Doagh Primary School — A spelling and numeracy homework book to match the whole-school exercise book

The brief

Doagh Primary School wanted a homework book to sit alongside the yellow whole-school exercise book — same Doagh identity on the front, but tuned for the bit of the week that happens at the kitchen table rather than the classroom desk. Spellings and number facts needed to live in one place across the year, with somewhere for parents to sign off practice attempts and somewhere for children to write down the words and facts they got stuck on so the teacher could see them on Monday.

What we designed

Working with the school, we built a 68-page A4 book that pairs a spellings page with a numeracy page every week, with two reference spreads at the front to support both.

• A green cover carrying the Doagh Primary School crest top-left and a Spelling and numeracy subject title top-right, with the six Doagh values — Determination, Resilience, Empowerment, Appreciation, Motivation, Safety — running along the foot of the cover as a strip of cloud bubbles. The green sits next to the yellow whole-school book on a child's desk so it's clear at a glance which book is which.

• A Times Table Grid inside the front cover — a full 12 by 12 multiplication square set inside a friendly robot illustration, with the square numbers (1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81, 100, 121, 144) called out in red along the diagonal so the pattern is visible. Credited to doodle.ac.

• A Numbers 1 to 100 wall facing it — every digit from one to one hundred set in a ten-by-ten grid with the written word beneath each number, so digit-and-spelling are learnt together.

• A spellings weekly page that repeats through the book — a Week beginning date at the top, three lined practice boxes (one per practice attempt) each with its own Parent signature line, and an Unfamiliar words and definitions box across the bottom for the week's tricky words.

• A numeracy weekly page facing it on squared grid paper — a Weekly number facts strip across the top to set out the focus for the week, three Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday columns of working-out each with its own Parent signature, and a Corrections and tricky facts strip across the bottom so the children record the ones they need to come back to.

The finished book

68-page A4 copies were printed in the UK and carbon balanced from print through to delivery.