Welcome to some ideas for supporting your secondary-aged child with homework.
The two main areas where a parent can support are: 1. to establish a daily routine and 2. to hold dialogue with your child about the day's learning - not all of it! But to ask a few open questions about the new ideas they have encountered during the day.
(What surprised you today in Science? Why? What did you grasp well in Maths today? What made you learn it? What did you find shocking/beautiful in Macbeth? What ideas do you now have for staging the play? What did you find most difficult today? Did you ask for help? Tell me some new things you learnt today that I don't know. Test what I (the parent) know about plant Biology!)
Don't underestimate the power of this dialogue: the act of discussing the learning makes the learning more secure.
Guidelines for a homework routine 1. Set the same time aside every evening e.g. 6.00 - 7.00pm.
2. Years 7-9 devote approximately 50 minutes per evening. Years 10-11 devote 60-90 minutes per evening.
3. Clear your desk of all distractions (mobile, magazines, etc). Have everything to hand that you need.
4. Work in 25 minute blocks. Take a 5 minute brain break (a snack or some starjumps!) Return for another 25 minute block. Repeat. Those 25 minutes should be of total concentration.
5. Reading homework is compulsory for all secondary pupils. A pupil should read independently for 25 minutes. The press, a novel, a quality magazine. S/he should then spend 5- 10 minutes responding to this text with a few lines of writing (your child has been given the prompts for this.)
6. If there is no other homework one evening, your child should revisit their learning: their new vocabulary, practising newly-acquired Maths knowledge, creating graphic organisers (spider diagrams, flow charts of new Science concepts, reading in Spanish, learning their lines for the production).
7. GCSE pupils should spend 60-90 minutes (taking 5-10 minute breaks) on: writing up the day's notes in a format they will be able to reuse as revision later (bullet point lists, colour-coded index cards in a box, whole-page graphic organisers, writing 20 difficult questions on a topic which they have just mastered for answering in 3 months & 6 months time.)
Homework rules - Homework must be handed in punctually.
- If it is not handed in, or if the work handed in is of a poor standard, the pupil is given a L or a R mark (late or rejected). The homework must be handed in the following day without fail.
- Three L or R marks within one half term incur a homework detention, where a pupil stays in the library with Audrey from 4.15-5.15 doing work set by a teacher.
- Details of this are in the Secondary Handbook.
Please let us know if your child is having difficulty in completing homework for any reason.
Thank you for your support.
Year 10/11 parents: Here are some useful articles that focus specifically on how you can help your child with GCSE revision.