digital formats and will be full of interviews and features including South West England news. The publication will be available to over 550,000+ Corporate Livewire subscribers. It will also reach over 30,000 readers located in South West England in print format.

Knowledge Station

KEY DATES FOR YOUR DIARY

4+ Assessments (for Reception entry in September 2022) will take place in January 2022.

7+ Assessments (for Year 3 entry in September 2022) will take place in November 2021.

11+ Assessments (for Year 7 entry in September 2022) will take place in January 2022.

The 4+

An exam for my 3 year old I hear you say? What are they supposed to know at this age? Well at this age it is a much more informal process than later on in their schooling. The children will be encouraged to take part in a number of different activities including playing with jigsaws, counting games, discussing stories etc. The social side of things is very important. Each school will be looking to see if your child can share, take turns and has a willingness to try new things. They will also be looking at their English and Maths skills. Feel free to contact us for a more specific breakdown on what is expected at this age for English and Maths.

The 7+

The 7+ is becoming increasingly popular especially for schools which have a secondary school connected to it. However, do be aware that gaining a place at a junior school at 7+ does not necessarily mean that they will automatically gain a place in the secondary school. Many schools now insist that all children sit the 11+ to gain entry to the secondary school. Although if your child has been performing well in the junior school it would be promising that they would continue to the senior school!

Not sure if your child is ready to sit an entrance exam? Here’s a sneaky peek at some sample 11+ questions from some of the leading schools in London.

English- Grammar

(Spend about 10 minutes on this section)

Re-write these sentences, correcting any mistakes or omissions in spelling, punctuation or grammar.

Is this the way to the zoo asked david. (4 marks)
Holly was embarased by all the attention, She was usualy very shy. (4 marks)
The kittens mother was to tired to look after them all. (2 marks)

Maths

Find the sum of 337 and 765.
Find the difference between 9347 and 2985.
Write £87 to the nearest £5.
Write 3284mm in metres.
What is the value of the 6 in the decimal 0.264?
Calculate how many seconds there are in 15 12 hours.
Find the mean average of 8, 11, 15, 26.
Here is a pattern of numbers:

Row 1: 1 + 22 = 5 Row 2: 2 + 32 = 11 Row 3: 3 + 42 = 19

(a) Write out the next two rows. Row 4: Row 5:

(b) Write out Row 9.

(d) Find the row which ends 419.

(e) What is the general rule to describe each row if you call the row number n ?

Need some help? Get in touch with one of our team of qualified, experienced teachers! info@katiejayne.co.uk

Important Issues That Face Your Child

With LGBT Month having just taken place throughout February, you may look back and think about what that means for your child/ren or friends and family. We all probably understand the meaning behind LGBT and what the letters stand for, but perhaps we might be less knowledgeable about the increased letter term LGBTQQIAAP. With children today discussing their emotions and their sexual direction more than generations before, it is our duty as adults to understand the topic so that we can be on hand to help discuss, offer advice or direct young adults to help if they choose.

Firstly, we thought we should start by explaining the term LGBT+ which includes all of the different identities in LGBTQQIAAP, but for those of us who might have to guess at a couple we thought we would list them with an explanation of what the term means…

L – lesbian: a woman who is attracted to other women.

G – gay: a man who is attracted to other men or broadly people who identify as homosexual.

B – bisexual: a person who is attracted to both men and women.

T – transgender: a person whose gender identity is different from the sex the doctor put down on their birth certificate.

Q – queer: originally used as a hate term, some people want to reclaim the word, while others find it offensive. It can be a political statement, or suggest that someone doesn’t want to identify with “binaries” (e.g. male v female, homosexual v straight) or that they don’t want to label themselves only by their sexual activity.

Q – questioning: a person who is still exploring their sexuality or gender identity.

I – intersex: a person whose body is not definitively male or female. This may be because they have chromosomes which are not XX or XY or because their genitals or reproductive organs are not considered “standard”.

A – allies: a person who identifies as straight but supports people in the LGBTQQIAAP community.

A – asexual: a person who is not attracted in a sexual way to people of any gender.

