What school work are you prioritising?

[aliceinsunderland44]

Just that really.

Dp and I are both still working full time at home. I have a 9 year old dc and finding it hard to fully engage with home schooling and work at the same time. So trying to prioritise the essentials.

Everyday he does handwriting practice as I noticed his writing getting sloppy after so long out of school. We try to write a paragraph everyday using key aspects of English - so write a paragraph in the present tense with lots of adjectives, that sort of thing. Also basic, generic maths so times tables, adding, division and subtraction. I gave up on the curriculum stuff school was setting because I could barely understand it myself never mind relay it to him!

Along with that there is lots of art work, drawing, crafting. And we do dip in and out of the non compulsory work that school is sending via an app. But this is often a lot more time consuming, the sort of thing I would have to sit with him and tackle which isn't really possible with work.

What do you consider to be the essentials?
I'm really worried about his progress.

The one thing that jumps out to me is you don't mention reading. If it's not already happening, I would allow time for him to chill out with some reading material.

As a teacher I’d say daily maths fluency and reading as a minimum. And then writing and the other subjects (in rotation maybe if you can’t do them all). Daily handwriting sounds sensible as well though.

Oh sorry yeah he does do leisure reading too but not as much as I'd like. I try to sell it to him as a treat but he says he'd rather have his iPad

With my 9 year old she does guided reading, english and maths and can do other stuff if she wants but i don't force it.

Our school send out set work for the week and the aim is to get through as much of it as possible. My DS is year 5 so every day I make sure he does maths, spellings, reading and they are set an English project for the week so I make sure he spends enough time on that daily so it is done ready for Friday. We also have stuff that we do if we have time or if he wants to but as a bare minimum we do the above, usually around 3 hours a day which is only half of his school hours but I am also working from home.

Please don’t be concerned about progress OP there are many children not doing anything. The teachers will hopefully consolidate the work they have been doing at home to make sure everyone is at the same stage when they return. One of the maths topics we have been working on had not been covered in class so the teacher sent a reassuring email that we were to have a go and not worry if they didn’t get it as they would be revisiting it at the start of year 6 and they have also sent out different, easier worksheets to do to consolidate areas that had been covered in class for if the children were stressing about the new topic.

We're prioritising daily exercise and reading, and at least weekly zoom calls with friends. That's it.
To me, it's most important they stay fit and happy and healthy and can keep sociable.

I know they should be doing writing and maths, and other stuff. But I can't do it so I've given up.

Does school not set work?

We are following the weekly scheme of work. We have:
*maths - TT Rockstars and a task e.g 3 digit addition, read the time, grid
multiplication

• English - read for 15 minutes while we listen, writing, comprehension, weekly spelling words
• Topic work - either tied into the English, Art or Geography
• Some PSHE, bit of history, some French

We do pretty much all of it, but if I had to choose, I'd go for Maths, including Timetables, English including reading and spelling and then the extras that we do such as:
exercise, gardening, baking and cooking

DS also gets through his work in about 2 hours each day, so while it's fun for no one, it's not that horrendous either.

We're just doing reading and maths. Writing is such a battle and I reckon he'll catch up over the next eight years as long as he keeps up his reading and builds his vocabulary.

Reading, writing and maths every day. If I'm feeling short of time then I try to combine some of tge topic work eg we will find an ebook about the topic, read it and get dd to write 3 things that she remembers.

Y1 and Y3 here, trying to do reading, handwriting, maths and English daily with anything else being a bonus if we get it done.

We are learning tables and reading. Telling the time as well.
Mine is 9 too and the interesting thing about home ed is that you can see where they are struggling and concentrate on that.
She had pages of fractions to do but it was clear she didnt get it so we have gone back to basics.
I use Oak Academy and Carol Vordaman Maths Factor when i need to do a zoom or skype meeting. They are free and excellent and gives her some teaching experience.

I should have added that their mental health comes first. If a child is struggling I don’t think they should be forced to do anything, obviously.

