At Rushey Green School we work in partnership with parents to provide an education of the highest quality, which celebrates everyone's success in a happy, caring environment, where all our differences are valued.

Home &endash;learning is any work or activity which pupils are asked to do outside lesson time, either on their own or with parents or carers. The aim of this policy is to set out the purpose of home-learning and describe how it will be planned, co-ordinated and managed throughout the school, to ensure consistency and progression.

The Purpose of Home-Learning

The purposes of home-learning are:

- To develop a real and effective partnership between teachers and parents in fulfilling their responsibility to the child's learning and pursuing the aims of the school

- To help children consolidate and reinforce skills and understanding particularly in literacy and numeracy.

- To complete and develop current class work

- To encourage the use of different kinds of learning resources at home

- To help children develop the confidence and self-discipline needed to become independent learners

- To encourage a habit and develop satisfaction for learning

- To provide opportunities for parents and pupils to work together to enjoy learning experiences

- To prepare year six children for secondary transfer

- To raise achievement

Time Allocation

The precise amount of time spent on home-learning is much less important than the nature of the task set. Broad guidelines, however, about the amount of time pupils might reasonably be expected to spend on home-learning have been set out by the government and include a recommended reading time of 10-20 minutes a day.

Years 1 & 2 - 1 hour per week

Years 3 & 4 - 1.5 hours per week

Years 5 & 6 - 30 minutes per day

In key stage 2 normally there will be a set day for receiving and returning home-learning, otherwise the teacher will inform the children on handing out the work, the day to return it. There may be periods, such as leading up to KS1 SATs, when home-learning will not be given. During this time home-learning will be the parents responsibility and at the yearly key stage 1 SATs meeting, appropriate activities will be recommended, and the quality of time spend between the child and parent.

Organising Home-Learning

Primary school teachers are not given time out of class for marking children's school or homework. On average each week, teachers spend 5 hours on weekly planning, 5 hours on daily preparation and 5 hours of marking and assessing school work this is over and above lesson time. In order to keep the teacher's workload manageable home-learning will include a range of activities that will be readily administered by parents and monitored and evaluated in a number of ways.

Home-learning will consist of activities that develop current class work, revise and consolidate previous work and promote and extend general knowledge. The main focus on home-learning will be literacy and numeracy. Regular reading is vital throughout key stage 1 and 2. Children will be required to learn tables, spellings, and complete written exercises in literacy and numeracy. Children may be asked to carry out activities that make the most of everyday opportunities such as making calculations based on a shopping trip or a sorting activity based on books or similar items at home.

Home-learning will also consist of games and research and children may be asked to repeat an activity for the purpose of revision. To inform parents of the literacy and numeracy requirements for each year group we will provide two supporting documents 'help your child read' and 'help your child with numbers' at autumn open evening. In addition, lists of recommended activity books will also be available.

Monitoring and Evaluation

Home-learning will be monitored and evaluated in a variety of ways. Some home-learning will be checked by tests set in class such as spelling, multiplication tables and English grammar. Some work will be marked with the children during lesson time. Parents may be asked to check an activity and sign their child's home-learning journal as part of the monitoring process. Home-learning will be stamped or ticketed to acknowledge the child's efforts. Work will not always be corrected i.e. &endash; incorrect spelling or sums put right, punctuation added etc.

Continuity and progression

To ensure continuity and progression in home-learning, teachers in each year group will co-ordinate the work given in their year group taking into consideration ability and special needs. Numeracy and literacy will be closely linked to the National Strategy for each year group. In the event of a class teacher being absent from school unexpectedly, we will do our best to ensure children receive relevant activities for home-learning. Parents will need to ensure completion and return of home-learning activities, provide a suitable place for working as well as necessary assistance, and give praise and encouragement to promote the status of home-learning.

Early Years & Key Stage 1

In the reception class, children will be bringing home books and learning letter sounds. Those who are ready will also bring home key words for learning. Each child will have a comment book for parents to make a record of when and what their child has read, along with any comments or feed back for the teacher. Parents will also be given ideas and suggestions about ways of developing the child's number recognition and counting ability.

In years 1&2 in addition to reading the children will be given words to learn to read. When they have built up a reading vocabulary of these words, they will then be given spelling lists to learn. Spellings will be checked weekly. Teachers and parents/carers will be able to communicate via the word/spelling books.

Children in years 1 and 2 are given a home-learning Journal. These are given out each half term. In the journal, are weekly literacy activities and a parent comment sheet. Teachers comment half-termly.

Key Stage 2

Years 3 & 4 will continue to read at home regularly books that match their ability. In addition the children will be given work such as book reviews, spellings, activities in numeracy and literacy. Parents and teachers can communicate via the home-learning book provided.

Years 5 and 6 will continue to read appropriately challenging material. In addition, pupils will be given work from a range of activities and subjects including book reviews, spellings, numeracy, literacy, science and topic work. According to ability, pupils in years 5 and 6 will practise previous year test papers in preparation for key stage 2 SATs. A home learning book will be provided for comments.

Monitoring and evaluating the home-learning policy

The Deputy head will be responsible for monitoring the policy and ensuring its implementation. A sample of home-learning assignments and comment books will be checked periodically and discussions with teachers will help the school to know how efficient and effective the policy is. Feedback about home-learning from the children will be given through the school council meetings. Parents will be able to give feedback through questionnaires sent out by the school occasionally and by writing comments in their child's home-learning comment book.

Last reviewed Spring 2003

To be reviewed Spring 2006

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