Why do we ask our children to complete home learning?
At BMS, we value home learning for several reasons:
Knowledge aquisition
Home learning is always linked to our key learning in school. Practising and working with this helps you to develop your long-term memory of these pieces of learning.
Preparation for work
Building routines home learning prepares you for your later educational career where you will be expected to independently revise and prepare for examinations and coursework.
Self-agency
Engaging in your learning at home and building your home learning routines, helps you take responsibility for your learning and progress. Everything we ask you to do at home should help you feel confident in your school learning. How much effort you put into this will impact your learning and progress.
Taking positive action
Home learning provides an opportunity for you to discuss your learning with your parents at home.
What is the Home Learning Cycle?
The home learning cycle lasts for two weeks.
In that two weeks, our students are expected to complete:
– 4 home learning tasks
as well as:
– Year 5 and Year 6: 30 mins a week (60 mins across the fortnight of TTRS)
– Year 5 and Year 6: spelling learning
– Year 7 and Year 8: 30 mins a week (60 mins across the fortnight of Maths Sparx)
– Year 7 and Year 8: asked to complete some quiz sections (no more than 2 per cycle)
Where do children complete their home learning?
Our students will each have a Key Learning Book. This book hosts our Key Learning across the curriculum along with learning tasks.
Children will be directed to which tasks they must complete each cycle.
Children should use the dotty pages to complete their learning work – there are four pages for each home learning cycle.
Children may also make use of the squared paper pages to support Maths learning or as appropriate across the curriculum for graphs, etc. Year 7 and Year 8 students will benefit from completing written calculations and jottings on the squared pages when completing their Maths Sparx home learning.
Principles of the tasks
All tasks are based on cognitive strategies – strategies that support the learning of content and understanding of knowledge. In school, we teach a range of cognitive strategies in our Learning to Learn lessons.
In the Key Learning Book, there are guides about each cognitive strategy that will be taught in school and used as part of home learning tasks. These can be referred to in order to support the completion of home learning. Each strategy has an explanation, at least one example and a top tip.
What if my child becomes stuck when they are completing their homework?
In school, we carefully choose when and what home learning is set. Please be assured your child will have been taught the subject knowledge they need to complete their task. However, we do know that remembering the curriculum can be a challenge.
We would always recommend supporting your child to reflect in a metacognitive way by making use of this thinking grid:
Your child is also welcome to use reputable websites such as BBC Bitesize to check the subject specifics in their home learning such as adverbs, definitions of population, differences between plant and animal cells.
Your child should make use of the cognitive strategies pages in the Key Learning Book if they are not sure how to present or complete their given task.
Beyond that, your child’s class teacher or tutor will be happy to help. Please encourage your child to come and speak to us so we can give them the help or reassurance they need.