Help Your Kids With English by Carol Vorderman Review

A unique step-by-step visual guide

English

Children are gearing up to go back school after over a year of disrupted or no education and home-schooling. It might be a bit of a shock to some having that routine back in their lives and there will be a lot of catching up to do. But for the most part, children and adults are looking forward to returning with delight. But just because home-schooling might be coming to an end, it doesn’t mean that children won’t need that educational input at home anymore.

Once they are back at school and settled in, high school children are going to start getting the dreaded ‘H’ word – HOMEWORK. And they are going to need some input from their parents or carers. This can be quite a challenge for all parties, especially as children today are taught different methodology than we were at school and although the outcome may be the same, the way of getting there is completely different. This results in children trying to teach the adults how to do something so that they in turn can help them with their homework. But there is help at hand, we have been using Carol Vorderman’s Help Your Kids With Maths and Help Your Kids With Times Tables reference / resource books to help the kids with their maths work, they are an excellent visual guide that helps explain the concepts and how to solve the problems. They have been invaluable. So we decided to try another one of her books to help our high-schooler with another core subject, English.

English is a very important subject and one that can be very hard to learn (with words like there, their and they’re). We use it every day from reading the bus timetable on the way to school or work, to shopping for groceries in the supermarket, searching the internet to find useless funny videos and to communicate with each other. This is a subject that cannot be ignored as it will have an important impact on our daily lives. The ability to read well, write well and speak well is extremely important.

Carol Vorderman is the much-loved and respected maths wizard who co-hosted the popular television show Countdown for 26 years. She is an absolute genius when it comes to numbers and maths, if you have ever watched her work out the sums on Countdown it is just fantastic (especially with the speed she does it). Whilst she no longer works on Countdown, she does still work with numbers and education. She is the author of several educational books and is the UK’s bestselling educational author. She has created a series of books that are be a massive help to help assist children and their parents, carers and even teachers understand the core subjects at school. Her Help Your Kids with … series of books are reference books that encourage children, teenagers and their parents to work together, giving step-by-step instructions on different English topics and all with a visual approach.

Do your kids struggle with their English homework or do you struggle to help them with it? Help Your Kids with English is a book for frustrated parents to help break down how kids are being taught English at school these days so that you are able to help them with their schoolwork and homework. It covers the four core English subjects – grammar, punctuation, spelling and communication skills, and is suitable for Key Stages 3 and 4, for children aged 10 to 16 years old.

English

The book is broken down into five sections to cover the core subjects of English.

  • Chapter 1: Grammar – this covers nouns, plurals, adjectives, pronouns, modifiers and lots more.
  • Chapter 2: Punctuation – this covers things such as full stops and ellipses, commas, colons apostrophes and exclamation marks and more.
  • Chapter 3: Spelling – this covers, amongst other things, vowel sounds, consonant sounds, syllables, morphemes and abbreviations.
  • Chapter 4: Communication Skills – this covers topics such as letters and emails, writing a speech, picking the right words, planning and research and presentation skills.
  • Chapter 5: Reference – this is a reference of terms for the four core topics.

This isn’t a book that you read from cover to cover (unless you really want to) but one that you can dip in and out of as the topic requires. It allows parents and children to work together to understand even the trickiest concepts of English.

As you work through the book, the layout lends itself to an easy reading format and is very well laid out, clear and concise with plenty of examples to follow. It has descriptions of the topics (e.g. morphemes – the smallest meaningful part of a word) and helps you understand what it is and how it gets used.

If you or your children require that bit of extra help in learning English or helping the children understand how to do their English homework, then this is an excellent resource book. Not only will it help the adult understand how the children are being taught but it will help them demonstrate and discuss the problems the children might be having with their homework. It will also help to build confidence, reducing stress and makes English subjects clear and accessible so that English homework is no longer a dreaded task.

If you are looking for ways to support your children with their home-schooling or their homework once they go back to school, then I can highly recommend Help Your Kids With English along with the rest of the Help Your Kids With … series.

Rating: 5/5

RRP: £14.99

Available to buy from Amazon here.

DISCLOSURE: All thoughts and opinions are my own. This review uses an affiliate link which I may receive a small commission from if you purchase through the link.

Click here to read more reviews of books by Carol Vorderman