Are your children safe on the internet? Visit this website for e-safety guidance:

‘If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s third largest!’

Click here for the guide

With regular headlines in the press about cyber-bullying, the dangers of inappropriate content and the questionable safety of social media, it’s little wonder that E-safety is quite rightly becoming a growing priority.

So, how do you maintain the balance between giving children freedom and maintaining control? How do you enable children to take full advantage of the technology to support learning and prepare them for the real world while providing a safe environment? Where does your responsibility start and end? And how can you ensure e-safety? It can feel like a bit of a minefield, but don’t panic, we are here to help.

These succinct tips aim to provide you with some clarity and practical advice on how to approach e-safety.

Top Tips

• Talk to your child about what they’re up to online. Be a part of their online life; involve the whole family and show an interest. Find out what sites they visit and what they love about them, if they know you understand they are more likely to come to you if they have any problems.
• Watch Thinkuknow films and cartoons with your child. The Thinkuknow site has films, games and advice for children from five all the way to 16.
• Encourage your child to go online and explore! There is a wealth of age-appropriate sites online for your children. Encourage them to use sites which are fun, educational and that will help them to develop online skills.
• Keep up-to-date with your child’s development online. Children grow up fast and they will be growing in confidence and learning new skills daily. It’s important that as your child learns more, so do you.
• Set boundaries in the online world just as you would in the real world. Think about what they might see, what they share, who they talk to and how long they spend online. It is important to discuss boundaries at a young age to develop the tools and skills children need to enjoy their time online.
• Keep all equipment that connects to the internet in a family space. For children of this age, it is important to keep internet use in family areas so you can see the sites your child is using and be there for them if they stumble across something they don’t want to see.
• Know what connects to the internet and how. Nowadays even the TV connects to the internet. Make sure you’re aware of which devices that your child uses connect to the internet, such as their phone or games console. Also, find out how they are accessing the internet – is it your connection, or a neighbour’s wifi? This will affect whether the safety setting you set are being applied.
• Use parental controls on devices that link to the internet, such as the TV, laptops, computers, games consoles and mobile phones. Parental controls are not just about locking and blocking, they are a tool to help you set appropriate boundaries as your child grows and develops. They are not the answer to your child’s online safety, but they are a good start and they are not as difficult to install as you might think. Service providers are working hard to make them simple, effective and user friendly. Find your service provider and learn how to set your controls

Read Write Inc. Phonics (also known as Ruth Miskin Literacy or RML) is a lively phonic programme that gets children reading and writing quickly!

Be sure to follow the link to learn more about RML, in a dedicated parents' site.

http://www.ruthmiskin.com/en/parents/

Learning to read is the most important thing your child will learn. It opens the door to all learning, so we put as much energy as we possibly can into making sure that every child learns to read as quickly as possible. At Lodge Primary School we also want your child to love reading and to want to read for themselves. A love of books is vital to the enjoyment of reading.

 

We begin by teaching phonics in Reception using the synthetics programme RML (Read Write Inc. Phonics). It is a lively and rigorous programme devised by a former Head Teacher, Ruth Miskin. Children learn how to read the sounds (phonemes) in words and how these sounds can be written down (graphemes). At Lodge Primary School we teach the children simple ways of remembering these sounds and letters using pictures and picture phrases. The children then are introduced to a character called Fred who encourages the children to blend using pure sounds. Eg. C-a-t = cat, Ch-i-p = Chip, l-igh- t = light. The children rehearse reading and spelling red words, which the  children learn by sight recognition such as ‘said’, ‘once’, ‘where’. Identifying that it has a ‘grotty’ grapheme.

 

As the children progress through Reception and Key Stage One, the phonemes become more complex and can contain two letters which are called ‘digraphs’ (sh, ch, th, ay, ar, oo) or three letters which are called ‘trigraphs’ (air, igh, ear, ure). The children learn how to segment and blend these sounds in words in both reading and writing.The children are grouped by reading ability across Reception and Key Stage One.

 

The children practise their reading with books that match the phonics and the red words they know. The child’s reading book will contain tricky words. These are words that a child should know by sight as the usually do not blend together correctly, or include tricky sounds that may confuse the child. Mastering the sounds is when the children start believing that they can read and this is when their confidence flies! 

 

To support your child’s progression in reading, please encourage your child to sound out the letters in words and then to push the sounds together to make a whole word. Encourage your child to say the pure sounds. You can hear the sounds correctly by searching YouTube for ‘Read Write Inc. phonemes pronunciation guide’. Enjoy the experience of sharing books and stories with your child, exploring new words and their meaning.

http://www.ruthmiskin.com/en/resources/