More learning@home

I have blogged about homework before and do not wish to repeat myself, but would like to share this half term's work and show how it enriches our enquiry based learning in school. I changed the way I set homework in school after having a big think about it last year and gauging opinion from my PLN through a crowd-sourced document. I know that Hattie says that the worst thing you can do is give children projects, but equally he says that the best homework is that which enriches work in class. That's exactly what this homework does - and I'm not sure that they would be classed as projects even thought that's what I call them. The fact that children show an obvious pride in their work and want to show it off to others means that it has already had more than 'an effect of zero'.   


At the beginning of term, as always, I stuck a homework option sheet in each child's learning@home book with a range of choices. Children may decide to do something that isn't included in the sheet, which is absolutely fine as long as it follows the same theme.

The homework arrived steadily over the last two weeks of term and was as delightful as ever. There were information books and some lovely pieces of fiction - one where I starred as a walrus! I'm taking it as a compliment that I was included in the story of course! It is a treat to see the variety of work that has been done and quiet often I learn about talents that I may not otherwise have known. 

Their homework sits beautifully alongside art work and written work that they have completed in class.  

The models are gorgeous and included some very characterful polar bears, some great igloos and arctic tableaux. There is clearly adult input in some of them, but I imagine that it is a lot more enjoyable than parents trying to get their child to complete worksheets.

Three of my children extended their learning at school by creating similar iBooks at home. They were rightfully proud of their work and enjoyed presenting it to the class.

iBooks made at school

Some children decided to cook and we all enjoyed the delicious arctic cake and polar bear biscuits that were brought in. You can see more work on our class blog. What I really love about doing homework in this way (as opposed to worksheet style homework) is that the children have some ownership over it and I like to think that there are lots of conversations about the topic during their learning at home. Parents impart their wisdom and share their ideas, then learn/work alongside their children. Perfect!

More incredible learning at home: The Great Fire of London

I have blogged about homework before (we call it learning@home) and know that some teachers have appreciated seeing the work that we have completed and the ideas behind them. Others have debated the usefulness and impact of homework, but it is an expectation that we provide it. I have tried to make it as meaningful as possible by linking it in to the work that goes on in class. This homework activity sheet went home to all families at the beginning of January and every child bought in a piece of work before half term. Yes they varied in the amount of adult support that the child received, but I actually don't have a problem with this. In the same way that I wouldn't expect a child to bake on their own (and I understand that they can experience rich conversations and  new language whilst doing so), I feel the same about some of the models that have been created. It's clear that they haven't been achieved independently, but I imagine the quality family time that has hopefully happened. Even more important, the children are incredibly proud and very keen to show off their learning at home. We certainly celebrate their achievements in class!

A sketch of the new St Paul's

Tudor houses

Tudor houses

 

An incredible project about the Great Fire of London and another fantastic model of St Paul's Cathedral. 

 A church that burnt down in London

Thomas Farynor's bakery buns

We all appreciated these - they were delicious!

The bakery fire

Tudor recipe books, diaries, pictures, posters, fact sheets and top trumps cards.

Our display is growing!

More learning@home!

I have written before about our learning@home successes and thought I would share some more with you. We have linked up with a school in London and before OfSTED arrived we managed to send letters and drop in via Google Earth.
For the half term homework my children had a range of options as usual to choose from and once again there have been some jaw dropping moments. Here are a few of the pieces of work that have arrived.

The London Eye

London landmarks

Big Ben

The Tower of London, with poppies!

Yes, there has clearly been adult input, but that's the point isn't it? My children are working with their parents and my parents are being positive role models with their child's learning. The quality of the work is incredible - much better than we would produce at school, because all children are getting 1:1 support. All children have produced things and the variety is incredible. I have learned new things from the children and they are very excited to share their work. Tomorrow we will celebrate in style with a massive show and tell! 

Big Ben

An amazing pop-up book

The response from parents has been very positive too. They love the variety and that it links in with our school work from the had term. They also tell me how much they enjoy coming in to see it during our open school sessions. 

