T
Turner, home learning.
Updated January 2024.
Rationale based on Current Research: The Turner school community (teachers, parents and students) hold a belief that home learning is a valuable opportunity to consolidate and extend classroom learning. From a research perspective academic benefits of homework has produced inconclusive results. There has been no benefit shown for children in the preschool year of schooling receiving formal homework. Current academic opinion is that homework provides little benefit to the academic results of primary school aged children. The research does show that academic benefits are more obvious for secondary-school children. There is general agreement in schools that homework may provide non-academic benefits, including developing children’s achievement and motivation and assisting them to become mature learners. There is also research showing that parents and carers may benefit from homework through becoming more involved in their child’s education.
Home learning at Turner is targeted, relevant and purposeful, designed to:
- have flexible expectations to meet the dynamic and capability of family time, including weeks where students will have more/less time to put into home learning.
- privilege Home Reading because children get better at reading by reading!
- consolidate mathematic learning at school through fun activities for home to build fluency.
- individualised and independent learning opportunities for developing self-management for learning including self-directed deep learning, time and organisational management, and building a sense of responsibility.
- provide opportunities for feedback and celebration between home and school about a child’s learning development.
Expectations at Turner for Preschool- Year 2: There is no formal home learning grid for Kindergarten, year 1 and year 2. Instead, we seek the support of families to read with their child every day aligned with our Home Reading program and to look for opportunities to explore number concepts in real contexts. There are also times where teachers may ask children to prepare for oral language groups or do some finding out about topics they are inquiring into that term. They may ask children to bring in interesting objects or photos as ‘seeds’ for their learning.
Home Learning Grid for Years 3-6: A Home Learning grid is sent home at the start of each term and provides opportunities for students to practise, share, consolidate and extend what they have been learning in the classroom. There will be times in the term when high investment learning experiences will naturally overflow into learning at home. These opportunities include the Senior Story Telling Awards, passion projects, leadership projects and the Year 5/6 Market Day. A typical termly home learning grid includes opportunities related to all curriculum areas and is linked with the term’s Inquiry focus. These learning experiences can complete independently.
Learning Differences and a Targeted Approach: There may be times where the school and families are working more closely together when it comes to learning at home to address a specific learning need. For students’ who are Gifted and/ Talented (G&T), they may access the G&T coordinator at Turner who can recommended some home projects and out of school activities for gifted students. For a student needing extra support to meet an expected benchmark, they are likely to be on an ILP or short-term targeted plan. These plans identify goals and strategies that can further support and enhance the teaching that is happening at school.
Resources and further Information:
- Number Cards: Cards and associated activities available on our website and Learning from Home Hub.
- Home Reading Program: Informing is also sent out with reading log books. The essential aim of the home reading program is that children share positive reading experiences with other people who are significant in their lives. We would recommend that children are reading from at least 10minutes a day at home in younger years to at least 20 minutes in older years. We encourage a range of books to go home. These books are selected by your child and are recorded in their reading log so the teacher can monitor the range and level so there are opportunities for your child to:
- Read independently: Many of the books will be ones the child can read independently (by themselves) and some,
- Be read to: some books, because of the child’s choice will be interest books that parents/carers will read to their child. These are opportunities to model fluent and effective reading strategies to your child and to talk about the book to support comprehension.
- Read with an experienced reader: At other times, when a child is tired or the book is a little more challenging in parts, the parent/carer will read with their child.
- Want more to engage your child with learning at home: Check out our additional resources on Learning from Home Hub- https://sites.google.com/ed.act.edu.au/learning-from-home-hub/additional-learning-resources