Tag: Rachel Law

New GCSEs in English and maths

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New GCSEs
in English and Maths.

If your child is in year 9 now, they’ll be starting their
new GCSEs in maths, English language and English in Sept 15. It will be
assessed by external exams at the end of the 2 year course in the summer of 2017,
featuring the new 9 to 1 (high to low) grading system.
The other exams will be added in Sept 16, for examination
in Summer 2018, so the current year 8s will be the first to experience the new
exams for the majority of the subjects.

What’s happening to maths?


The new maths GCSE will be more ‘challenging’ with more emphasis
on problem solving. There will be new topics, such as ratio and proportion and
students will be expected to learn mathematical formulas by heart.


The
syllabus will feature around a third more content and will require pupils to
answer “real world problems”, including financial mathematics, to ensure the
area is covered in greater depth.

And English?


Twenty per cent of marks for written exams will be allocated to
accurate spelling, punctuation and grammar in the new English language GCSE
and, while there will be no set texts, students will be expected to read
widely.


English
literature, which will no longer be compulsory, will see students having to
tackle an unseen text and will require pupils to study at least one Shakespeare
play, a Victorian novel and modern British fiction or drama since 1914.
Poetry is also set to become a bigger
part of the GCSE syllabus from 2015, with pupils required to study at
least 15 poems by at least five different poets.
The link below
shows comparison of new to old grades.
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/377768/2014-09-12-grading-the-new-gcses-in.pdf

Does-my-child-have-Dyscalculia?

Posted on by Effie Herdman
Tutor My Kids Tutor working with child

Some children have difficulty in understanding maths because of gaps in their understanding; others because they have specific difficulties in grasping number concepts.

Gaps in learning can occur for all sorts of reasons – illness, lack of attention one day etc, which make it difficult for knowledge to be added to it, due to the sequential nature of maths. For example, if you know your number bonds to 10 (which combinations of 2 numbers make 10) it’s really easy to then link this to 20 (19 +1, 3 +17) and 100 (30+70). If the number bonds are missing, it’s incredibly hard to pick up the more advanced learning.
 

However, some children have specific difficulties in learning maths. There is a cluster of issues that can point to dyscalculia – a specific difficulty in learning maths:

These include difficulties in recognising patterns in maths (e.g. the end 5 and 0 digits in the 5 times table), how big a number is (e.g. £20 can be seen as smaller than £15.72 because it has fewer digits), telling the time, ability to estimate logically (can show as ‘wild’ estimates that vary hugely),strategies to solve problems that are immature (e.g. older primary children sharing using pictures or cubes when written methods would be more usual).
One key indicator can be how instantly children can say how many objects there are. (This is age dependent, but most year 5 or 6 children would be able to look at 5 counters and say that there are 5 without counting. This is called subitising.) If a child (or adult) cannot do instantly without counting them, it can be part of the cluster of behaviours that points to dyscalculia.
 
Helping children overcome missing gaps and/or dyscalculia needs specific teaching to help them link maths ideas to their written form; it is hugely helped by 1 to 1 tutoring by a maths tutor, maths teacher or school intervention.

If you would like to discuss any of these issues, please contact Rachel Law on 01223 858421 or by email hello@tutormykids.co.uk

For more information on Dyscalculia screening, click the link.

 

Gove is like Mamite

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Gove
is like marmite.

People either love or hate him.

I can’t agree that knocking our teachers constantly has
helped the education system any, but I do support the need for our children to
be able to spell, write grammatically correct sentences and be numerate.

This term, I’ve seen some great teaching of grammar and
spelling in our local primary schools. Previously, it tends to have been taught
as an add-on, but increasingly, it’s been taught as a main focus. It’s stuff
like correct use of apostrophes – the teachers’ staff room, I’d, won’t. I’ve
lost track the number of times I’ve seen was’ent or similar. It’s about how
it’s taught – if children understand that the apostrophe is showing missing
letters and what it’s a shortening of – it’s so much easier for children to get
it right.

Punctuation can catch children out too – commas often
confuse children and sorting out ways to help them is really useful. Getting
children to work out in a sentence which is the main clause and which is added
information helps to ensure that commas are in the right place. e.g. The boy
walked along the road, towards the swimming pool.  The boy walked along the road is the main
clause; towards the swimming pool the additional information.

Many children find spelling difficult. Learning spellings
by heart is hugely useful, but more so is spelling patterns and looking at
where the difficulties lie. Are there letters we don’t sound – like
environment?

It’s great to see our children being more prepared for
the world of work.

New UK Primary Curriculum from September – Why year F and year 4 children will be most affected.

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From September this year, there will be a new curriculum in
our schools. In a nutshell, they aim to take children to a more advanced
stage earlier in their school career than in recent years. 

e.g. telling the time in 5 minute increments moves from year 3 to 2, knowing times tables to 12 x 12 (previously 10 x 10) and the associated division facts by the end of year 4, not the end of year 6. In addition there are new areas introduced such as cube numbers (33) and dividing fractions. The same pattern is repeated with literacy.

The new literacy curriculum calls for a much stronger
phonics and spelling base – with specified spelling lists, again at an earlier
age than before. There is more focus on homophones (words that sound alike but
are spelt differently) e.g., wear and where. The use of dictionaries to look up
words that children have read and not understood is strongly recommended. A more
detailed knowledge of grammar is expected too, with children being taught to
understand other forms of verbs and their effect in writing– such as the perfect
and modal forms of verbs. These are not the only changes.


