Dear Parent / Carer,
At The Hurlingham Academy, we know that learning outside of lesson time is essential to long term academic success. It allows our students to extend their learning and to reinforce what has been learnt in class. Every day, your child is expected to study for around one hour. This includes:
- Reading for pleasure
- Hegarty Maths
- Subject self-quizzing
- Subject worksheets and tasks
Reading for pleasure
Like anything else, reading is a skill that becomes better with practice. The objective of Reading for Pleasure is to increase your child’s sense of achievement, confidence and develop their vocabulary – but most of all, for your child to learn to enjoy reading. We encourage your child to challenge themselves with their choice of reading material. Your child should try to read a range of fiction across genres with increasing levels of difficulty. They can see if they have met their reading target on the Accelerated Reader website. Regularly Reading for Pleasure will have enormous benefits across your child’s subject areas and will help them to develop a broad vocabulary.
Pupils need to take an online quiz on Accelerated Reader for each book they read.
Maths
Maths home learning provides your child with the opportunity to become more fluent with their maths skills and practise what they have learnt in lessons. Your child’s maths teacher will set them tasks to complete. They must watch the video and record their notes in their independent learning book which they must then bring into school.
Subject self-quizzing
Your child has been issued with a Knowledge Organiser. It has been created to help our students learn a wide range of knowledge, which in turn will allow them to connect different ideas and apply higher order skills in their lessons. It will also prepare our students for the new style, more rigorous and challenging, GCSEs that they will sit in the future. Once a fortnight, your child’s subject teachers will quiz your child on the essential knowledge that they are expected to learn.
According to significant educational research, frequent quizzing has many benefits for memory and motivation. These include producing better organisation of knowledge, causes students to learn more from their next study episode, identifies gaps in knowledge and improves long term retention.
At home, your child should revise the specific knowledge, as directed by their teachers, using the highly effective Look, Cover, Write, Check self-quizzing strategy. Please be proactive and support your child by quizzing them daily. Your child must bring their Knowledge Organiser to school every day and take it home every evening.
Support
If your child is struggling with any aspect of their homework then please encourage them to go and see their tutor or subject teacher. Your child can also attend our after school Homework Club, which is held Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 3.30 – 4.30pm in the library. There are members of staff who can support your child with their homework as well as computers if you are struggling at home with internet access.
Homework Planner
Every day, your child must use their planner to record their homework tasks. As their parent please check and sign their planner to support with developing their organisation and routines.
At home, please support your child by ensuring that they have a quiet environment to do their home learning. It is important that your child gets into positive and effective study habits now so that they can fulfil their learning potential.
If you have any questions regards your child home learning then please don’t hesitate to contact me.
Mr Leon Wilson
Principal