Guidance and Support for Parents
We believe very strongly in the partnership between home and school. Children can achieve well at school when their family and friends take an interest in their school and schoolwork. Getting involved in your child’s education, even in the simplest way, shows that you care about their school life. Often, the more supported a child feels at home, the more effectively she or he will learn at school. Whatever your lifestyle, or family situation, it is never too soon (or too late) to start helping a child develop a positive attitude towards learning.
We know it is difficult balancing, home, school and work with your little ones. However, it is so true that even five minutes a day can help your child. A great place is in the car whilst on a car journey. Children seem to love asking you all those questions and telling you things. You can use this opportunity to help them too!
Please find below a leaflet for parents of girls who begin their periods before this is covered in PSHE lessons at the end of Year 5:
Extended Support for our families
We know that times can be difficult for families in different ways and at different times. As a school we believe we want to support all our families. We have an open door policy where you can ask to speak to your child's class teacher or any member within the school. If we are not able to support you then there are a number of places we can sign post you to access support. These areas of support can be:
Within our school, locally, national helplines and online.
Family Support
Karen Allan is our family Support worker who works across both the Infant and the Junior School. Karen has a vast amount of experience supporting families over her career. If you would like to have an appointment with Karen please speak to the school office who can pass you her details.
School nursing team
They can support families by providing:
- The National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP) including your child’s school entry review and year six growth monitoring.
- Support and advice for healthy weight.
- Support for growth and development issues.
- Help if you are worried about your child's health.
- Individual care plans for children with health concerns requiring support in school.
- Support for children with complex health needs.
- Enuresis (bed wetting) advice.
- Child protection, working with young people, parents and other agencies.
- Health promotion, education and training.
- Healthy sleep routine information and advice.
- Emotional wellbeing support and help.
- Parent and young person drop-ins.
- Immunisations, including the HPV vaccination for year eight girls.
- Young person’s sexual health and contraceptive advice.
- Young person’s alcohol advice and support.
- Young person’s support to stop smoking.
- We work in Partnership with all agencies across Southampton.
Each school is part of a cluster which has a public health nurse lead. If you have any concerns about your child’s health or wellbeing you can:
- Contact us by phone or email.
- Speak to your child's school or college.
- Come along and see us at one of our drop-in sessions – ask at your child's school or college for details.
- Request that we come and see you.
- Talk to another health professional who will put you in contact with us.
- Contact your GP.
Public Health Nursing Service
Adelaide Health Centre
Millbrook
Southampton
SO16 4XE
Tel: 0300 123 6661
Email: SNHS.healthvisitingsouthampton.nhs.net or SNHS.publichealthnursingsouthampton.nhs.net
Local Support Services
No Limits is an award-winning, local, independent charity providing a unique combination of prevention, early intervention and crisis support to young people, based on a nationally evidenced model.
They provide information, advice, counselling and support through a range of services available ‘under one roof’.
You might be struggling emotionally and looking for strategies to help you cope. Or maybe you just need to talk to someone who understands the extra challenges you face and who can point you in the right direction to get the support you need for your family.
To help, the Listening Ear service offer 1-1 telephone appointments with a family support adviser for parent carers looking for a listening ear, reassurance and practical and emotional support.
Carers in Southampton supports parent carers to look after their own health and wellbeing. The support from the service includes:
- Help for carers to get in touch with the support and services they need
- An opportunity for carers to get together
- Keeping carers informed about relevant local events
- Letting carers know what their rights and entitlements are
- Enabling carers to have their say
- Offering support when concerned about changes in the life of the person they care for
- Helping carers draw up an 'emergency plan'
- Offering support through a dedicated telephone helpline
Contact: 023 8058 2387
The Buzz Network is a group for Southampton Parents/Carers of Children and young people with a disability or additional needs. It is funded by Southampton City Council who work closely with the Southampton Parent Carer Forum to ensure it is meeting the needs of families.
- Contact: Sam Wiseman - Short Breaks Officer
- E-mail: buzz.network@southampton.gov.uk
Welcome to the journey of Autism. We support families with their journey whether they are at the starting point or on the road. We offer 1-1 support to parent/carers with signposting to relevant agencies, advocacy at meetings for school, CAMHS, housing etc. We can support with form filling and paperwork. We also offer peer to peer matching as well as a group to meet others in similar situations. We promote to reduce isolation for families and hope to increase confidence and acceptance.
Please contact us with any support needs or more information:
Telephone: 07306 411022/07824 995295
Email: southamptonautismservice@gmail.com
Website: Southampton Autism Support Service
- YoungMinds - Parents helpline | Mental health help for your child.
- Mind - Parenting with a mental health problem.
- ECMHC - Early childhood mental health consultation.
We don’t use the phrase “Stranger Danger”, because the vast majority of strangers aren’t dangerous.
