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Starting school: Starting secondary school

Practical parent's guide to help your child get the best start at secondary school, including a free printable 'starting secondary school guide'.

Childrens dictionaries

A dictionary and thesaurus at home and at school are vital tools in developing and enriching children’s language as well as helping to improve their spelling, but how do you choose one at the right level for your child?

Bond SATs Skills

Prepare your children for the 2016 SATs with Bond SATs Skills, from the No.1 for exam success

Activity kits and flashcards

Find out about activity kits and flashcards from Oxford University Press, designed to help your child develop the skills they need for reading at primary school, and SATs.

Kids' activities

Fun educational games for young children to help develop maths and literacy skills from Oxford University Press. Includes colouring in sheets for Biff, Chip and Kipper.

Oxford colouring in

Free fun activities for children. Colour in your child’s favourite Oxford Reading Tree characters including Biff, Chip, Kipper, Floppy and more.

Oxford activity sheets

Fun activity sheets from Oxford University Press.

Reading at primary school

A child’s ‘reading journey’ begins with ‘learning to read’ and moves on into ‘reading to learn’. This advice will help you to understand how reading is taught and developed.

Maths at primary school

As you might expect, mathematics is a very important subject at primary school. It is usually taught in specific lessons, but children practise and use their maths throughout the school day. This advice will help you to make sense of the different terminology used and understand how maths is taught.

Geography at primary school

Geography has developed from factual learning and is now a brilliant way of developing young children’s natural fascination for the world around them. Rather than long lists of dry and boring facts, today’s primary school project-based approach breathes life into geography that will remain with children for the rest of their lives.

Writing at primary school

Learning to write is one of the most important things that a child at primary school will learn. Children use their writing in almost all other subjects of the curriculum. Good writing also gives children a voice to share their ideas with the world.

Grammar and punctuation at primary school

At the end of primary school, every child will sit a Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling test (often called the GPS test or SPaG test). Having a good understanding of grammar is helpful for children’s writing, allowing them build words into sentences that communicate exactly what they want to say.

Assessment at primary school

Find out how children are assessed at primary school and what you can do to support them.

KS1 SATs

The National Curriculum tests or SATs can seem like a daunting part of your child’s education, but if you know what to expect, they don’t need to be scary for you or your child!

Learning at home

Find out how you can support your child's learning through primary school to give them the best start, with fun ideas for educating by stealth and information about learning to read.

Reading at home

Find out how you can help your child learn to read, and develop a love of reading.

Getting ready for reading ages 3-4

There are lots of fun and easy ways to help get your child ready to read. Try these simple ideas to get your child ready for reading.

Starting to read ages 4-5

When your child is aged 4 or 5, they will probably begin to start learning to read at school, using a phonics-based approach. There are lots of things you can do to support this at home.

Building on reading skills ages 5-6

By the time your child is aged 5 or 6, they will probably have had some experience of early reading and will be building up a range of reading skills. Now it’s all about gaining more confidence so take a look at these ideas to help you get a good balance of reading for enjoyment and skills practice.

Developing confidence as a reader ages 6-7

Your child will be building on their early reading skills and developing confidence in reading more broadly and fluently. These ideas will help you to keep a good balance between reading for enjoyment across a range of interests and developing the skills to help your child read with even more confidence and efficiency.