Homework at Sand Hutton and Warthill Federated Schools

We are mindful that learning is most effective when children are enthused and excited. For this reason, we resist the temptation to have a fixed or rigid approach to homework and consciously change and adapt homework arrangements so that we continue to engender a ‘buzz’ around independent learning.

Our current approach is a whole federation activity encompassing all classes, on a shared theme,  in a given period of time. This is on top of using a variety of activities and strategies to develop and improve reading and other basic skills through home learning.

Each half term, the children are given a small project, based on a theme. These themes allow us to enrich different aspects of the curriculum or address matters that have arisen in our schools or are pertinent to our local area. They further enhance learning as we are able to share learning across the classes and throughout the federation of both settings.

Themes have included Road Safety; our villages have no street lights and in places no pavements, applying for a Blue Peter Reading badge: to celebrate our love for reading, and demonstrating how we live out our school values through carrying out and recording an act of kindness to make a difference to an individual of members of our communities.

Our children actively seek to be creative and imaginative with these tasks. They look forward to the opportunity to share their homework and see it celebrated. They see homework as meaningful and therefore effective independent learning can be seen in practice.

This is our current approach and we are monitoring its maintained efficacy overtime.