Home Learning

As a follow up to Student-Led Interviews, here are some ideas that may be useful at home.

Year 3

Reading at home

Make reading fun

• Have fun singing along to karaoke songs or playing board games together
• Read to your child every day. You can use your first language
• Have a pile of reading materials available – library books (non-fiction and fiction), kids’ cookery books, simple timetables, newspapers and magazines, catalogues and any other reading that supports your child’s current interest
• Encourage your child to retell favourite stories or parts of stories in their own words. Play card games (you can make the cards yourself) and board games together.

Here are some tips -

When they are reading, your child will be working at solving unfamiliar words by themself. If they need help you could ask them to work their way across the word looking for things they know that might help. At this level, reading involves bringing everything they know together to solve problems and build understanding. If they can’t work it out – tell them and carry on with reading.

If you or your child starts to feel stressed by what they’re reading, take a break and read the rest of the story aloud yourself – keep it fun.

Make it real

• Reading makes more sense if your child can relate it to their own life. Help them to make connections between what they are reading and their own lives and experiences. For example, "that’s a funny story about a grandad – what does your grandad do that makes you laugh?", "We saw a big mountain in that book, what is our mountain called, and where did the name come from?"
• Look for opportunities for your child to read wherever you are – signs, advertising billboards, junk mail, recipes
• Show your child that reading is fun and important to you by letting them see you reading magazines, books, newspapers.

Find out together

• Visit the library often and help your child to choose books about topics that interest them
• Talk with older people or kaumātua in your family about interesting stories and people from your child’s past that you could find out more about together
• Ask your child questions (and support them to find the answers) to widen their reading experiences. For example, "What’s the quickest biscuit recipe?", "What time is the next bus to town?"
• Help your child with any words that they don’t understand – look them up together in the dictionary if you need to.

Writing at home

Writing for fun

• Talk about interesting words with your child, especially ones that are fun to say, like "hippopotamus" or "ringaringa". Short and simple games could involve finding how many little words can be found using the letters in the word ‘elephant’
• Work together on the small word games found in the children’s section (or word section) of the newspaper
• Make up a story or think of a pakiwaitara (legend) or traditional tale and act it out with costumes and music, write down the names of the characters or tïpuna (ancestors)
• Make up a play with your child. You could help your child to write the play down. Use puppets they design and make themselves to give a performance to the family

Here's a tip - keep writing fun and use any excuse to encourage your child to write about anything, any time.

Writing for a reason

• Writing for a real purpose can help your child want to write.For example, writing invitations, typing emails or writing and posting small notes
• Personalising notes by cutting, decorating, sticking or stamping are great skills for coordinating fingers and being creative. Postcards are a good size for a sentence or two and they are cheap to post, too
• Encourage your child to write what they need to pack for a holiday, dictate your shopping list to them, or get them to write a list of jobs that need doing.

Here's a tip - talk about what your child writes. Be interested. If you don’t understand what your child’s picture or story is about, ask them to explain.

Supporting your child's writing

• Talk to your child about what you are writing – let them see you making lists, writing emails, filling in forms
• Keep envelopes, banking slips, forms you don’t need so that your child can do their own ‘grown up’ writing
• Display your child’s writing where others can admire and read it
• Play with words. Find and discuss interesting new words – this can help increase the words your child uses when they write – look words up in the dictionary or on the Internet or talk to family and whānau members to learn the whakapapa (origins) of the words.

Here's a tip - be a great role model. Show your child that you write for all sorts of reasons. Let them see you enjoying writing. You can use your first language – this helps your child’s learning, too.

Mathematics at home

Talk together and have fun with numbers and patterns

Help your child to:

• find and connect numbers around your home and neighbourhood
• name the number that is 10 more or 10 less than before or after a number up to 100
• make patterns when counting in groups (skip counting) forwards and backwards, starting with different numbers (eg 13, 23, 33, 43…, …43, 33, 23, 13)
• try making different types of patterns by drumming, clapping, stamping, dancing or drawing patterns that repeat
• find out the ages of family or whānau members
• do addition and subtraction problems in their heads using facts to 20 eg 10 + 4, 15 – 7
• use groups of 10 that add to 100 eg 50 + 50, 30 + 70.

