If you are supporting your own children at home with their learning as we await for news on full school returns, we hope you find the resources and ideas below helpful. They should help freshen things up if you have already been schooling your child from home for some time, or if you want to use the half term to get your learners back on track and into a routine before the big return to school. These resources should also come in handy if you are thinking about becoming a tutor – perhaps for the first time, or perhaps returning to education and in need of a little refresher on what’s out there.
Below we have picked out three of the best springboards to get you on the right track with your home learning sessions:
BBC bitesize has been around for a long time. The reason they continue to be such a popular resource is that they always keep it fresh by continuously updating their provision with colourful and engaging learning activities. The latest ‘Lockdown Learning’ section of their site is super child-friendly, empowering learners to explore and take control of their own learning. With the inclusion of fun interactive games, and even guest appearances such as a PE lesson from Marcus Rashford as part of their ‘celebrity supply teacher’ range, there is lots of scope to boost motivation here. Bitesize could be used as a reward for completing the main learning objectives and lessons planned for the week. Having a set routine throughout Monday – Thursday in the week incorporating the core subjects, before children earn some ‘choose time’ on Bitesize on a Friday where they take charge and pick areas they’d like to explore would be a really positive structure. Similarly, the 5 minute games could be little end of the day treats to be earnt for concentrating and working hard on lessons throughout the day.
This would be a brilliant first place to look at with your child, although we’d recommend paying close attention to the areas that they are confident with as well as those they could do with support on. It would be extra helpful for your child to then explore these trickier areas using resources and activities from other sources to keep it fresh. For example…
Home Learning Virtual School
The Oak National Academy – This is an excellent starting point. Funded by the government, the Oak National Academy website is brimming with sequences of lessons, instructional videos, video slideshows and activities made by teachers and organised by year group and subject. Tutors could use this as a basis for planning a topic or sequence of lessons. Parents could even use the lesson videos and ‘co teach’ with the virtual teacher. They are brilliant as they offer a clear layout of the type of learning objectives and activities students would be expected to be able to achieve depending on year group. This gives you the confidence and peace of mind that you are pitching your home learning sessions at the correct level. If content is too challenging (or not challenging enough!) then you have the option to jump up or down a year group accordingly.
White Rose Maths has a great selection of home learning resources. They are a brilliant springboard if you feel you are getting stuck in a bit of a rut with repetitive maths worksheets for your child, as they follow a problem solving based approach and demonstrate clear progression in challenge level through their sequence of activities. They are organised into year and their visual guides are great for getting a clear idea of how an activity would work with your child when planning ahead before a learning session.
Tutors are likely to want to dig into their resources and going by age group to match the ability of their students. These make an excellent starting point to creating your own tailored lessons, with lots of inspiration to be gained from the varied approach they take to including varied activity types for each topic area.
Well, there you have it – three of the richest sources of free home learning resources out there at the moment. We wish you the very best with supporting your student or own children at home.
