Rationale:
Our school values parents as co-educators and home learning has a valuable role to play in the academic development of pupils. Current government guidelines recommend an average of one hour per week for Years 1 & 2, one and a half hours for Years 3 and 4, and two and a half hours for Years 5 and 6 per week. The school recognises that parental involvement and home learning will vary depending upon the domestic arrangements of the family.
Our Aims of home learning are as follows:
1 To enhance and widen children's learning experiences.
2 To increase children's independence within the learning process.
3 To increase parental involvement in their own children's learning.
4 To prepare children for the volume of independent study at home in their future education at secondary school and beyond.
Methods: The term "home learning" covers a wide variety of activities, which are done at home or outside the immediate school environment.
1 The most important home learning is reading alone and/or reading with an adult, interpreting everyday activities e.g. reading recipes, signs etc for a short amount of time each day. This provides children with the time to practise reading skills and develop good habits, which cannot be covered within the limits of the school day. A reading record book will be provided for parents to complete after hearing their child read.
2 Specific learning of spellings and mathematical facts tremendously assist other work done in school. These may be tested formally and will always have direct relevance to other work and to the child's existing levels of skills and knowledge
3 From time to time, pupils will bring home games to be played at home with other family members.
4 From time to time children will be asked to complete a task at home, which was begun in school time. This may occur due to time constraints in school or because a child wants to complete the task or occasionally because a child has not performed satisfactorily. In the latter case, the child will take responsibility for the completion of this task and its return to the class teacher on time.
5 Children will sometimes be asked to collect objects or information from home, which will support the learning in the classroom.
6 Children may be asked to research an aspect of topic work using the local library, books at home, ICT resources or by talking to adults in the home environment.
7 During family holidays taken in school time, children will be given additional reading books and may be asked to produce a diary or scrapbook of events for presentation to fellow pupils on their return to school. This will always be done when the absence is greater than five school days.
8 Teachers will set specific tasks to be completed at home. In general, children should be able to complete these without much adult input. However monitoring of the work and some assistance by parents will help children to value the work they are undertaking and so produce homework of a higher standard.
9 Children with special educational needs will often have an element of individual home learning within their termly action plan. The role of parents in this will be crucial in achieving the targets set.
10 In the autumn term teachers will issue parents with general guidance for the completion of these tasks. Each year group will have its own system for ensuring parents know what homework has been set.
11 In the future, school staff are looking to use modern technologies to set up home learning tasks for pupils and give guidance to parents on its completion. Until every child has internet access within the home, this cannot be the only method of organising home learning. The school website and web-based subscription packages are two technologies currently being explored for this purpose.
12 A lot of important home learning is not organised by school staff but is provided by parents. Learning to swim, ride a bicycle, tie shoe laces, …….etc are all important milestones in children’s learning. We would like parents to share these successes with school staff by writing the details and the date on one of our WOW stickers. These can then be added to the child’s learning diary or learning log, alongside the learning that is done in school.
Conclusion:
Most children work very hard during the school day. They need to have leisure time when they can follow activities for personal enjoyment and have time to relax. However, children in the primary years also need to appreciate the value of doing some academic work at home in order to support the work done in school.
March 2014
Our school values parents as co-educators and home learning has a valuable role to play in the academic development of pupils. Current government guidelines recommend an average of one hour per week for Years 1 & 2, one and a half hours for Years 3 and 4, and two and a half hours for Years 5 and 6 per week. The school recognises that parental involvement and home learning will vary depending upon the domestic arrangements of the family.
Our Aims of home learning are as follows:
1 To enhance and widen children's learning experiences.
2 To increase children's independence within the learning process.
3 To increase parental involvement in their own children's learning.
4 To prepare children for the volume of independent study at home in their future education at secondary school and beyond.
Methods: The term "home learning" covers a wide variety of activities, which are done at home or outside the immediate school environment.
1 The most important home learning is reading alone and/or reading with an adult, interpreting everyday activities e.g. reading recipes, signs etc for a short amount of time each day. This provides children with the time to practise reading skills and develop good habits, which cannot be covered within the limits of the school day. A reading record book will be provided for parents to complete after hearing their child read.
2 Specific learning of spellings and mathematical facts tremendously assist other work done in school. These may be tested formally and will always have direct relevance to other work and to the child's existing levels of skills and knowledge
3 From time to time, pupils will bring home games to be played at home with other family members.
4 From time to time children will be asked to complete a task at home, which was begun in school time. This may occur due to time constraints in school or because a child wants to complete the task or occasionally because a child has not performed satisfactorily. In the latter case, the child will take responsibility for the completion of this task and its return to the class teacher on time.
5 Children will sometimes be asked to collect objects or information from home, which will support the learning in the classroom.
6 Children may be asked to research an aspect of topic work using the local library, books at home, ICT resources or by talking to adults in the home environment.
7 During family holidays taken in school time, children will be given additional reading books and may be asked to produce a diary or scrapbook of events for presentation to fellow pupils on their return to school. This will always be done when the absence is greater than five school days.
8 Teachers will set specific tasks to be completed at home. In general, children should be able to complete these without much adult input. However monitoring of the work and some assistance by parents will help children to value the work they are undertaking and so produce homework of a higher standard.
9 Children with special educational needs will often have an element of individual home learning within their termly action plan. The role of parents in this will be crucial in achieving the targets set.
10 In the autumn term teachers will issue parents with general guidance for the completion of these tasks. Each year group will have its own system for ensuring parents know what homework has been set.
11 In the future, school staff are looking to use modern technologies to set up home learning tasks for pupils and give guidance to parents on its completion. Until every child has internet access within the home, this cannot be the only method of organising home learning. The school website and web-based subscription packages are two technologies currently being explored for this purpose.
12 A lot of important home learning is not organised by school staff but is provided by parents. Learning to swim, ride a bicycle, tie shoe laces, …….etc are all important milestones in children’s learning. We would like parents to share these successes with school staff by writing the details and the date on one of our WOW stickers. These can then be added to the child’s learning diary or learning log, alongside the learning that is done in school.
Conclusion:
Most children work very hard during the school day. They need to have leisure time when they can follow activities for personal enjoyment and have time to relax. However, children in the primary years also need to appreciate the value of doing some academic work at home in order to support the work done in school.
March 2014
