Year 8

Reading at home

Support their learning

Help your child gather newspaper, magazine and journal articles for a topic of interest at school. Help them find information on internet sites.
Talk to your child about what they have been reading on the Internet. What have they learnt? What questions do they still have? Where else could they find information that would be useful?
Talk to your child’s teacher about available books and resources that relate to your child’s interests
Read through your child’s homework tasks and questions together and talk about what they are planning to do to finish the homework
Play card and board games as a family. Increase the challenge – it really helps children’s learning.

Here's a tip: be a great role model. Let your child see you enjoying reading – whether it’s the newspaper, a magazine, a comic, a cook book or a novel. Read magazines, newspapers and books in your first language.

Read together

Read your child a children’s novel that they are interested in – try one or two chapters each day
Get your child to listen to younger siblings doing their reading homework (this is a good chance for them to practise some of their own reading skills)
You can remind them about pausing while the younger child thinks about a word they don’t know, giving them help to work out the word, and giving them praise for their reading, too
Have books, magazines, comics, newspapers and other information available for everyone in your family to read on topics that interest your child – eg skateboarding, surfing, fashion
Listen together to CDs and mp3s of your child’s favourite stories, books and songs.

Here's a tip: be positive whenever your child is reading, no matter what they are reading. Respect your child’s opinion as it shows they are thinking about what they read.

Hunt out things to read

Take a trip to the library and help your child to find books, audio books and magazines that they will enjoy reading – eg books about their favourite musician, movie star, sports celebrity or other role model
Find books or magazines that tell stories about who your child is and where they have come from
Find a difficult puzzle book to work on together
Read and talk about advertising signs you see – talk about how the company decided on the words and the design, and who they are trying to appeal to with the advertising
Use a map to find directions for a trip you are going on, or follow the journeys of people on travel and adventure programmes
Get some instruction books from the library on how to plan for and make food, gifts, or toys, for family birthdays, Matariki or Christmas. Work through the instructions with your child
Find some recipes together that your child might like to cook for a family treat. Be there to help your child as they read through the recipe, get all the ingredients and create the final result.

Writing at home

Write for a reason

Help your child to:

write a letter or an email to a newspaper editor, radio announcer or television broadcaster sharing your child’s opinion on a topic of interest in the news
start a blog/wiki on the Internet and get your child to record thoughts about their day to share with their friends and family
write a proverb, family motto or pepeha and illustrate it with images from the Internet or photo albums
develop a spreadsheet on the computer to record the progress of your child’s sports team or kapa haka group (or one they follow), including games played, performances given, penalties, scores, player/performer of the day
start a writing journal to record trips and weekend activities
take some photos using a digital camera and write a picture book for a younger child using the photos
write a comic using drawings and graphic design to present an idea or story
make some birthday cards, thank you notes or letters to friends and family.

Here's a tip: be a great role model. Show your child that you write for lots of reasons, eg replying to an email, writing a shopping list, invitation or letter, writing a story about your early life for your child to read.

Make writing fun

Get together with your child to:

play strategy games and do word puzzles like word search puzzles and crosswords
make the weekly shopping list using supermarket flyers and find all the bargains and savings to fit the budget
write some descriptions for items you may wish to sell using the Internet
find out about some of your family history (whakapapa) and/or family stories (pakiwaitara) and record these stories to share with other family/whānau members.

Here's a tip: make writing fun and use any excuse you can think of to encourage your child to write about anything, anytime.

Talk about writing with your child

Ask them about a piece of writing they are doing at school and/or for their homework
Tell them about some writing you are currently doing – a letter, a poem, a list for the holidays, a scrapbook, something you are doing for work or study.
Help them to use dictionaries and thesaurus (both paper and Internet versions).

Here's a tip: talk about what your child writes. Be interested. Use it as a way of starting conversations. Listen to your child's opinion, even if you don’t agree with it.

Mathematics at home

Talk together and have fun with numbers and patterns

Help your child:

find and connect numbers around your home and on family outings, eg read the odometer on the car to see how many kilometres the car can go on a tank of petrol. Get them to note how much it costs to refill, then work out how much it costs per kilometre
talk about sales in town – 15% off, 33%, 20%, half price. Look for the best value. What would the price of the item be after the discount? Is it better to buy two items and get one free or get 25% off the price of the items?
budget pocket money and/or plan ahead to open a savings account or reach a savings target. Talk about earning interest. Calculate what interest would be earned using different savings schemes
work out the floor area of your home, sports stadium or whare nui – how many square metres is it?
talk about goals and plan ahead to budget for items for themselves or for others
do complicated number puzzles.

Here's a tip: the way your child is learning to solve mathematics problems may be different to when you were at school. Get them to show you how they do it and support them in their learning.

Use easy, everyday activities

Involve your child in:

planning to help make a dish or a full meal for the family or even a community event at the hall or marae – working out the cost of making it at home versus buying it already made, planning the preparation and cooking time – and focus on the ingredients and the amounts of fat and sugar, too.
planning what proportion of their own, or their brother’s and sister’s, time should be spent on tasks (like homework, sleep, TV, sport, kapa haka) to make sure there’s time left for fun and family
watching documentaries, which are full of facts and information using mathematics
reading the newspaper to find articles or advertisements featuring graphs or tables

Here's a tip: talk with your child’s teacher to understand what they are learning in mathematics and what the learning is in the homework they’re doing.

For wet afternoons/school holidays/weekends

Get together with your child and:

play games: find new card and board games that use strategy
calculate the chance of their favourite team winning the tournament. Investigate how many points they need and work out what their competitors need as well
play outdoor games – skateboarding, Frisbee, touch rugby, kilikiti, cricket, soccer, pétanque, netball
plan and perform a rap, dance or waiata a ringa and draw up the outline of the dance steps on graph paper
make a present or gift for someone using a scrapbook, kōwhaiwhai, quilting, doing tivaevae, collage, painting, carving, knitting, sewing or carpentry
plan for when you have saved $10/$20/$30. What would be the best use of that money for a day out?

Here's a tip: being positive about mathematics is really important for your child’s learning, even if you didn’t enjoy it or do well at it yourself at school.