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Baysgarth

Aim

Homework is an initiative that forms part of Baysgarth's wider resilience strategy. The aims in order to support this are:

  • To provide students an opportunity to develop the learning behaviours of organisation and responsibility
  • To support the development of self motivation, by encouraging the embedding of consistent routines
  • To support the development of organisational skills 
  • To encourage self testing and assessment to promote intrinsic motivation
  • To provide opportunities for failure in a low stakes context
  • To allow parents an opportunity to support home work by ensuring the learning behaviours and skills are reinforced rather than content

Model

The use of digital learning platforms have been proven to reduce teacher workload, provide immediate learner feedback, track and analyse learning and better engage our learners. The school will use an agreed set of digital platforms at KS3 and support learners to develop their digital competences.  At KS4 a wider range of platforms and tasks may be implemented according to subject need. 

Key Stage 3

Key stage 3 refers to students in years 7, 8  and 9.  Students in these year groups are studying subjects that allow them to complete the national curriculum. They study a broad range of subjects but all are underpinned by literacy and numeracy.

Homework in English and Maths will be set on a weekly basis, 60 minutes for each subject. The strategy is about skill and resilience development, so the work set will not be directly linked to the current curriculum. It will focus on KS2 and previous learning to support retrieval. Online platforms as intuitive and extensive as those established in English and Maths are not available commercially in other subjects yet, but we must ensure we continue to look for these as we evolve the strategy.

Parents don’t need to support the content of the homework, their role is to provide the space and support for doing it. The work needs to be built into the weekly plan for the family to ensure that routines are developed. If resources are not available at home, then parental support is expected to get students to attend homework clubs. 

Online platforms are used to ensure homework can be easily set and there is no marking for staff, with feedback instantaneous to students. The online platforms for English and Maths are now intuitive so they can respond to a student who is getting stuck or finding something difficult, so motivation is never affected. 

Completion of homework will drive house point allocation. Our reward strategy is being overhauled as we strive to ensure it rewards the heroes who try and not just the champions who excel.

Failure to complete homework in Maths or English will require them to attend either the Maths or English homework club for an hour after school. The homework clubs will run across Wednesday and Thursday and there are late buses on these nights. 

Failure to attend an after school detention will result in an isolation placement the following day. 

Other KS3 subjects can set homework and the strategy for encouraging completion will be solely about rewards rather than sanction.

Key Stage 4

Key stage 4 refers to students in years 10 and 11.  Students in these year groups are completing their GCSE courses and the expectation is that they will be set homework across the range of subjects they study. This is in line with current practice. Some of these students have had 3 years minimum of not completing homework and therefore to close the gap and support the preparation for independent study in college, our strategy is to focus on helping them to recognise success and giving them the tools to revise and study effectively. 

There will be a revise wise event for Y11 to support this and the study skills programme is being developed to be interwoven across their curriculum time. 

KS4 students have access to a wide variety of online platforms and these have started to become embedded this year. Teachers will verbally set the homework in the lesson and inform students that it has been set on Google Classroom. Clear instructions will be given verbally and on Google Classroom including which digital platform to access, due by date and aim of homework. This will then be able to be seen by parents through the weekly round up. 

Students will receive 2 house points for completion of homework to a good standard and on time. Further development of our reward strategy will see additional whole school rewards in addition. Faculties are also encouraged to be creative in how they reward students to build motivation at classroom level. 

Staff will issue a lunch detention when a student fails to complete homework on time, as is currently the process. Students will sit the detention the following day.

Failure to attend the lunch detention or a breakdown will result in an isolation the following day.

Homework Club

The homework clubs will be based in areas of the school where ICT can be provided. It is imperative that the students can have access to ICT so they can access the work they have missed. If they complete this work within the hour, they have access to further work through their Google classrooms. 

The homework club will run on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. This may be reduced if the need decreases. Students can attend any of these nights to complete their homework, with late buses being provided to get the students home.

Maths will set homework at 0830 each Monday with students having to complete it by 0830 the following Monday.  Sanctions and rewards will be issued by the Maths team by 1330 on a Tuesday, with the admin team notifying parents by 1600 on Tuesday that their  KS3 child must attend the Maths homework club on Wednesday.  KS4 students will receive their Lunch detention the following day.

English will set homework at 0830 each Tuesday with students having to complete it by 0830 the following Tuesday.  Sanctions and rewards will be issued by the English team by 1330 on a Wednesday, with the admin team notifying parents by 1600 on Wednesday that their  KS3 child must attend the English homework club on Thursday.  KS4 students will receive their Lunch detention the following day.

Monday homework club will primarily be for students completing homework before their deadlines.  Although, there may be some students in attendance who are completing a rescheduled compulsory visit to the homework club.  There will always be subject specialists available to support.  There is no requirement for students to be silent, although all discussions should be productive and focussed on the homework tasks.