If a student completes an hour’s homework per school night for five years, it is the equivalent of an extra year at school.
Regular homework is important, since it serves as an intellectual discipline, establishes good study habits, eases time constraints on the amount of curricular material that can be covered in class, and supplements and reinforces work done in school. In addition, it fosters student initiative, independence, and responsibility, and brings home and school closer together. It helps students to become confident and independent in their learning and crucially good organisational skills and strong study routines will significantly reduce anxiety caused by assessments and terminal exams.
Crucially, homework at secondary school has been proven to work. There have been countless studies done looking at the correlation between exam success and homework and the results are indisputable! Students who regularly complete their homework achieve better grades in final exams than those that don’t. One study noted links between students who regularly did their homework and tidy bedrooms! Research has shown that students who regularly complete homework benefit from:
An increased progress from 12 months in a year to a possible 20 months
An increased retention of knowledge
Improved study habits and skills leading to an improve work ethic
Homework is not about keeping students busy and off the streets. The homework tasks that we set are based on the theory of practice. We all know the saying ‘practice makes perfect’. At King Charles I we work on the premise that ‘practice makes permanent’. The more practice a student does the more they can remember for longer. We do not want students to be able to remember things for a test or a quiz, the focus is on lifelong learning. Plus, the more they can remember the easier tests become and the less anxious students feel about tests and exams. For more information, please see our homework policy.
Teachers and student’s biggest enemy is forgetting. Twenty minutes after leaving our lessons our students will only be able to remember 58% of what we said. After a week, they can only remember 25%! Luckily for us, we discovered a solution, that is not only easy and only requires a pen and a piece of paper, but has been proven by research as one of the most effective studying methods. Quizzing, aka retrieval practice, is quick and easy to do, but more importantly it enables students to learn and remember knowledge in the long term.
Please see the following examples of effective quizzing:
Please watch this short video about how to quiz effectively:
The majority of quizzing tasks set for homework will be set using the subject knowledge organiser. Your son/daughter has a black folder that contains all of their knowledge organisers for their different subjects. A copy of the knowledge organisers can also be found on our knowledge organiser page on our website. Please click here to access the knowledge organiser webpage.
Daily Tasks
Daily homework tasks
The principle behind our homework timetable for Year 7 and 8 is to support students to develop good daily study routines. By setting tasks such as daily reading and Hegarty maths, we are expecting students to complete these tasks on a daily basis and not all in one go at the weekend. As students progress through the school the amount of homework that they are expected to do will increase and students who have not developed a good daily study routine will struggle to complete their work and will feel under pressure and anxious. We understand that students may have commitments outside of school, however homework should always take a precedent as it forms an essential part of their education. For further information please see see the Hegarty Maths tab.
Why do we need to read every day?
“The more you read, the better you get at it; the better you get at it, the more you like it; and the more you like it, the more you do it. And the more you read, the more you know; and the more you know, the smarter you grow.” -Jim Trelease
Reading underpins everything that our students do in school. Evidence suggests that children who read every day not only perform better in tests than those who don’t, but also develop a broader vocabulary, increased general knowledge and a better understanding of other cultures. A recent Department for Education study showed that there “is a difference in reading performance equivalent to just over a year's schooling between young people who never read for enjoyment and those who read for up to 30 minutes per day”. At King Charles I School we recognise the importance of reading and expect that every student should be reading every day for a minimum of 30 minutes.
Need Help?
Need help with homework?
Homework club is run on both our sites and is open to all students. It provides students with a calm environment in which to complete their homework as well as allowing them access to extra support, books and computers. Homework club can also be accessed by students in the event of a club being cancelled. Homework club is currently open as follows:
Years 9, 10 and 11: Hillgrove Site: the homework club will take place after school in the Hillgrove library. It runs from 2:55pm until 4:25pm all week.
Years 7 and 8: the homework club will take place in the FLS on Borrington. It runs from 2:55pm until 4:25pm all week.
If your son/daughter does not understand the homework task, they should speak to their teacher well before the deadline date to clarify what to do or get some extra support. If they can’t find their teacher, they should send them an email or pop into homework club for support.
Hegarty Maths provides full coverage of the curriculum up to and including GCSE. New material is introduced in the videos through well-explained reference to its pre-requisite building blocks. All skills are demonstrated through carefully scaffolded examples. Students can revisit any concept to get further practice over time to improve working memory and confidence. The methods used by the site are based on the cognitive science behind successful teaching and learning. Students should watch the videos, make notes and complete the quiz on a particular topic which tests their understanding of the content. Their work is marked after every question and a final mark given at the end. Students may retake the quiz as many times as they like to improve their scores and revisit any model answers in the video throughout the quiz if further support is required. It is a fantastic learning tool.
The continued development of mathematical knowledge and skill is vitally important to students’ performance. Regular review and revision of these skills and subject knowledge will improve retention and fluency significantly. This has become increasingly important following the GCSE curriculum reforms which has put a greater focus on problem solving and more challenging content.
For Years 7, 8 and 9 inclusive, five assignments are set per week. Some students will be set 2 out of the 5 tasks on Times Tables Rock Stars. Please see the Times Tables Rock Stars tab for more information. Students should spend 30 minutes per night, Monday to Friday inclusive watching the video, making notes and completing the quiz for each task set. Students should strive to score 100% in the quiz and retake it if necessary to reach this goal. All question types that appear in the task are modelled in the video tutorial. This process should be undertaken for a minimum of 30 minutes to maximise learning. The selected topics are prior knowledge that require revision and are differentiated for each set accordingly.
Hegarty Maths is also used for homework in Year 10 and 11 amongst more targeted exam practice in the lead up to GCSE examinations.
We offer Hegarty Maths support clubs that are run by maths specialists on a Monday and Thursday afterschool until 4pm in L22 on the Borrington site and in Q11 on the Hillgrove site. In addition, there is a lunchtime support club every Thursday lunch time in L22 on the Borrington site.
Times Tables Rock Stars
Times Tables Rockstars
All students have access to Times Tables Rockstars as a fun way to boost their times table knowledge. Students who have been identified as needing to significantly improve their times tables have compulsory times tables homework set each week in addition to their Hegarty Maths.
Times Tables Rock Stars is a carefully sequenced programme of daily times tables practice. Each week concentrates on a different times table, or the times tables the class teachers has specifically identified for the class or individual student. There is a recommended consolidation week for rehearsing the tables that have recently been practised every third week or so. The heat map identifies times tables that are strong or weak by colouring each tables fact red, amber or green. Green means that students can instantly recall that times table fact. The aim is for the whole heat map to be green! Parents can check this and support by quizzing their child on the red and amber facts or providing home rewards for reaching a fully green heat map.
Fun is injected by the colourful and game-like nature; students get to pick a rock star avatar and rock hero name to represent them. As they earn more points they can purchase clothes or new guitars from the “shop”. They can compete against each other and teachers!
This format has very successfully boosted times tables recall speed for hundreds of thousands of pupils over the last 8 years in over 14,000 schools - both primary and secondary - worldwide. Improved times table knowledge will increase fluency with the aim of being able to instantly recall all times table facts from the 1 to 12 times tables. This will free up a student’s working memory to focus on problem solving.
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