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.