VIEW FROM THE CLASSROOM
View from the classroom
school’ and to keep parents up-to-date and involved with their child’s learning. Our justification is the same, but it is also
strongly based on the underlying foundation of our school, which is to develop each child’s love of learning.
How do you achieve this ‘love of learning’? At Widmer End we ensure that while the home learning activities are designed to consolidate the day’s learning, some of the activities are also enjoyable. This transforms homework from a burden to a task students look forward to. While we set literacy and topic home learning,
maths is a particular area of focus for us. Maths is a core skill and the new maths
W
idmer End Community Combined School in High Wycombe is a calm,
nurturing, and friendly school community that is full of fun and laughter and is driven to develop children's love of learning. This month, Education Today speaks to
Liezl van der Merwe, Year 2 and KS1 (5 to 7 years of age) leader, who explains how and why the school created its own homework protocol and the challenges this addresses.
Tell us a little bit about why you set homework in your primary school? While most primary schools set homework, the debate on its benefits is rarely out of the news. Each argument tends to look at whether it really helps children’s learning or whether schools only use it to keep parents happy. A survey, carried out by TheSchoolRun,
revealed that the answer is both. It showed that most primary schools use homework to ‘consolidate the skills that are being taught at
curriculum also states that each child must have an in-depth understanding of each skill before moving on to the next. By setting maths-based home learning activities, the children who have struggled to fully grasp a particular concept have more time to develop their understanding, while the other children consolidate their learning further by deepening their learning and carrying out problem-solving activities. To achieve these objectives, we use the online
resource, Matific (
www.matific.com), that consolidates the learning through fun, problem solving activities aligned to the curriculum. It tracks their developments step by step, giving them fun activities that slowly increase in complexity as they progress. If they stumble over any specific concept, Matific automatically provides them with more problems to solve at a slightly easier or similar level of complexity.
How do you give parents the comfort that their support is being provided in the right direction? On the subject of homework, one of the biggest teaching unions, ATL, expressed its concern that sometimes parents or guardians try to help with homework and, if they have been taught differently, it can end up being confusing for the child doing the homework. This was something
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www.education-today.co.uk January 2019
we were very aware of; while many parents are enthusiastic about home learning and the opportunities this provides to get more involved in their child’s learning, they are worried about ‘doing more harm than good.’ This is another reason why Matific is ideal. The resource intelligently assesses each child’s level of understanding from their responses to each set problem, before presenting them with the next activity. If they struggled, they will be given a slightly easier question; if they completed it quickly, the next question will be at a higher level of understanding. In this way the work is done for the parent. All they need to do is sit with their child and share in the fun activities. Matific also gives them an understanding of
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