Budding Explorers

Hello everyone, it’s been a long time! 🩵
I will be available for KS1 and 2 tutoring over the summer holidays on Wednesdays.
I currently have availability:

Wednesday 24th July
Wednesday 31st July
Wednesday 7th August
Wednesday 14th August
Wednesday 28th August

This will be based from my home in Poole and £28 per hour session. Please share with friends and family my page or email address: [email protected]

Hi everyone, it’s been such a long time since I posted. With lockdown rules and COVID I was unable to continue tutoring. By the time everything was easing I was quite heavily pregnant so taking extra care. I am now on maternity leave as baby Wilf was born in August 💙
I will be sure to update on here if I start tutoring again next year. I hope everyone is well. Take care x

Hoping all the little explorers have settled in to their new classes! I had a wonderful summer working with you all. The cats are missing everyone 🐈
Please get in touch if I can help with anything.

If anyone is interest in small group sessions after school please get in touch.

I meant to share this wonderful writer last week! 🦁 From a nervous start, we shared some ideas and liked the sound of a WANTED poster.
In the sessions running up to this we had worked on suffix endings, created a word bank of adjectives and adverbs, added plurals, the prefix ‘un’ and used conjunctions in silly sentences. This has then been applied to this great poster!
What a STAR 🌟

Due to the current climate I am keeping resources minimal and simple. The children have even helped to make their own, such as grouped number cards, number squares and their own spelling flash cards. It’s a great way to reinforce what they are learning and also helps give parents simple ideas outside of a worksheet.
Anything used is washed down afterwards with hot soapy water and antibac wipes or only used with each individual child.

Wow! Where has this week gone? We have had spelling hunts in the garden, creative writing: making up our own stories whilst focusing on suffixes, adjectives, adverbs and verbs, WANTED posters, multiplication using objects/ pictures and number squares and some great reasoning and explanations of how problems have been solved. Not only have I been blown away by the work completed but by the determination and enthusiasm! I am loving working with all these little explorers 💭

“Getting my child to read is a struggle” is something I hear all of the time. How often as an adult do you read a book that you are not enjoying? As teachers we use a guideline of books that work up in a structured order to ensure we create an equal playing field as to how we measure their progress and to ensure they can do certain things. Whilst it is valuable to read these books at home it can be repetitive and in all honesty... dull!! Here’s a few tips to help encourage reading at home:

🌿 Allow your child to choose books they WANT to read! Whether you buy, swap, google or borrow
🌿 Read to your child: fairy tales, non-fiction, your favourite childhood book, comics, menus, shopping lists, road signs - this builds their vocabulary and understanding
🌿 Pretend to struggle with some words to boost their confidence when they correct you. Ask them to find high frequency words or tricky words on a page: e.g. “Can you spot the word ‘the’ or ‘said’?
🌿 Discuss what has been read and ask simple questions: What might happen next? How do you think the characters feel? What does this word mean? Can you find me a word beginning with ‘sh’? Where is this story set? Can you tell me about a time you went to a place like this setting?
🌿 Act out their favourite stories. This builds their vocabulary, supports memory skills and helps develop their own story writing and ideas.

I hope this helps to get them engaged and creates a love of reading 📖
(Below is a screen shot of the Year 1 comprehension reading national curriculum which is available online. All of the above will help support this element of the curriculum.)

🌈 PHONICS ONLINE 🌈
Great phonics apps/ websites that can be used quickly each day (which also helps if you are keen to limit screen time). Just a ten minute burst will help! Work through each phase in order and start each session with a quick round of flash cards to familiarise with the sounds. Choose two or three sounds a week to then work on and repeat games with these sounds to help embed them before moving on to new sounds.

Twinkl phonics suite
Phonics play
BBC Bitesize phonics

Nessy: for children who are finding phonics difficult and may need to focus on whole word recognition as their main learning style. Aimed at all children but helpful for those who may show signs of dyslexia.

Many parents I have spoken to have been saying how they are struggling with juggling work and home schooling...and I am honestly not surprised! Not only that but the children are disengaged and getting bored. My top advice would be to keep it short and simple: reading, phonics and spelling are so valuable and easy to do quickly at home. Maths can be done through play and conversation whilst out and about. I’ll be sharing some quick easy ideas this week which require no planning or worksheets and minimal resources 👩🏻‍🏫

A little trick to help make spellings slightly more engaging 🙈... let them be the teacher! Give them the highlighters to correct your work and quickly identify any unknown spellings! Start with the high frequency words and common exception (tricky) words.

✏️ If your child is reluctant to write on paper or is complaining it is boring, try using:
Whiteboards
Chalks outside
Big wet paintbrush outside on the walls or floor
Magnetic letters
Tray with: glitter, foam, water, sand etc
Look, say, cover, write, check ✅

A quick easy game using individual sounds unknown to your child. I identified key unknown sounds using a phase 5 sound mat and drew them on a page. I wrote a selection of words using the identified sound spellings and jumbled them up. The child then had to identify the sounds using dots and dashes (I like to call them sausages and beans!) and match it to the correct sound spelling on the page. A really simple activity which is focusing on phonics, with minimal resources and preparation and so easy to do at home!
EXTENSION: hide the words around the house/ garden: Can you find all the words with the ‘au’ sound in? Can you use the words in sentences using chalks outside?