Here's a tip - being positive about mathematics is really important for your child’s learning – even if you didn’t enjoy it or do well at it yourself at school.

Use easy, everyday activities

Involve your child in:

• telling the time – o’clock, ½ past, ¼ to
• learning their 2, 5 and 10 times tables
• repeating and remembering telephone numbers they use a lot
• reading and sharing a book. Ask them questions about numbers in the story – use the number of pages as a way to practise number facts, too
• doing a shape and number search when you are reading a book or looking at art (like carvings and sculpture)
• helping at the supermarket – ask your child to get specific items (medium-sized tin of red beans, 2 litres of milk, 250g of mince).

Here's a tip - talk a lot to your child while you are doing things together.  Use the language that works best for you and your child.

For wet afternoons/school holidays/weekends

Get together with your child and:

• play games – board games, card games and do jigsaw puzzles
• make your own advertising pamphlet – cut out and sort images to go on it, make pretend money to spend
• grow seeds or sprouts – measure the growth each week
• fold and cut out paper dolls and other repeating shapes
• trace over repeating patterns (eg kōwhaiwhai patterns)
• go on a treasure hunt – make a map with clues and see who can get to the treasure first
• dance to music and sing/clap to favourite songs – make up a dance sequence each – can you copy each other?
• both take turns closing your eyes and describing how to get from the front gate to the kitchen, from the kitchen to their bedroom, from home to school
• do timed activities. You hold the watch and they count how many times they can bounce a ball in a minute
• play guess and check games (use different shaped jars) – how many beans, buttons, pegs in the container?

Here's a tip - the way your child is learning to solve mathematics problems may be different to when you were at school. Get them to show you how they do it and support them in their learning.

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Year 4

Reading at home

Read and talk together

• Get your child to tell you about what they are reading. Who is their favourite character and why? Is there anyone like that in your family? What do they think is going to happen? What have they learnt from their reading? Does it remind them of any of their own experiences?
• Help your child with any words they don’t understand – look them up together in the dictionary if you need to
• Read recipes, instructions, manuals, maps, diagrams, signs and emails. It will help your child to understand that words can be organised in different ways on a page, depending on what it’s for
• Read junk mail – your child could compare costs, make their own ‘advertisements’ by cutting up junk mail or come up with clever sentences for a product they like.

Here's a tip - talk a lot to your child while you are doing things together. Use the language that works best for you and your child.

Read with others

• If your child has chosen something to read that is too hard at the moment, take turns and read it together
• Reading to younger brothers or sisters, whānau or grandparents will give your child an opportunity to practise reading out loud
• Encourage other family members to read to and with your child – Aunty, Grandma, Koro
• Playing board games and card games is important, too
• Choose games that everyone wants to play – make them challenging, not too easy.

Here's some tips -

Keep the magic of listening to a good story alive by reading either made up, retold or read-aloud stories to your child – with lots of excitement through the use of your voice!

When they are reading, the most common difficulty your child is likely to have is working out the meaning of new words, phrases and expressions. To do this your child will use their knowledge of words and word patterns (eg prefixes, suffixes and root words) to help build meaning. You may need to remind your child to read back and forward for clues to help their understanding of what they are reading. Talk with your child about the meaning.

Take your child to the library

• Help your child to choose a variety of books they want to read
• Help them look for books about topics they’re learning about at school
• Get your child to choose a book that you can read to them (listening to you read helps them with their reading)
• Encourage your child to retell favourite stories or parts of stories in their own words.

Here's a tip - help your child link stories to their own life. Remind them about what they have done when a similar thing happens in the story.

