Homework

At St Bede's we believe that homework plays a vital role in enabling students to embed understanding, and allows them to explore concepts in greater depth.

We know from research that:

homework, especially in secondary schools, can significantly contribute to student progress (+5 months).

We also know that excessive homework, without clear purpose can be detrimental to learning and lead to disenfranchisement in the long term.

We therefore try to adhere to the following principles when setting homework, within St Bede's:

 

  • Homework is linked to classroom work, as research shows this tends to be more effective. In particular, studies that included feedback on homework had higher impacts on learning.
  • We set work with a clear purpose, and make the purpose of homework clear to pupils (e.g. to increase a specific area of knowledge, or to develop fluency in a particular area).
  • Remove barriers to homework completion, wherever possible. Our homework club runs for 3 days, every week, in our fantastic school library to provide a quiet space to complete tasks. Students have full access to computers, as may be required.

 

All homework is set via epraise, or through Microsoft Teams. A guide to these can be found HERE.

 

What you can do to help:

One of the most important thing that students can do is to regularly review and reflect on what they have learnt.

We ask students to spend between 2-5 minutes reviewing the work from each of their lessons of that day. This would enable them to recall the key knowledge, and identify any gaps in understanding, which may be easier to do once there has been time away from the learning activity.

The simple task of having your child explain what they learnt, from each of their lessons, gently probing if necessary, would certainly help achieve this and in a time-efficient way.

Check for homework, and remind them of upcoming deadlines in a non-pressuring way. Ask them if you could help in any way.

Praise effort. Homework can often be challenging, but always recognise effort, and remind them that perfection needn't be the enemy of the good. Mistakes are fine; it's how we all learn.