In our experience, Key Stage 2 is a crucial time when children gain great confidence in their abilities, or they find it difficult to cope with many of the things that they need to tackle in school.
KS2 is about reinforcing concepts that children have been taught in school and expanding their problem-solving skills. Reasoning plays a big part in the new national curriculum. If your child is finding school under-challenging, Redbridge Tuition is a great place to extend their more complex problem-solving skills.
Alternatively, if a child struggles with some concepts at school, our tuition lessons are an opportunity to learn in a different and more personalised way. Our tutors are always willing to offer advice and help students achieve their full potential.
For further information, please contact us. We will be happy to discuss your particular requirements and answer any questions you may have or book you in with one of Redbridge Tuition’s KS2 tutors.
Key Stage 2 consists of years 3 and 4 (lower) and 5 and 6 (upper). The main purpose of this stage is to prepare children for secondary school and provide them with the foundations to become much more independent in their learning and their decisions.
At key stage 2 compulsory national curriculum subjects are:
- English
- maths
- science
- history
- geography
- ancient and modern foreign languages
- design and technology
- art and design
- music
- physical education (including swimming)
- computing
Many schools will also teach citizenship and PHSE (personal, social and health education). Schools must provide religious education (RE) but parents can ask for their children to be taken out of the whole lesson or part of it.
Lower key stage 2:
In years 3 and 4, children will have a greater focus on reading and writing and be introduced to various writing styles and genres.
By the time a child reaches the end of KS2, (in year 6), there is a huge amount of pressure on teachers to deliver results, as the school’s success will be judged by their SATS results. This often means that the year 6 teacher will spend an inordinate amount of that year focusing on the SATS exams which take place in June.
The move into Key Stage 2 (at age 7) will demand much more from the child in terms of the volume and level of work. By the end of KS2 (at age 10 or 11) the main focus will be on the attainment levels of each child and the school as a whole.
How can I help my child at home?
Nowadays, there are so many resources available online that the easiest thing to do is to log a child onto an educational website and believe they are learning.
But learning needs interaction, so here are some tips to help your child with their learning journey at home:
Limit the amount of time on the computer and allocate some time to reading every day. Make sure that these books are accessible to your child- there is no point in giving them a Charles Dickens or Jane Austen novel if they are not able to deconstruct complicated sentence structures and understand how people lived in those days. T is better to give them a book by Roald Dahl or Dick King-Smith- something they will enjoy and something that will expand their imagination as well as their vocabulary.
Do not isolate maths to books- include maths in everyday things like cooking, baking and shopping. That way your child will see that some of the topics they learn are relevant.
Do simple science experiments (like growing a plant in different environments) and discuss the results.
Make sure your child exercises daily and gets plenty of rest. There are many studies that show the link between good sleep and cognitive development.
How can Redbridge Tuition help?
At Redbridge Tuition, our aim is to propel every student forward. This is done through making sure they understand the key concepts in the given topic and spending time discussing the concepts, very often linking them back to daily life.
We work with children of all ages and each session is linked back to the National Curriculum, reinforcing or further explaining what children have learnt in school.
Alongside with normal tuition classes, we run SATS booster courses for children in year 6.