We teach children Street Sense instead. This approach gives them strategies to use if they feel uncomfortable or unsafe when out on their own or with friends. They use their Clever radars to help them learn when a situation feels safe or unsafe.
- Clever Never Goes - Child safety program.
Family Lives is a charity with over three decades of experience helping parents to deal with the changes that are a constant part of family life. We know that many people play active roles in raising children, from dads and mums, grandparents, stepparents and non-resident parents. Our role is to support all of you to achieve the best relationship possible with the children that you care about, as well as supporting parenting professionals. We recognise that the best way to support families is to provide professional, non-judgemental support and advice in a way that all members of the family can freely access. We provide this through our 24 hour helpline, extensive advice on our website, our email and live chat services, befriending services, and parenting/relationship support groups.
- Helpline: 0808 800 2222
- Empty Nest Syndrome
Concerned about Covid-19? You’re not alone. We’ve pooled practical advice on everything from family life to homeschooling. Down-to-earth parenting advice you can trust. We’re on hand to support parents, when you need us. Browse our articles on the most common parenting questions from our experts. Or talk one-to-one with a qualified parenting coach about anything that’s worrying you. It’s all free, and no topic is too big, small, or embarrassing.
Channel Mum is the friendliest and most honest community for mums everywhere. There is always a place for you here, because we know it takes a village to raise a child. You can also chat to other mums and professionals in the Channel Mum Support Group.
Home-Start volunteers help families with young children deal with the challenges they face. We support parents as they learn to cope, improve their confidence and build better lives for their children from birth to starting school. Families struggling with post-natal depression, isolation, physical health problems, bereavement and many other issues receive the support of a volunteer who will spend around two hours a week in a family’s home supporting them in the ways they need.
Parents' Information Service gives advice to parents or carers who may be concerned about the mental health or emotional well being of a child or young person.
- Helpline: 0808 802 5544
- Website: Young Minds
One Plus One is an online relationships resource offering information and support through an interactive website and online courses such as See It Differently designed to help couples see the impact of their arguments on children and learn how to do it differently, and Getting It Right for Children to help separated parents communicate without distressing their children.
Mums Meet Up connects mums locally and across the UK. It provides a quick and simple solution for mums to find others in their area, in the same boat, and to go on the journey of being a mum together - creating proper real life friendships for them and their children. Within just a few clicks mums are able to search their county and locality to find mums similar by age, age of child and circumstances (such as mums to be, working mums, single parent mums & more). Additionally, mums of children with disabilities are able to search by similar conditions, as well as location.
Dads House aim is to make sure children remain the priority after divorce, separation or bereavement. There are many ways in which we help dads and families, including offering emotional support, combating loneliness and isolation by being available to chat with Dads on the phone or in-person at our drop-in centre, breakfast clubs, law clinics, food banks and accommodation/housing. Our goal is to have drop-in centres around the UK run by Dads.
Single Parent Helpline: 0808 802 0925
One Parent Families/Gingerbread is the leading national charity working to help lone parents and their children.
Families Need Fathers help with shared parenting issues arising from relationship breakdown whether you’re the mum or dad, married or unmarried (Helpline: 0300 0300 363).
Grandparents Plus is the only national charity (England and Wales) dedicated to supporting kinship carers - grandparents and other relatives raising children who aren't able to live with their parents (Call: 0300 123 7015).
New Family Social promotes the care and upbringing of children by LGBT adopters and foster carers by allowing these families to socialise and share support in a safe environment. It helps to create a wide pool of adopters and foster carers by raising awareness and encouraging and supporting prospective adopters and carers, and by promoting their utilisation and fair treatment. It also works to advance public awareness and acceptance of these families in the interest of the growing number of children being cared for by them.
- Helpline: 020 3880 2683
Pink Parents offer a range of support services and social activities for all Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transsexual families, whether you are considering parenting, have grandchildren, are fostering or adopting or are an Uncle or Aunty, Pink Parents can offer you support and a place to meet new friends.
If you're a gay man or a lesbian, it doesn't mean you have to go through life without having a family of your own. The options available to potential gay and lesbian parents are wider now than ever before.
Being a Step Parent contains over 90 articles written by experts who continually update and add new content.
Spelling
Children have a set of words to learn at home each half term, and they are tested in the last week of the half term. The words can be found in the children's planners.
These activities can help children practice their spellings:
Reading
At Shirley Junior School we want our pupils to foster a love of reading, to be able to read confidently and enjoy reading. All children will be provided with an appropriate reading book for their ability by their class teacher. These books will either be Little Wandle books, Reading Planet books, or in upper school, books from our Year Group book shelves.
Each week we ask children to read at least 4 times at home, and to record their reflections on their reading in their planner at least twice a week.
See the bottom of this page for some ideas of how the reflections could look, copied from the planners with permission from the children.
