Addition to local school

[LennySmith]

Hi everyone.

We currently live abroad and my children go to local schools. In the future we will come back to the UK and they will continue in normal UK schools. I don't know when this will happen.

At some point it has come to my attention that my childrens' curriculum is VERY different from British. I was actually quite shocked how different. As my children will have to change to the more difficult UK school in the future, aside from the fact they are quite bored and unstimulated in their local school, I feel I need to keep them in line with Brritish education so that it is not too much of a shock when they come back.

My question is - is there a way to acquire tasks from a British school during the year of what children study in their UK schools? Any books, resources to get or subscribe to as a rolling task type mail list or something?

Any advice on this please? Obviously the less time I spend on this myself (apart from printing sheets with tasks)) the better.

Thanks a lot

[BackforGood]

This is the National Curriculum

I don't know how old your dc are.
In England, you start Year 1 the beginning of September after you have turned 5
(so year 2 the September after you turn 6, etc., etc.)

[1busybee]

There are a good set of books by cgp that provide a set of text and questions books for different areas and levels of the national curriculum.

[BringOnTheScience]

Twinkl (note no final letter e) is a resources website used by many primary teachers. An individual subscription might be worthwhile for year-by-year activities & worksheets.
www.twinkl.co.uk

[LennySmith]

He is in the grade equal by age to Year 2 in England. I browsed the Curriculum and became even more shocked O_O

Thanks for the CGP advice, that seems like what we need.

Also, what is the usual practice in this case - my local school has French as a foreign language, but my son is now studying Spanish. If he moves back at the age of 9 or 10, what will the school have to do? Drill him on intensive French and drop Spanish? Or they can usually provide classes instead of their main foreign language?

Thanks a lot!

[PermanentlyFrizzyHairBall]

Honestly I wouldn't worry too much about the foreign language - yes he'll be behind and need to catch up but language in UK schools isn't very advanced. My DS is in Y2 and though he's covered things like colours and numbers to 20 and some food he couldn't remember any of the words if you asked him. Watching a few educational french youtube videos will be enough.

If he's only in Y2 he won't be so far behind. For maths - mainly just adding, subtracting, basic multiplication and division (although not everyone in the class understands this well yet). Greater than or equal to. Look for any KS1 workbook online - my nephew likes gold stars for example. The curriculum tends to look a lot more formal than what they're actually doing in class - especially for English!

In other countries they tend to start reading and writing later but catch up fairly quickly so the gap will reduce over time.

What's his reading like now? If he can already read just keep going with that and practise his writing. If not get onto jolly phonics and with a bit of practise he'll soon catch up.

[viques]

Very few primary schools offer more than one mfl so there is likely to be little possibility of offering alternative classes in Spanish. However since learning a foreign language is not I'm afraid taken to any great depth in most primary schools I imagine that he will have little difficulty in slotting in to the French lessons. It would probably be worth checking out whether local secondary schools offer Spanish , that might be a factor for you to consider when he transfers to secondary school.

[user789653241]

This website follows English NC, and you can practice up to 10 question(I think) a day for free without subscribing.
uk.ixl.com/

I wouldn't worry too much about MFL, they do bare minimum at ours.
If you are worried, you can try sites like this. My ds covered more than he learned at school over few years in about few months.
www.duolingo.com/

[rosablue]

Also different schools do different mfl - my dc's school do french whereas the next primary school along does german.

When they transfer to secondary school, they start from the beginning again - in ds1's case they spent the first half term trying out French, Spanish and German, then had to rank them in order of which they like best, which is the one that they then go on to study for GCSE (and you cross your fingers and hope you get your first choice!). He chose German despite the fact that he had done french and a bit of Spanish previously...

[LennySmith]

well he reads and counts and adds and all that, but we will probably stay here for 3-4 years, I'm worried that the gap will increase with the years.

For instance, will they start learning times tables in Year 2 in England?

I was present at one of the lessons of my son and the teacher asked can you count to 20? All said yes, and she replied oh, that's very advanced for 6 year olds!!! OMG really?

By the way any apps recommendations will be appreciated.

Thanks a lot everyone.

[shouldwestayorshouldwego]

I was present at one of the lessons of my son and the teacher asked can you count to 20? All said yes, and she replied oh, that's very advanced for 6 year olds!!!

That could just be something she says to the class though as she can't exactly say 'well that's totally average and lots of children your age can do their 2 times tables.'

Do remember too that although that might be the national curriculum expectations, not every child in every class will be meeting those expectations. You clearly don't want him to be behind, but children do all learn at a different pace and you don't want him to be too far ahead in class for three or four years otherwise he will be really bored.

Could you find someone who is familiar with the local school system where you are and pay for a session to sit down with the ?English National Curriculum and work out which areas would need addressing at the time when you plan to come back. So say you plan to come back in year 5 when he is 9/10 if the English curriculum covers 2x 5x and 10x in yr 2, 3x 4x 6x in year 3 and 7x 8x and 9x in year 4 then as long as he has covered up to 10x by the end of year 4 it won't matter if his school doesn't do them until yr4. I would try to tease out which areas won't be covered at all by the time he comes to the UK. For example I doubt that other educational systems have the same obsession with knowing the grammatical terms because knowing what a fronted adverbial clause is doesn't really help you in life in the same way as a knowledge of the times tables.

[LennySmith]

I'm afraid they don't even know yet what times tables are!!!

It is the nice method you're offering but I also have 2 younger children so I'd rather study stuff as we go at the moment not to be overwhelmed later with all of them trying to cover gaps.

I found the CGP books to be very nice and it is easy to dose stuff with them.

Thanks!!!

[PermanentlyFrizzyHairBall]

Yes in Y2 they will be learning times tables.
My eldest has just started Y2 and yesterday in maths the top table were doing things like 163 + something = 1000
what is the something? The lower tables were doing similiar but with smaller numbers e.g. up to 20.

Google KS1 sats to see what they're expected to be able to do by the end of the year.

you could look at online resources such as mathletics, rock star maths, skoolbo.

[MissWimpyDimple]

They are big on "number bonds", so as PP said - what two numbers make 10, 100 etc etc.

That then moves on to times tables and they are basically expected to know them till 12 by around year 4/5.

By year 6 it's algebra and area and more complicated division and multiplication, including fractions etc.

[LennySmith]

OMG 1000 is sooooo far away from our reality at the moment O_O

Are they supposed to substract that vertically? Why oh whyyyyyyy we didn't go to a UK school ))))))

[PermanentlyFrizzyHairBall]

Lenny - honestly don't worry not everyone in the class is doing numbers up to 1000. I think you're right to be thinking about catching your children up but there is absolutely no need to panic. Most in my son's Y2 class don't know their times tables - about half of them could work them out for the lower numbers by successively adding. In terms of division at school they're doing really basic sharing with the help of pictures e.g. share 12 toys between three children. (Many children are capable of more complicated stuff but that's the level expected at school.)

They build up from number bonds so kids will start with 3 + something = 10 etc. They then look at place value so 134 = 1 x 100 + 3 x 10 + 4 x 1 etc. so they can then answer 30 + something =100 because they know 3 + something = 10 if you see what I mean.

If you do a little bit a day at home your children will be easily caught up by the end of the year.