At Co-op Academy Grange, we have high expectations and aspirations for all of our students. We strive to ensure that they can all access an aspirational curriculum, which includes the receipt of high-quality home learning that is appropriate to their needs.

Purpose

Research advises that consistent completion of meaningful home learning can improve the attainment of students by developing their skills and deepening their knowledge. As such, home learning is an integral part of the wider curriculum on offer. By learning outside of the classroom, students can develop important skills such as research and independent study. The completion of home learning will enable deeper knowledge to be embedded so that students learn more and know more, and thus retain the information in their long-term memory. Home learning also helps students to develop skills such as time management, organisation and planning, which will help them to become lifelong learners. It also enables students to be self-reflective and show commitment to their studies. Home learning is set for a variety of purposes:

• Providing opportunities for students to explore topics of their own interest.
• Introducing new content.
• Practising a skill or process that students can do independently but not yet fluently.
• Elaborating on information that has been addressed in class to deepen students’ knowledge.
• Giving students the opportunity to revise the information they have been taught.

Students will be set regular home learning. In order for students to keep a track of their home learning schedule, all home learning is set on Google Classroom as an ‘Assignment’ with a ‘Due Date’. Setting home learning on Google Classroom allows students to see their personal ‘to do’ list of home learning to be completed and the date that the home learning is due in. Google Classroom can be used to:

1. Post the home learning itself, electronically, for completion on the Google Classroom platform.
2. Signpost to other online platforms where the specific home learning task is set (eg: Dr Frost).
3. Alert the student that they have paper-based home learning that needs completing.

Home learning is an integral part of the wider curriculum and its completion has many benefits for students. As such, students will be rewarded for the completion of home learning. Students will not be sanctioned for non-completion of home learning.

In order to minimise teacher workload, teachers are encouraged to set high-quality self-marking home learning (for example via Google Forms, Dr Frost, GCSE Pod, Seneca Learning, Quizlet).

By using self-marking home learning, teachers can adapt their future classroom teaching based on the results of self-marking home learning, thus ensuring that home learning remains impactful.

Where home learning is set which is not self-marking, there is no expectation that teachers will specifically mark each piece of home learning submitted, but will instead provide feedback in line with the school’s Feedback Policy, and then use their findings to inform and adapt their future classroom teaching.