HOME Learning - Learning Conversations
Our Aims
At St
Mary’s we believe that homework should be worthwhile and it should have a
positive impact on children’s learning.
We believe that it needs to be meaningful, interesting, engaging and useful for future work. Homework should be clearly explained,
achievable and challenging.
We will
provide all children with homework to enable them to practise skills and
learning they have already done in school. Sometimes the aim is to repeat
something done in class as a consolidation exercise. At other times, the
homework will ask children to apply their learning to a new context. At all
times, however, children will not be given work to do at home that they have
not learned in school; they can of course choose to independently research something
new which links with their learning in class. For example, to do their own
project about the Romans.
We
aim to provide opportunities for parents/carers to work alongside their child
or children to support their learning in school. This is because we want to
work as a partnership in your child’s learning – school, the child and you, their
parents working together to help your child to reach their potential.
Expectations
Reading is key to accessing the whole curriculum; therefore every child is expected to read their school book or another book every day. Each phase of the school has a reading challenge which will link to the appropriate reading expectations.
Mental
recall of number facts underpins all learning in Maths – this year, to consolidate and further develop times table
knowledge, Key Stage 2 will be set a weekly TT Rock Stars challenge; this is an
online secure learning platform – your class teacher will provide you with log
in details.
Learning Conversations - On the school website and sent home via 'Marvelous Me' there will be two or three questions set by the
class teacher for you, as a parent, to ask your child about their learning this
week. This will give the children the
opportunity to consolidate and embed what they have learnt through
discussion. There is no expectation or
requirement for this to be written down; we value and recognise the importance
of talking and communicating with each other.
In order to aid transition and be prepared for
Secondary School; from the Spring term children in Year 6 will receive homework covering other areas of the curriculum, and their work will
begin to require more concentration and self-application. They may be given more pieces of sustained
writing to plan or complete at home.
As
a school we hope that you can support us in getting the balance right. We want
to work together with you to help your child be the best they can possibly be
and to reach their full potential. If you have any concerns about the homework
set, or, if you feel that the homework is just right, please do come in and see
your child’s teacher at the door in the morning.
It is
worth noting that when children deliberately do not attempt to do homework that
needs to be handed in to the teacher (and this does not include when family
emergencies occur) children will be required to remain inside during their own
time to complete their work. Allowing one child to opt out of doing homework
whilst everyone else is expected to complete it causes bad feeling amongst a class.
We therefore make it very clear that we expect everyone to be treated equally
and all children are required to complete homework.