Those children who
are entering year 2 and year 6 is September will continue to be taught the old
curriculum and tested on it. The other year groups will be taught the new
curriculum. The biggest impact will be on the current year F and year 4 – year 1
and year 5 from September who will face the new tests with the least time to
prepare for these changes.


For more information please contact Rachel Law at Tutor My Kids
www,tutormykids.co.uk
hello@tutormykids.co.uk
01223 858123


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Can home tuition help behaviour in the classroom?

Poor behaviour in the classroom can have many causes, such as circumstances at home such as bereavement, family separation, changes in work patterns etc. It can also be caused or at least made worse by a poor match of school work to your child’s abilities.

If the work is too hard for your child they will be unable to get on with it and this may result in poor behaviour in the classroom. If the work is too easy, your child may quickly become disengaged because they’ve finished it and/or it represented little challenge.

Pressures on schools to ‘deliver’ the curriculum are huge at the moment, with expectations that children progress. Getting progress for children is of course what we all want, but sometimes this means that teachers are not able to spend enough time on a subject for all the children to become secure on an area. This is especially apparent with the maths curriculum. Classes tend to move on, even if some children have not understood all they need to.

Maths is often more problematic because it learnt in a sequential manner; your child needs to understand adding before they can understand that multiplication is repeated addition. Maths knowledge is built upon a previous knowledge – like a wall. If the previous knowledge is not well understood the wall will never stand up well.

One of our teachers is currently helping a boy who has spent a lot of time out of the classroom due to behavioural issues. He’s severely dyslexic and the work that he was attempting was too hard for him. School are now catering for his needs much more effectively and our tutor is helping him to catch up the missed work.

Tutor My Kids organises tuition in your home, by qualified teachers with UK curriculum experience to fill in the gaps in your child’s knowledge and support their work at school.

Please get in touch with Rachel Law on 01223 858421 or via the website www.tutormykids.co.uk for a free, friendly and informal discussion.

For help and practical support with behavioural issues, please contact Julie Heginbottom, In Safe Hands via www.in-safe-hands.co.uk or on 07885 724662

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Teenagers will have to keep
studying GCSE English and maths until they get a C grade.

The
government has announced plans that teenagers who fail to get a ‘C’ grade in
their English or maths GCSE will need to re-sit them.

At Tutor My
Kids, we find that maths tuition is really effective and can make a big
difference in a short period of time. Teenagers don’t want to ask questions in
class in front of their peers, either because they’re labelled as ‘geeks’ or
they feel that they should know and their peers will judge them for being ‘stupid’.
1-to-1 tuition enables teenagers to ask the questions they need to know, build
up subject knowledge and exam technique.

The big
outcome for these teenagers is CONFIDENCE. Kids that thought they couldn’t do
maths are now finding out that they can.

For more
information please call Rachel Law on 01223 858421 or visit www.tutormykids.co.uk

The link
below gives more information from the BBC on the news story:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-23925033

Parental-Consultations-What-to-ask

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What to ask the teachers

Autumn term consultations are more often more about more pastoral issues, such as settling in, friendship issues, especially at primary school.
It is worth asking, at this point in the year, how your child is doing academically, especially if their report from the previous academic year in July was showing them behind where they could or should be, for their age.
At Tutor My Kids, we have had some conversations with parents where their first consultation of the year was very positive and they were only aware of problems when the July reports came out. It’s much easier to tackle these things earlier in the year, if possible.

What school can do to help

School, of course, has a responsibility to do the best for your child, but within a class of 30, it can be difficult to give your child the individual attention they need. School can set differentiated work (work set at the right level for your child) in class.  Ask if they can work with a teaching assistant. Are there intervention groups that they can join?

What can I do at home?

And, of course, equally importantly, ask what you can do at home to help. It’s amazing what 5 or 10 mins a day can achieve with reading, times table practice, etc.

Many parents struggle to find the time and/or don’t have the skills needed to support their children at home. Tutor My Kids provides teachers who work as private tutors in Ely, Cambridge, Huntington and Newmarket. Take a look at How much difference can an hour a week really make?

Please contact Rachel Law on 01223 858421 for email Rachel for a confidential chat about private tuition.

New Spelling and Grammar Test for Year 6s

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www.tutormykids.co.uk


Year
6 to be Tested on Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar.


For the first time, year 6 pupils will be sitting
the new SPAG (Spelling, Punctuation And Grammar) test in May 2013.

The new test is a significant departure from current
practice, whereby ‘phonetically plausible’ spellings have been acceptable for
SATs; those that sound right, e.g. thort for thought.

Children will be expected to demonstrate the correct
usage of a wide variety of punctuation, sentence structure and grammatical
features, as well as accurate spelling.

This will impact year 5 and 6 the most, as the test
is new this year and they will have less time to incorporate this new approach.
Other year groups will naturally have more time to ensure this knowledge and
understanding is in place before year 6.

The following links provide more information. The second link shows exemplar  questions.

Many parents contact Tutor My Kids when their children are in year 5 or 6 looking for a home tutor in Cambridgeshire to help their children in the lead-up to SATS. 

Primary Ideas: The Angles Roller Coaster

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Take a look at this.  It’s a great example of how to help your children at home.

Primary Ideas: The Angles Roller Coaster: We believe that to give learning purpose and ignite interest it’s important to link learning to real life situations. We have demonstrated …

Primary Ideas: The Angles Roller Coaster

Posted on by

Take a look at this.  It’s a great example of how to help your children at home.

Primary Ideas: The Angles Roller Coaster: We believe that to give learning purpose and ignite interest it’s important to link learning to real life situations. We have demonstrated …