Reading Reflections
Reflecting when reading is a technique which helps children to engage with texts, rather than just reading words on a page. As children become confident with their decoding (reading individual words without the need for sounding out), they begin to develop their comprehension skills (understanding the meaning of a text). By thinking deeply about a specific aspect of a book and reflect upon meaning, children increase their comprehension skills. Decoding and comprehension are needed as children develop into confident readers.
Reading reflections can take place before, after or during reading and can be written or drawn images.
Here are some ideas to inspire reading reflections:
- Meaning - Children identify words which they do not know the meaning of during reading. Using a dictionary, they discover the meaning of these unknown words and record these in their reflections.
- Prediction - Before or after reading, children think about what might happen next in a story. They record their thoughts in their reflections.
- Retrieval - After reading, children draw one of the characters or settings using information from the text.
- Inference - After or during reading, children select quotes to demonstrate a particular personality trait for a character or mood for a setting.
- Choices - After or during reading, children record words or phrases chosen by the author which they found effective as a reader.
- Structure - After reading, children comment on the layout of a text. They could discuss why an author has decided to include specific illustrations or images.
If your child really struggles to record their ideas, please speak to your child’s teacher, who will suggest alternatives, such as the child drawing a picture to show an event in the text, or a verbal discussion which you can record briefly for them. We would encourage children to write their own reflections, however, particularly in upper school, as children’s responses to something they have read can help inform an assessment of their writing, and also because it prepares them gently for their Key Stage 2 Reading test in year 6. Those children who achieve “age related standards with greater depth” in their year 6 reading outcome are most often children who have consistently read and reflected on their reading at home throughout their time with us.
Suggested Reading Lists
In the Upper school planners there are suggested reading lists for children who would like to broaden their reading.
Reading Incentives
Teachers check children’s planners in class once a week and look at the preceding 7 days of reading. We celebrate children who have taken the time to write their reflections by giving them house points, and we encourage children to engage more with their reading as much as possible.
Maths
As part of the new maths curriculum children are expected to know their 2 times table, 5 times table and square number facts by the end of year 3, and all tables up to 12 x 12 by the end of year 4. They need to be able to not only recall the tables facts, but know the corresponding division facts and apply their knowledge of times tables when calculating and problem solving.
Home Learning
At home, we ask children to practise their times tables using TT Rockstars. They each have a username and password and are expected to use the website weekly at home. Questions will be set every week by class teachers.
We also ask children to use Numbots for at least 10 minutes each week, to increase the fluency of addition and subtraction facts, so children can recall these facts automatically and use them to calculate accurately and efficiently. Childrens' login for Numbots is the same as their login for TT Rockstars.
Here are a few activities you can do at home to help children learn their times tables:
- Create a dominoes game together for each times table.
- Missing numbers patterns - take it in turns to write out the times table but leave a few missing spaces for the other player to fill in the numbers. e.g. 2,4,___,8,10___.
- Play multiplication bingo (one for the whole family) draw a 3x3 grid and fill in numbers from a specific times table and then someone calls out a number sentence e.g. 4x4 and the players have to work out the answer, if they have it they cross it off- first one to cross them all off is the winner!
- How quickly can the children complete the Times Table Grid Challenge below? Can they beat you?
- Write a multiplication rap and perform it to friends, family or even sing it in the car.
- Write it as a story, poem or a puppet show.
- Sing the tables to a well-known tune (many examples on Youtube).
‘Times Tables In Schools’ by Kate Robinson this is a great booklet on the Oxford Owl website full of tips and information on how to help your child learn their times tables.
Here are some useful websites that might help you:
- Topmarks - Interactive times tables games.
- Primary Homework Help - All areas of maths.
- BBC Teach - All areas of maths.
- Oxford Owl - Help with times tables, has some useful ‘top tips’, videos and activities for learning times tables
- Activity Village - Times tables worksheets.
- Dr. Mike's Math Games - Fun multiplication activities.
- BBC Guide - The five times table.
- BBC Guide - The ten times table.
- BBC Guide - Introduction to division.
Fun Maths Games
‘Underwater times tables’ here you can select the times table to practice and so you can choose 2, 5 and 10. Choose to practise any times table from 2x to 12x (there is no mixed option). For each times table there are two levels. The first level presents the questions in order, e.g. 1 x 2, 2 x 2, 3 x 2, which makes it a great game for when you are just starting to learn a new multiplication table. There is no timer. Questions go up to 12 x the chosen number. What2Learn.
The Cloud Game from eChalk lets you choose which times table to practise up to 12x or you can choose a mixture. The question appears at the top and you have to click the cloud with the correct answer on it. You will gain points depending on your speed and accuracy and will be rewarded with a fireworks display.
You can test your knowledge of 2x to 9x tables in the 'Spitfire' game from ICT Games. Use your arrow keys to steer the spitfire towards the answer, then press your space key to fire.