We are doing English, maths and reading with our year 5 DC. For English I can highly recommend English with Holly on YouTube at 11 am. Holly is an English tutor and does brilliant sessions ranging from Shakespeare, to spellathons and grammar aimed mainly at KS2 children. She has firmly become part of our home school routine and makes a welcome change to worksheets sent from school or downloaded from educational websites.
In Maths we follow the sessions on whiterosemaths as set by our school, they have short videos with explanations and worksheets to go with it.

Maths! It has right and wrong answers so I have found easier to “teach”..I don’t know whether anything he writes is what you would expect from an eight year old or not so it seems a bit of a waste of time whereas maths we can make progress with. He does read a lot too.

My seven year old LOVES MathSeeds and does one acorn every morning. I’m really impressed with it and I can see the areas he is struggling so we have gone over money and change and whilst he’s still not 100% we’re nearly there with it. He also really enjoys Miss Emms at Oak Academy and we do her English lesson after lunch each week day. We do 15 spellings a day, some reading and something from the work the school sets plus a daily journal. Probably amounts to 3-4 hours of worn a day.

*work

Ds has a jar with the following in:
-30 minutes independent reading
-15 minutes Times Tables Rockstars
'15 minutes handwriting (usually somerhing Harry Potter related

• Maths with Mam (can be 20 minutes, can last an hour if we get into it with games etc)
• English. We all dread this the most. I'm mainly setting Harry Potter related description writing / comprehension. Usually maybe 40 minutes

We're both wfh at the minute so he sits with us. I don't force him to do the whole jar but he gets a reward (tablet time or a blast on Fifa with his pals) if he does.

He usually flits in and out of doing work and playing. Sometimes his reading will go on for ages and I'm happy to not interrupt him. He's 8.

DS is in Year 6, his school are setting lots of work. We do English and Maths as a minimum, and science and humanities if we have the time and inclination. We don’t do the art stuff, DS finds that too stressful.

Ds is in Y6, we’re concentrating on Maths and English mainly everyday, I’ve really got to push him to do those, so anything else i can get him to do is a bonus. If I can I try & get him to do the reading and science tasks, which are set weekly.

We do
Reading (read about a book a week)
Comprehension a week
Tt rockstars 1k points
Mathletics
Cgp books
Bbc bitesize
Telling the time
We've completed all the set handwriting.
Ive got behind on grammar
Havent done enough optional stuff.

She is 8. (Telling the time is quite complicated)

My DD is 8 and in Y3. We have been watching Bitesize daily, reading, learning timestables, spelling, some pages in her Maths no problem workbook, Bitesize English and Twinkl worksheets. Also using the online platforms school has - TT Rockstars, My Maths, Mathsfactor and Bug Club as well as some of the Bitesize games. We have also been learning about WW2 using books, clips on BBC Teach and Twinkl worksheets. She has done a few Science experiments with a kids' science kit, lots of drawing and colouring, arts and crafts, Minecraft and Animal Jam, baking, playing in the garden and with toys and we've been watching Mallory Towers together!

TLDR - Academically - I am prioritising reading, spelling and times tables.

Maths (we are doing more advanced stuff from mathseeds as the Whiterose stuff is too basic even for my v average DD; her twin brother would be bored stupid with that) but it’s mostly worksheets and some long addition and subtraction which we make up for them with themes (eg subtracting from 1000, 2009, 9000; adding 100+1; 100+11 etc to see the patterns)

English. I agree keeping up some writing is key and HARD. we do silly stuff like design your own monster; draw maps; do treasure hunts for mummy and daddy. Also try and do one or two of the longer tasks set by school. Some are good and some are really rubbish. We also have lots of workbooks like CPG and scholastic etc which are useful for eg suffixes and commas etc.

The rest is pretty af hoc - and we have childcare! So baking/gardening/doing helpful stuff that takes time like sweeping the patio/ watering seedlings carefully.

Jo wicks too. I have a little crush on him although it’s a bit like doing PT with my PA 😄

Ds is 9. We're trying to do the BBC stuff every day plus we read with him every night and he reads for pleasure in bed.