Parent Blog Issue Number 6 Monday 28th June 2021

Katie Jayne Tutors is pleased to provide relevant and informative educational information to parents and gives free access to all sorts of resources via its Twitter, Facebook and Instagram pages. For golden nuggets of help in bitesize chunks, just follow or sign up for our blog sent straight to your email – you can sign up at the bottom of this blog or on our website where you can also follow the links for our social media pages.

This issue we look at how parents can help their children to get back into the swing of learning and how to maintain it over the holidays. We look at how best to provide wrap around support and what questions to ask your child’s teacher so that you can build that wrap around solution specifically for your child.

Remember you can always call us if you have any further questions, we are very happy to help.

We are fast approaching the summer holidays, so next time our Junior and Senior Blog will look at our chart topping list of activities to keep the kids active, busy, entertained and still educated during the long summer break.

Hope to catch you next time.

Katie and the team.

Wrap around learning

Nearly all of the parents we have spoken to over this last year or so have one main concern…’Will my child have missed out on gaining the education that they need to progress?’

Well at first this is not an easy question to answer, but with a little help from Katie Jayne and our fabulous set of tutors, we can definitely help you navigate through this over the coming weeks and months.

When we asked Katie what she thought, her response was: “All children learn at different paces and some will have found home learning easier than others. There will definitely be many children who have struggled and fallen behind during this period so take a look at my top tips on giving your child all the support they need to learn as we come out of Covid.”

Questions to ask your child’s teacher

Q-What curriculum is my child following?

Q-Can you email me some past papers or the topics covered within the curriculum?

Q-What topics have you already covered?

Q-What topics are you due to cover and when?

Q-Which topics that you have already covered do you feel that my son/daughter needs to work harder at and what do you recommend for us to cover at home?

Q-Are there areas or topics that you feel my son/daughter is strong and confident in?

Q-When will there be internal class tests, if any?

Q-Do you have after school clubs that can support any of this learning?

Q-Are you able to provide us with any books/resources that will help our child’s learning at home?

Top Tips

1-Ask to speak to each subject teacher to get a good understanding of where your child sits with his or her learning in that subject. This does not have to be a face to face meeting, it could be a telephone call or email conversation. I would actually say an email conversation may suit parents best as this gives the teacher the opportunity to write down what your child should have learnt up to this point, what they are going to learn and where the teacher would place your child in that scheme, showing areas that need extra focus.

2-Armed with this knowledge you can now help to set up a homework pattern that supports your child in the subjects where they have perhaps fallen behind. Use this homework pattern to set aside specific hours after school and at the weekends for you and your child to work through those subjects that the teacher has highlighted.

3-Keep in regular contact with your child’s teachers showing your son or daughter that they have full wrap around support at home and within the classroom.

4-If you feel that extra help is required for your child in a specific subject ask friends or relatives who may have specialist knowledge in those subjects to help or you could consider using a tutor. Katie Jayne Tutors are all fully qualified teachers and will ensure that they are covering the correct syllabus for your child. There are numerous other benefits that our team provide to help support your child’s learning. Please contact us for further information and so that we can help you choose a tutor that suits your child’s way of learning, they can work at your child’s own pace and go over subjects already learnt and give foundation to the knowledge.

5-Children with SEN requirements should definitely follow up with the school, many state schools understand the need to provide help to fill in the learning gaps and so it is definitely worth seeing the Schools Head of SEN and also, again, considering an hour or two a week of private tuition from an SEN specialist to help support the learning that is taking place at school.

6-Encourage a positive learning environment at home, a quite place to study away from distractions, or perhaps a workroom or space where Mum/Dad/Brother/Sisters can all work peacefully, encourage topic discussion, enable debate and further reading or visits to educational places at the weekend.

7-Use the online educational tools that are freely available.

8-Follow Katie Jayne Tutors Insta/FB/Twitter/Blog for useful, insightful, fun and interesting snippets.