Learning@home

This is the second half term that I have decided to do a more open ended kind of homework, which lasts the half term rather than weekly. I have blogged about homework before and had been trying to find a better way of managing it. The last half term one about nocturnal animals was a great success, but I was interested in whether this was due to the novelty factor. My colleague in class one decided she would like to try this way too, to see if the quality of her homework would improve. We had a seaside theme, but whereas my colleagues focus was boats, mine was  buildings - mainly lighthouses and beach huts. 

 We have both been bowled over by the quality of the work that has been handed in. Yes, a lot of it has clearly been achieved with huge parent involvement, but isn't that great? One child brought in a photograph of a wooden boat planter that he helped his dad make, another spent a whole day designing and making a submarine type of vessel with his dad.  Brilliant.

We invited the parents in after school again to come and celebrate their children's work. It is wonderful to see and hear their responses. Prior to this, 3 teachers came at different times before school to visit us and were totally distracted by the display of work that was being created. One of our teachers is a parent of a child in class one and she explained that although she groaned when she read the homework, her husband thought it was great and it turned out to be the best homework her daughter had done. Our colleague told us how her daughter looked forward to doing it, didn't moan once and had a huge sense of pride in her achievements. It was meaningful, quality time with her family. Wow! That's just what I was hoping for - homework being enjoyed, not a chore. It was wonderful to hear my colleagues talking about the quality and value of what they could see and I wish the children could have heard the lovely comments that were being made. All the homework was different, all unique, all brilliant.

The positive comments that my colleagues made were replicated when families came in. What more could I ask for?

The thing that hasn't worked so well this half term is the maths, which is additional to the topic work. This half term I wrote a range of activities, all on the theme of shape, space and measures.  The children were required to colour in at least 5 of the activities that they had completed over the half term. When I looked in their books, very few had been coloured - and there is little evidence that what has been done has had an impact. I will rethink the maths activities for next year.

Homework (part 2)

When I was previously chewing over the issue of homework, which I blogged about here, I received a terrific response to the crowd-sourced document with a range of different approaches being added.  I subsequently created my own half term documents for maths and topic work, which are a bit wordy, but were well received by parents. I was blown away with what my children created during this half term. Children who had previously failed to do homework of any quality received head teacher certificates for their achievements. Take a look at what they created. You can see more photos on their class blog.







All in all, a very successful change to homework for class 2, which the children have been buzzing about. On Monday my children wrote invites to their families to come and visit the class and look at their work on Friday after school. It was a successful open event and lovely to hear such positive comments - and to see parents praising the work of others.

 Because of its success I have created a similar homework document for our seaside topic this half term, which incorporates some spelling investigations too.  I can't wait to see what they do this time!

Homework

Quick link to the crowd sourced homework doc in case you have just dropped in for that.

A highly contentious issue, homework matters have made me groan inwardly, grit my teeth and smile on many occasion. From complaints of too much, too little, or the lack of spellings, to the families who ask for more, but neglect to 'hear' their children read, I take the criticisms and try my best to do something about it.

 When I first became an infant teacher it was in the wake of an outstanding OfSTED inspection. One of our next steps was the suggestion of taking the EYFS learning journals into the 2/1 classes, so I devised a way of doing this with my colleague. I had a strong idea, she had a strong name for it! We named our homework folders Learning@Home and put in a new sheet of A4 each week. We wanted the homework activities to be as practical as possible - activities that could often be done in the car, walking home from school or at the dinner table, so that lack of time could not be a reason for not doing them. We were keen to make sure that families were as involved as possible in their child's education, so rather than hand over worksheets, we tried to think of activities that would generate discussions and extend children's learning.

Last week I did a massive 'grin and bear it' after after I read in a school survey how the homework was too easy, a child did it in five minutes and although they were given additional challenges, these were on an ad hoc basis. Bearing in mind that reading is a daily homework activity, I felt a tad gobsmacked about this (gobsmacked enough to be bothered to write this post). I was annoyed at the fact that the very same week I had phoned the family to explain how, after putting an additional challenge in their child's tray, I had found a few that hadn't been taken home. This smacked of 'I don't want to do these' to me, so I suggested that the family take their child to the library and start an 'expert project'. The children in my class are 6/7 years old and the last thing I want to do is switch them off. Despite this, the comments were still made on the survey and I felt I had to justify what I had done (unnecessarily - my HT wasn't asking me to, I was needing to. Like I said, I was gobsmacked!) This is because, alongside daily reading and the weekly learning@home activities I had sent the following, additional activities home, most purchased at my own expense:

