A well-managed home learning programme helps children to develop the skills and attitudes they will need for successful lifelong learning.  Home learning also supports the development of independent learning skills and provides parents with an opportunity to take part in their children’s education. 

Aims:

The School’s aims in setting home learning are:

1. To help students develop good work habits: independent study skills, timekeeping and resilience.
2. To help students to become self-disciplined and self-motivated towards study.
3. To enable students to practise and reinforce skills learned in the classroom.
4. To consolidate and extend learning begun in class.
5. To enrich study by making greater use of material and sources of information that may not have been available in the classroom.
6. To involve parents and carers in the management of students learning and keeping them informed about the work students are doing.
7. To allow the teacher to monitor the progress being made by a student and to act on findings.

The types of work set for home learning

Evidence suggests that short, frequent home learning closely monitored by teachers has greatest impact (Hattie).  There are three valid types of homework which have some positive impact (Rosário et al., 2015):

• Practice
• Preparation and
• Extension

According to Vatterott (2009), the most impactful home learning tasks are ones that focus on practice, checking for understanding, or applying the knowledge or skills students have learned in their lesson.

Examples of home learning tasks that are likely to have greater impact are:

• Low stakes diagnostic testing
• Summarising notes
• Creating Knowledge Organisers to recast classroom materials
• Guided research
• Exam question practise
• Guided revision, etc

Key Stage 3 Home learning

Students will receive an average of 1 hour of home learning per evening.  Over the two-week cycle this will consist of two hours of Maths and English, one hour from Science and MFL, and approximately half an hour from all other subjects.  In order to make the most of regular practice, tasks are unlikely to be set in hourly tasks, instead broken into numerous shorter activities.

Key Stage 4 Home learning

Students will receive an average of 2 hours of home learning per evening.  Over the two-week cycle this will consist of four hours of Maths, English and Science, and a further two hours from each of their other subjects.  In order to make the most of regular practice, tasks are unlikely to be set in hourly tasks, instead broken into numerous shorter activities.

Post 16

Homework tasks will take many forms in preparation for the public examination courses in Years 12 and 13; these will include: writing-up of class notes; extension of class notes; extended reading; comprehension questions; presentations; revision, writing of timed examination questions. Homework will be expected to be completed at home and at school during private study periods.

For each subject studied, a minimum of 9 hours per fortnight of home learning will be set. This can and should include further reading, research and preparation to support classroom study to lesson 10 assessment. A least one assessed piece of work should occur per fortnight until the lesson 10 assessment begins.

How can parents and carers help?

We ask that parents and carers support us by seeing that home learning is done conscientiously and in the best possible conditions.  Parents and carers should try to provide a reasonably peaceful, suitable place in which their children can carry out their home learning or help them to attend other places where homework can be undertaken, such as home learning clubs or libraries.  We also hope that parents and carers make it clear to students that they value home learning, and support the school in explaining how it can help them make progress at school.  Using the parent App from SMHK is an excellent way to support 

Please contact J.rayner@WarlinghamTLT.co.uk if you have mislaid your parent code to Satchel. 

Students that have forgotten their login details should contact IT Support ITSupport@WarlinghamTLT.co.uk.