P – pansexual: a person whose sexual attraction is not based on gender and may themselves be fluid when it comes to gender or sexual identity.

You may have a wonderful relationship with your child and feel that you both understand each other and communicate well, but experience has shown that this does not always help when a child wishes to speak to a parent about how they feel sexually. There are many hidden and deep feelings associated with ‘coming out’ and nobody can help more than Stonewall. Stonewall have been there for the LGBT+ community since 1989. A small group of people who had been active in the struggle against Section 28 of the Local Government Act set up the group and battled to be heard, eventually becoming a recognised charity in 2003. Stonewall is a member of the Equality and Diversity Forum, a network of national organisations committed to progress on age, disability, gender, race, religion and belief and sexual orientation issues.

‘Coming out’ – Advice and guidance for parents

You can also find help @ The LGBT Foundation

@ NHS

The Karen Darke story continued…

The journey to her first Paralympic Games and some Quest 79 inspiration…

My first big dream when lying in a hospital bed staring at the ceiling waiting for my spine to heal, was about how I might be able to visit the Himalayan mountains. The world’s biggest mountain range has always captivated me, and my friends had put a poster of these mountains on the ceiling above my bed to try and make my view more inspiring than polystyrene tiles. At first, I just felt sad that I couldn’t go to such beautiful places anymore, but then I started to think ‘Why not?!’

So, a few years later, stronger and ready for an adventure, I began creating. I had a special tandem bike made – three wheels, pedalling with my arms on the front, and a friend pedalling with legs on the back. We trained for the Himalayas in the Scottish islands – the mountains nowhere near as big as where we were going, but we were getting fitter for the adventure ahead. We had six weeks to cross from the country of Kazakhstan, via Kyrgystan, into China and then across the high mountains into norther Pakistan. We would be independent and unsupported, and of course I had plenty of fears. How would we carry my wheelchair? What if there was a medical problem? Would we find enough food and water in the wilderness?

Luckily, I’ve always believed in having big dreams and believing they can come true. When we finally cycled across the Himalaya, it was an incredible journey. For me personally, it was like a ‘rite of passage’: a journey that made me realise that my world was not really limited by being in a wheelchair. Our ability to do anything is a state of mind not a state of body. We have to focus on what we can do; not on what we can’t. And focus on feeling grateful for all the good things we all have in our life, regardless of how difficult external circumstances can seem at times.

Years later, I had a dream of not sitting in an office all day doing a job I wasn’t very happy in. I dreamt of being a full-time adventurer and athlete. Little did I know that 15 years after my accident I would suddenly get excited about the idea of trying to get to my first Paralympic Games in London. I had never had any interest in any Paralympic sport but suddenly hand-cycling was included. Hand-cycling gets me excited.

Rather than give you a long story of how I got to the Games in London and won a silver medal – way beyond all my wildest expectations – I will share with you instead a few ways that help me when I’m working towards a big goal or dream.

(1) If I’m tempted to miss a training session (because I’m too tired, or too busy, or just because I can’t be bothered one day), I think of my ‘future self’. How disappointed would I feel if I woke up the next day and knew I’d not done what I should have? How disappointed would I be to get to the start line of an Olympic race and think I could have tried harder in training to race my best? I’d be letting myself down. And so, I always begin, and enjoy that commitment. Sometimes though, if I know my body is really tired from training hard, I abandon the session and come home – but I feel good about it because I know that I tried.

(2) I always remember the saying ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try and try again.’ The first two races I ever did I was last in them. Often my result in a race hasn’t been what I hoped it would be, or what I knew I was capable of. Instead of getting fed up, I feel disappointed for a little bit, then ask ‘what did I learn from that and how can that help me next time?’. There is no such thing as failure – only feedback.

(3) I try to be patient. Sometimes we get better at things quickly. Sometimes it takes some time. But if we keep trying, a little bit every day, then we are bound to make progress towards our goal.

(4) Sometimes I think my goal (to win a Gold medal in the Paralympics) is possible, and sometimes I think it’s too crazy. I try to focus on it coming true and do some visualisation to help me. (I close my eyes, imagine a time when I’ve raced really well or felt really good, and then try to imagine feeling like that again in the future). The more we imagine our goal coming true, the more it is likely to happen.

