Collins4Parents

A photo of a smiling woman is featured in a circular frame. The image includes text that reads ‘The Importance of Poetry for Children’ and ‘by Holly King-Mand’. There are orange circles on the background with the ‘Collins4Parents’ logo on the left.

The Importance of Poetry for Children

Thanks to National Poetry Day, October is traditionally the month that cultures and communities celebrate poetry, and it’s a great time to introduce the magic of poetry to your young reader! This month, poetry book sales will reportedly rise...

4 min

Top tips for family literacy this summer

Top tips for family literacy this summer

Holly King-Mand is a writer, speaker, teacher, and literacy campaigner & advocate. She is widely recognised as ‘the nation’s favourite English teacher’ for her work to keep children learning English during the pandemic and for inspiring...

4 min

Engaging Children with Shakespeare

Engaging Children with Shakespeare

Shakespeare is often credited as one of the most prominent and important writers of the English language and if his presence within the national curriculum and GCSE exams is anything to go by, he most certainly is. <div...

4 min

Brush up on spelling

Brush up on spelling

Spelling tests tend to be a weekly occurrence at primary school. Some children embrace the challenge and enjoy learning their spellings. Some absolutely dread them and get very anxious about being tested. Some children aren’t too interested and don’t really...

2 min

Have fun with phonics

Have fun with phonics

Using phonics is an essential ingredient in learning to read. This begins at an early age and continues right throughout primary. It runs alongside other methods of teaching reading such as word recognition.

3 min

What is the Phonics Screening Check?

What is the Phonics Screening Check?

The Phonics Screening Check is a test for children in Year 1. Children take it during June in a one-to-one setting with a teacher. This is usually their class teacher, but it could also be the headteacher or another teacher...

3 min

Making Sense of Book Bands

Making Sense of Book Bands

Book Banding is a popular way of organising children’s reading books. It’s a system that allows schools to choose books from a range of reading programmes and know that they are of the same level of difficulty. There are 19...

3 min

How to support your child with writing at home

How to support your child with writing at home

Writing is one of the most challenging things we ask our children to do and knowing what’s expected in each year group and how to help your child can be hard. We’ve taken a look at some of the writing...

5 min

Fun ways to help your child with phonics

Fun ways to help your child with phonics

Phonics is about learning the sounds that individual letters make: singly (a, b, c) or together (th, ck, tch). These sounds are called phonemes. We can put phonemes together to make words (b-i-g; ch-e-ck). One thing to bear in mind...

5 min

What are Common Exception Words?

What are Common Exception Words?

Common exception words are everyday words that break the phonic rules taught at school. Whilst these words will always be part of each child’s common vocabulary, they will eventually cease to be ‘exception words’ when the child understands the rules...

3 min

Improve English and Maths skills at home

Improve English and Maths skills at home

Primary schools have changed a lot over recent years and expectations for young children are high. English and Maths are top of the agenda and our children have a whole lot to learn. Many will benefit from additional support at...

3 min

Getting to know comprehension

Getting to know comprehension

Reading comprehension is about understanding what you've read. During reading sessions in school, children share their understanding through discussions and verbal questioning, and through written comprehension activities where they write answers to questions about what they've read. Many children find...

4 min