• Brain academy maths challenges
• Brain academy quests
• Achieve level 3 English
• Boggle
• Brain box geography game
• A choice of brain teaser puzzles (like the picture below)
• Level 3 maths activities
• Level 3 English activities

I've already said how reading is supposed to be a daily activity and I provided questioning sheets during parent's evening so that effective support and extension can be continued at home. I feel I've done my duty as a teacher and have been thinking about Carol Dweck's Mindset again. What I need to do is encourage families to take more responsibility for extending their children and enriching their knowledge, rather than it being my responsibility to continuously extend them. I don't want to switch children off at such an early age. So here's where you can help. I started to put a list together of extension activities that can be done at home. They are based on the things my family did with me when I was a wee one! Can you add anything?

Footnotes

Although I find the comments were unjustified,  I do applaud parents who show interest and involvement in their child's education. One child in my class regularly brings in arty, creative work that they have completed at home, but complements topic work, and it is delightful. Although this is an entire new blog post, I do think that if we are to recreate the education systems that our current government aspires to, we are going to need to promote these kind of parental attitudes too. 

Responses from my twitter colleagues within 12 hours. Thanks as always! :-)

These ideas are additional to ones on the document.

1. Julie B ‏@MrsBennettTeach  9h

   @SheliBB How about create your own board game - inspired by my 8 year old who is currently doing just that!

1. TeacherToolkit ‏@TeacherToolkit  19h

   @SheliBB @Mrs_Twit24 Ta-daa! http://teachertoolkit.me/2014/01/28/takeawayhmk-is-unhomework/ …

Jenny Tubby ‏@jennytubby  20h

"One of our takes on "Takeaway Homework". In the style of Dominos #takeawayhwk pic.twitter.com/VUfCvxz1KW” @SheliBB this is a high school e.g.

1. Tracey Bowers ‏@traceyab1  10h

   @SheliBB @beckijennings @Kezmerrelda @JenniH68 http://woodpeckersclass.wordpress.com/2014/03/27/home-learning-3/ … http://woodpeckersclass.wordpress.com/2013/11/28/russia-home-learning/ … http://woodpeckersclass.wordpress.com/2014/03/17/home-learning-improving-or-harming-our-environment/ … http://woodpeckersclass.wordpress.com/2014/03/03/home-learning-2/ … 2

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2. Sheli Blackburn ‏@SheliBB  10h

   @traceyab1 @beckijennings @kezmerrelda @jennih68 thank you! Do you mind if I add to crowd sourced doc, or can you add to comment on blog so

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3. Tracey Bowers ‏@traceyab1  10h

   @SheliBB @beckijennings @Kezmerrelda @JenniH68 will do - got others too. Parents encouraged to take the idea as far as their child wants

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4. Sheli Blackburn ‏@SheliBB  8h

   @traceyab1 @beckijennings @kezmerrelda @jennih68 but the most important in my book is still reading - for meaning. I give parents questions

Nic ‏@Mrs_Twit24  6h

@SheliBB topic was celebrations, had meeting for parents to explain &showed examples I made to give them some ideas. pic.twitter.com/29Qp5mD9OA

Shared by @Mrs_Twit24 though layout was devised by someone else

1. Jenni Porter ‏@JenniH68  8h

   @SheliBB @traceyab1 @beckijennings @Kezmerrelda I like those philosophy for children questions....would you rather...?

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   1. Sheli Blackburn ‏@SheliBB  21h

      New post: Homework http://carryonlearning.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/homework.html … Can you help infant/primary teachers? (@traceyab1 @beckijennings @Kezmerrelda @JenniH68 )

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   2. Becki Jennings ‏@beckijennings  11h

      @SheliBB @traceyab1 @Kezmerrelda @JenniH68 hmm I don't agree with home learning so young which is why we do projects giving them half a term

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      Jenny Tubby ‏@jennytubby  20h

      @SheliBB I have the same issue with Y2/3. I'm going to do takeaway h/w next term and explain that they need to expand not just advance

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