(5) Remember not to be too hard on yourself. ‘Work hard and play hard’. There is a time to give something your all, but you also need to take time out, rest and have some fun. Otherwise, you will get bored!

Good luck with all the things you are working towards. I hope you achieve them, and if you have any tips you can share with me, thank you for sharing them!

x Karen

Feeling Blessed Not Stressed…..

‘ My wife and I decided that we don’t want to have children’ – ‘ We are telling them tonight’

We can all laugh at this old joke, laugh, I laughed so much that I realised I actually wasn’t laughing at the joke at all – I was laughing hysterically, an incy wincy teeny weeny part of me tried to remember what I did, what we did, before we had Harriet and Joel. Nope!!!! Nothing came forward in my brain. I obviously did not have a life prior to the birth of our darlings, the darlings that I often refer to as the ‘lights of my life’ and they are!

With so much to worry about with lockdown and homeschooling, I quickly realised that I was not the Super Dad that I had prided myself on being. I did want my lie in on a Saturday, I mean I had been working a double shift i.e. trying to do my day job of Account Manager for a large blue chip company and also being IT technician for Harriet and Joel. I got that job with no interview, no references and certainly no interest in the role whatsoever. It is a miracle that I was not sacked from both jobs on day one of ‘Home Schooling’.

I always said “I would never lie to my children”,

Also me; “we can’t go to ride our bikes today they closed the park/Boris has banned all cycling/my bike has a puncture…”

Amazingly, I did not get struck down by lightning, my children did not look at me with dark eyes and say “we know you are lying Daddy” and the sky did not cave in.

At the end of each day we all have a family meal around the table, my wife and I take it in turns to read Harriet and Joel that book, you know the one that magically only has 6 pages, even though there appears to be 25 and when our ‘little darlings’ are asleep we have a glass of red and tell each other how very lucky we are… #feelingblessednotstressed

Guardian Angel

Our usual helpful items around educational topics

Do you have children who should be taking their A Levels or GCSE Exams this year- if so read on….

Just 8 per cent of teachers are confident that Ofqual and Department for Education plans for this year’s GCSEs and A levels will lead to fair results for all.

The findings from a Tes survey responded to by more than 6,500 teachers in England come in the week that the final arrangements, following the cancellation of this year’s exams, are due to be announced.

Ofqual and the DfE have proposed that students are graded through teacher assessment, with papers set by exam boards used as a basis for their judgements.

TES article

Mail Force?

Mail Force is a charity that’s stepped up to help hundreds of thousands of children who don’t have laptops and the necessary data connectivity to follow online classes. So far, the Daily Mail has raised over £10m for Mail Force’s Computers for Kids initiative, and has the backing of many celebrities and UK businesses. Watch their campaign video here

Free data for school children

Return to School

This guidance has been issued in response to the First Minister’s statement to Parliament on 2 February 2021 announcing a phased return to in-person learning in schools from 22 February which was confirmed on 16 February. It is intended to provide clarity on arrangements for school education in February/March 2021 and to help schools to plan for the full-time return of children in P1-P3, for the part-time return of some young people in the senior phase and a small increase in existing provision for children and young people with significant additional support needs. Early learning and childcare will also return on 22 February – separate guidance has been prepared on this.

Something of Interest

Looking for something of interest to do over the coming weeks?

I have always loved trees and walking, so when a friend took me on a walk that incorporated an Ancient Woodland I was eager and ready to get cracking. I certainly got more than I bargained for when we came across these wonderful images supplied and installed by The Woodland Trust. Epsom Downs had been used as a camp to house new recruits and train them ready to go off to fight in WW1. See how different our landscape looked back in 1914/1915.

That day I did not just go for a walk to keep fit, I also learnt some local history, educated myself as to the importance of our woodlands and remembered how lucky we are in the 21st Century compared to living in 1914. If you are interested to find out where your local Ancient Woodland is just follow the link below.

The Woodland Trust