Reading at Home 

At HPJS we know that the skill of reading is essential to success. We work hard with parents to build skills with word reading, comprehension and stamina. The single most valuable activity that you can do to help your child to improve their reading is to read at home with your child every day - at least 5 times per week. This, beyond all else, will make your child a better reader. They will, of course, be practising at school as well, but that individual practise time (only 10-20 minutes daily) is what makes all the difference. Children should record each time they read at home in their reading diary. Their reading diary needs to be brought into school daily and will be checked by an adult.

All reading at home is checked and counted and children will receive the following awards: 

Bronze book worm     50 reads in total
Silver book worm        150 reads in total
Gold book worm         250 reads in total 

TT Rockstars 

Maths is a big subject and we appreciate there’s more to it than times tables and there’s more to times tables than learning them off by heart. However, a lot of the rich, interesting maths is all about the multiplicative relationships and these are hard to fully grasp without fluent recall of the tables. For that reason, learning the tables is fundamental and we are working hard to equip our children with fluent recall of their times tables.
When it comes to times tables, speed and accuracy are important – the more facts your child remembers, the easier it is for them to do harder calculations. Times Table Rock Stars is a fun and challenging programme designed to help students master the times tables. To be a Times Table Rock Star you need to answer any multiplication fact up to 12×12 in less than 3 seconds! 

We therefore would like children to be completing TT Rockstars as homework.

All children have a TT Rockstars log on. They should have a copy of these details at school and at home. Children are to access TT Rockstars 4 times a week and they should play in the Garage or Arena game modes for at least 3 minutes, where they will receive the questions teachers have scheduled. 

Garage – single player - against the clock set by class teacher.
Arena – multi player – times tables set by class teacher against other players

After this, children are free to choose from any of the four game types.

If children are unable to access TT Rockstars at home for any reason, class teachers will provide them paper copies of the tables they are currently practising to complete. Teachers will keep track of children’s progress by checking the weekly homework has been completed and children will complete checks every two weeks in order to track their progress.