heart of heartlands lessons

When we reviewed what homework looks like at Heartlands we read what the research studies show. Refer to experts such as prof. Hattie and research by the Education Endowment Foundation, and you will find that their reviews on a range of research have shown homework at secondary level is beneficial and has a positive impact on student progress.

Our students tell us that they enjoy and take pride in their homework when they feel it is useful for their learning. We have worked hard in the last couple of years to ensure that we set high-quality homework, reviewing prior learning or flipping learning. In doing so, we have employed a number of tools:

1. First of all, we have worked tirelessly to use Show My Homework (SMH) consistently across the school. All our homework is set online and is easily accessible to both students and parents. At the end of each week, all Heads of Faculty are emailed their department statistics on how many tasks have been set by each teacher, allowing for clear and transparent accountability across the whole school.
2. Centralised faculty detentions are held daily, making it a straightforward process for staff to issue a detention to students who have not completed their home learning.
3. Students who need support with their home learning have the opportunity to work with staff in one of our homework clubs, held each evening after school.
4. Finally, those who consistently fail to hand in their homework are referred to a week-long programme aimed at developing independent revision skills and good study habits.

We believe in educating our learners, ready for the 21st century. This means promoting creativity, research and critical thinking skills, utilising long-term projects and good computer skills, making use of blogs, videos, podcasts and apps such as GCSEPod, MyMaths or Tassomai; resources which are readily available at school. As a Google school, our students complete their work on Google Drive and share their work with teachers. With the school library open late and Google Drive accessible from anywhere, both online (and once downloaded for free) offline, our students can complete their homework without having to worry about connection to the internet or having the appropriate software on their home computer.

In a spirit of cooperation and support, many of our teachers share their homework ideas, including low stakes tests, podcasts, as well as long-term projects across their departments and in whole-staff teaching and learning briefings.

There is nothing more rewarding than seeing our students bringing in their home learning through the gate first thing in the morning, beaming with pride at the work they have completed.