Homework
Aims
Homework should enhance learning through encouraging children to develop organisational skills, self-discipline and independent thinking. It should act as a bridge between home and school to provide parents and carers with involvement in their children’s learning.
At Lordship, homework is given for a number of reasons:
- to practise important ongoing skills e.g. reading and times tables;
- to enhance/build upon learning that has taken place in class;
- to expose children to concepts that they will soon be covering in class (pre-learning
- for enjoyment;
- to promote creativity.
Tasks may vary in type but will always be carefully planned, and differentiated where appropriate, to ensure that children are able to make a reasonable attempt at completing them.
The amount of time that tasks are expected to take may vary due to the child’s age and ability but would typically be expected to take no longer than 30 minutes, with the exception being project based homework which may be ongoing over a number of weeks.
There is an expectation that children are supported by their parents/carers when completing homework. If a child is struggling with a task they should be encouraged to speak to their class teacher so that it can be clarified and adapted if necessary.
Typical homework given in each Key Stage
EYFS (Nursery and Reception)
Homework is mostly informal, ‘ad-hoc’ and based on the current topic being taught in class. Children are expected to read/be read to by an adult regularly.
‘Talk homework’ is given every Friday in Reception and followed up in a ‘Big Talk’ session every Monday.
KS1 (Years 1 and 2)
Children are expected to read daily and are given spellings to learn on a weekly basis.
Some more formal homework, usually linked to maths, English or topic work taking place in class, is given out on an ad-hoc basis for the purposes outlined above.
KS2 (Years 3-6)
Children are expected to read on a daily basis and to practise timetables regularly in order to know them by heart from Year 4 onwards (children all have TT Rockstars logins so that times tables can be learnt online at home).
Spellings are learnt weekly/fortnightly although children are usually expected to learn a spelling rule rather than a list of words.
Project homework is given during most terms and often parents are invited in to school to view it when completed.
By the end of KS2, children will be getting weekly maths and English homework in order to prepare them for the increased expectations at secondary school.