Guidance on Homework
Why do we give homework?
- To reinforce and extend the work going on in class.
- To involve families more fully in the child’s school work.
- To increase standards of achievement.
How will homework be organised?
- All children will have exercise books designated specifically for homework.
- Children will record, in their home-school diary, the tasks they are required to undertake.
- All year-groups will be required to undertake the following tasks: • Reading, tables/number bonds, spelling (daily).
- Mathematics activity mid-week
- English activity at the weekend
- Half-termly RE homework.
- Occasionally, children may be asked to complete additional tasks, which support the work already going on in class or which help to prepare for forthcoming projects. How can parents help?
- Homework is designed as a task for you and your child to complete together and the support your child receives is invaluable, placing him/her at a real advantage.
- Set aside some time every day for homework. On most days this can be fifteen to twenty minutes to read with your child and to work on spellings and tables. Once a week, a longer session will be required, but this will be at the weekend. A maximum of one hour is suggested for this. If the work appears to be taking much longer, you can ask your child to stop. Please then indicate, when you sign, that an hour was spent on it.
- Make sure that you and your child can work together without distraction.
- Talk with your child about how to tackle the task.
- Help your child with the work. Homework is not designed as a test of your child’s ability, but rather as an activity for partnered work.
- Try to make homework fun, if possible.
- Some Mathematics tasks are of a practical nature. Help your child to gather together the materials required.
- On completion, please sign and date the work to show that you have seen it and been involved in it. Constructive comments are welcomed, too. If the task is purely practical, please sign after the written instruction in the home-school diary.
- Help your child to maintain the same high standards of presentation expected in school.
Points to remember.
- Homework helps your child to improve in a variety of ways and it helps the school in its work.
- The help you give your child with homework is appreciated and highly valued by the staff of the school.
In addition to your support with homework, all parents are asked to sign the Home School Diary on a weekly basis. Any messages that you put in the Home School Diary for us should be initialled by a member of staff to indicate that they have been seen. If your message has not been initialled, please check with your child that it has been shown to a member of staff and then contact your child’s class teacher.