Writing at home

Write for fun

• Writing about their heroes, sports events, tīpuna (ancestors), hobbies and interests helps your child to stay interested in what they are writing about
• Help your child to leave messages in sand on the beach, send a message in a bottle, do code crackers, word puzzles, crosswords, word finds – these are all fun to do together
• Make up a story or think of a pakiwaitara (legend) and act it out with costumes and music. Write down the names of the characters or tīpuna (ancestors)
• If you or someone in your family has a computer, encourage your child to use it to write, email and publish or print for pleasure (emails, birthday cards, poems, jokes, letters, pictures with captions). Or you could use a computer at the library.

Here's a tip - keep writing fun and use any excuse you can think of to encourage your child to write about anything, any time.

Talk about your child's writing

• Get your child to talk about their writing and share it
• Cut out words and letters to make stories, codes, poems, puzzles and more…
• Play word games together
• Play with words. Thinking of interesting words and discussing new ones can help increase the words your child uses when they write – look words up in the dictionary or on the Internet or talk with family/whānau to find out more about where the words come from.

Here's a tip - talk about what your child writes. Be interested. If you don’t understand what their story is about, ask them to tell you more about it. Use questions they will want to answer.

Write for a reason

• Get your child to help write the shopping list, invitation lists for family events, menus for special dinners, thank-you cards when someone does something nice
• Postcards are a good size for a sentence or two and they are cheap to post, too. Have a special place to keep your child’s writing at home (notice board, fridge, folder). You might frame a piece of writing and hang it up, too.

Here's a tip - be a great role model. Show your child that you write for all sorts of reasons. Let them see you enjoying writing. Write to them sometimes, too. You can use your first language – this helps your child’s learning, too.

Mathematics at home

Talk together and have fun with numbers and patterns

Help your child to:

• find and connect numbers around your home and neighbourhood – phone numbers, clocks, letterboxes, road signs, signs showing distance
• count forwards and backwards (starting with numbers like 998, 999, 1,000, 1,001, 1,002 then back again)
• make patterns when counting – forwards and backwards, starting with different numbers (73, 83, 93, 103… or 118, 108, 98, 88…)
• explore patterns through drumming, clapping, stamping, dancing find out the ages and birth dates of family and whānau see patterns in the numbers in their times tables.

Here's a tip - being positive about mathematics is really important for your child’s learning – even if you didn’t enjoy it or do well at it yourself at school.

Use easy, everyday activities

Involve your child in:

• making lunch or a meal for a party or a hui – make sandwiches in different shapes. Can they cut their sandwich in half? Can they cut the other sandwich in half a different way?
• helping at the supermarket – choose items to weigh – how many apples/bananas weigh a kilo? Look for the best buy between different makes of the same items (eg blocks of cheese) – check on the amount of sugar or salt per serving
• telling the time – o’clock, ½ , ¼ past
• deciding how much money you will need to put into the parking meter and what time you will need to be back before the meter expires
• thinking about how many telephone numbers they can remember – talk about what they do to help them remember the series of numbers
• reading together – help them look for numbers and mathematics ideas
• looking for shapes and numbers in newspapers, magazines, junk mail, art (like carvings and sculpture).

Here's a tip - mathematics is an important part of everyday life and there are lots of ways you can make it fun for your child.

For wet afternoons/school holidays/weekends

Get together with your child and:

• play card and board games that use guessing and checking
• look at junk mail – which is the best value? Ask your child what they would buy if they had $10/$100/$1,000 to spend
• do complicated jigsaw puzzles
• cook or bake – use measuring cups, spoons (½ and ¼ teaspoon) and scales
• collect boxes – undo and see if you can make them up again or make it into something else
• make paper darts and change the weight so that they fly differently, work out which is the best design
• create a repeating pattern (eg kōwhaiwhai patterns) to fill up a page or decorate a card
• play mathematics "I Spy" – something that is ½ a km away, something that has 5 parts hide something from each other and draw a map or hide several clues – can you follow the map or the clues and find it?
• do skipping ropes/elastics – how long will it take to jump 20 times?

Here's a tip - the way your child is learning to solve mathematics problems may be different to when you were at school. Get them to show you how they do it and support them in their learning.