Family Learning

What is Family Learning?

We value the support and engagement of our parents and carers at Leith Primary School. Family Learning incorporates the notions of parental involvement and parental engagement along with the idea of families learning together and home learning.

Parental Involvement

There are a number of ways in which our parents and carers can work alongside teachers and other school staff to support the ongoing improvement and development of the school. We regularly invite parents to review and feedback on the school Vision, Values and Aims to ensure that they are the right fit for the school as it is right now. This and other aspects of school development are done via online surveys, votes at parent events and through formal and informal discussions. One of the most constructive ways parents and staff collaborate is via our parent council, LPPC (Leith Primary Parent Council). Close working relationships on a variety of issues really helps to ensure that parents have a voice on matters important to them.

Parental Engagement

Supporting your child or children’s ongoing learning journey by attending Open Classroom sessions, school assemblies and performances, attending Parent-Teacher Consultations and showing an interest in your child’s learning targets set on Online Learning Journals (P1-P4) and Microsoft OneNote (P5-P7) are all ways of demonstrating positive parenting engagement. Supporting your child to read quietly or practice numeracy skills most days is one of the best and easiest ways to show your child that learning matters. When a child sees that their parent values their learning, their outcomes tend to improve and grow.

Home Learning

As a school, we choose not to set formal daily homework. Academic research does not show that there is a clear benefit to children of primary school age to engage in this type of home learning. However, we do encourage all our pupils to use time after school to join an after school session such as a sport, club or other hobby. We also encourage all our children to read every day and all have a subscription to the SumDog website which can support with learning numeracy skills, spelling and grammar. Taking your child to places of interest such as museums, galleries and historic buildings such as Edinburgh Castle, The Palace of Holyrood House and the Royal Yacht Britannia would all be considered as home learning. Look out for Door Open days to get free access. Even going for a walk to the Botanic Gardens, Portobello Beach or along the Water of Leith and talking about what you see, smell and hear is all home learning.

Learning Together Events

Learning Together events starts in our nursery with Stay and Play sessions. Before starting P1 parents and their child are invited to join in a story and craft session as part of their transition to P1. From there we have regular Open Classroom sessions for parents. We also host events for the BookBug and Read, Write, Count programmes for P1-P3 children. Previously we have held Families Connect sessions with our Family Support Worker, trips to Leith Library for parents and pupils and open STEM events. We try to respond to what parents tell us would be helpful to support their child. If you have a good idea for a Learning Together event, let us know!