Homework

Purpose of homework
We believe that there is enormous advantage in children spending regular periods of time, on different learning activities devised by school, as part of a homework programme which supports the work they do in school.
The Governors and staff of Ss Peter & Paul Catholic Primary School recognise the need for children to have the time to follow out of school interests and family activities and the following guidelines and time allocations allow for these important things to take place.  

Role of parents and carers in supporting pupils

• Parents and carers are asked to:
• provide a reasonably peaceful, suitable place in which a child can do homework.
• make it clear to their child/ren that they value homework and support the school in explaining how it can help their learning.
• encourage children and praise them when they have completed homework.   
  

Role of Teacher
It is the responsibility of the class teacher to set homework each week for the class in addition to the expectation that the children read at home each night and practise their spellings. The class teacher will agree the day with the children for both setting and collecting in homework. This will be communicated to the Parents at the start of each Term through a timetable. It is also the responsibility of the class teacher to mark the homework set and give feedback to the children about the quality of the work.

There will be certain times during the School Year where homework other than daily reading will not be set e.g. the week before Christmas. At these times your child could be doing work on their curricular targets or spending more time on their learning log.

Recommended time allocation for homework
The minimum recommendations of the DCFS for homework for children in key stage 1 and 2 are given below.
Years 1 and 2:
1 hour per week
Daily reading, spelling practice, number work.  
Years 3 and 4:
1.5 hours per week
Daily reading, spelling practice, Literacy and Numeracy work.
Years 5 and 6:
30 minutes per day (2 ½ hours per week)
Daily Reading, Literacy and Numeracy work, project/research for other subjects.

We also believe that we should ask our Reception children to read daily, when they start to bring their books home and, when appropriate, learn their letter sounds at home.

Learning Logs

We would like parents to share their children’s learning experiences and have supplied each child with a personal Learning Log.
These Logs will come home each week with a statement saying,

‘Tell me what you know about...’  (E.g. the number 10, adding up, evacuation, Ancient Egypt etc)

Together with your child you can discover first hand an aspect of their learning from the week. The time spent on this activity would not be set and would be in addition to the daily reading and spelling practice for Y1 and Y2.

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