The above three examples of games can all be found here Maths Games have a look through with your child and they can choose the ones they like with your help and supervision to get them started.
At Top Marks, there are three games; ‘Hit the Button’, ‘Learn Your Tables’ and ‘Cross the Swamp’, where you can select the times table to practice. ‘Cross the Swamp’ is harder and will need your help to begin with as it includes division it is a great game to develop your child’s multiplication reasoning skills.
When playing the games you could get the whole family involved as you could play against one another and see who can get the best time!
Please note that Shirley Junior School does not have control over external content of these websites.
Home Learning
Screen-Free Activities
In case you would like some ideas for activities away from the screen, we have collected a few here:
Below is a list of challenges and fun activities that have been created by the subject leads in school for you to explore if you would like to undertake a different challenge! None of these are compulsory - just here to support in a wider range of things to do.
Maths
Art
Music
Science
Design
French
Geography
History
Computing
Insectlore - supply live caterpillars, and butterfly habitats, so you can watch caterpillars grow and turn into butterflies - a lovely activity for spring time.
You might also like to use some of these:
Your Child's Progress
How will my child’s progress be monitored at school?
Your child’s class teacher will regularly monitor the progress they are making at Shirley Junior School in a wide range of subject areas. Most regular assessment is made against the core areas of learning – Reading, Writing and Mathematics. Senior leaders, together with teachers, review progress of the whole year group several times through the year to check everyone is on course to make expected progress. They discuss with class teachers how to provide extra support for children who may not be making expected progress. This may be additional support from a teaching assistant, activities to do at home or extra practice in class.
How often is progress assessed?
Ongoing assessments happen each time a lesson is reviewed by class teachers. Children are given learning objectives for each lesson so they know what they are learning and how it fits with the wider subject or project.
Progress towards key objectives is recorded throughout the year for each subject. There are also key assessment points each term when children are assessed in Reading, Writing and Maths. These assessments are recorded on so that teachers can track progress from one term to another and from one year to another.
How can I know about my child’s progress?
Your child’s teacher will talk to you about the progress your child is making each time you meet for a parent/teacher meeting. These happen in the Autumn and Spring terms. In the Summer term, class teachers write a full report covering progress and attainment.
'Share my Learning' days are opportunities for you to come into school to see your child’s progress by looking through their books with them. You will be able to see from their learning objectives what they are focussing on, and you will be able to see in the following pieces of work how well they are demonstrating the taught skills. Your child should be able to talk about their own learning and will enjoy showing their work to you.
General Resources
- TheSchoolRun - Lots of free downloadable activity sheets
- Cosmic Yoga - Yoga, Mindfulness and Relaxation for kids.
- Khan Academy - Especially good for maths and computing for all ages but other subjects at Secondary level. Note this uses the U.S. grade system, but it's mostly common material.
- BBC Learning - This site is old and no longer updated and yet there's so much still available, from language learning to BBC Bitesize for revision. No TV licence required except for content on BBC iPlayer.
- Futurelearn - Free to access 100s of courses, only pay to upgrade if you need a certificate in your name (own account from age 14+ but younger learners can use a parent account).
- Seneca - For those revising at GCSE or A level, tons of free revision content. Paid access to higher level material.
- Open Learn - Free taster courses aimed at those considering Open University, but everyone can access it. Adult level, but some e.g. nature and environment courses could well be of interest to young people.
- Blockly - Learn computer programming skills. It's fun and free.
- Scratch - Creative computer programming.
- Ted Ed - All sorts of engaging educational videos.
- National Geographic Kids - Activities and quizzes for younger kids.
- Duolingo - Learn languages for free. Web or app.
- Mystery Science - Free science lessons.
- The Kids Should See This - Wide range of cool educational videos.
- Crash Course - Subject videos on You Tube.
- Crash Course Kids - As above for a younger audience.
- Crest Awards - Science awards you can complete from home.
- iDEA Awards - Digital enterprise award scheme you can complete online.
- Tinkercad - All kinds of making.
- Prodigy Maths - In U.S. grades, but good for UK Primary age.
- Cbeebies Radio - Listening activities for the younger ones.
- British Council - Resources for English language learning.
- Oxford Owl for Home - Lots of free resources for Primary age.
- Big History Project - Aimed at Secondary age. Multi disciplinary activities.
- Geography Games - World geography gaming!
- Blue Peter Badges - How to get Blue Peter badges.
- The Artful Parent - Good, free art activities.
- Red Ted Art - Easy arts and crafts for little ones.
- The Imagination Tree - Creative art and craft activities for the very youngest.
- Toy Theater - Educational online games.
- DK Find Out - Activities and quizzes.
- Maths Frame - Hundreds of interactive maths games, and lots of worksheets linked to the new curriculum. All resources are designed by an experienced KS2 teacher. New games and worksheets are added regularly.