Homework

At St Mary Cray Primary Academy we feel it is important for children to be set engaging homework that gives them opportunities to practice and consolidate the learning that has taken place at school (across a range of subjects).

Enjoy sharing your children’s learning with them - every little helps.

In Year 4, homework is given on Friday and should be completed and returned by the following Thursday.

Homework through the School

In Reception, children read and practise sounds and words for homework.
For children higher up the school, the main purpose of homework is to develop a partnership with parents and actively involve you in your child’s learning. We endeavour to make homework as fun as possible, so a range of open ended practical and written activities are provided rather than worksheets.

Parents are encouraged to:

Provide a peaceful place for doing homework
Make it clear that homework helps children to make progress
Expect deadlines to be met
Give praise for completion of homework
Ensure homework is done over several weeks rather than in one go. This ultimately improves enjoyment and ensures children sustain levels of engagement across the term.

Maths

All children from Year 1 upwards will be given a maths activity each week. This will take the form of either work from their mental maths activity book, times tables or work related to the unit of work they are working on in class.

Times Tables - The National Multiplication Check for Year 4, commencing Summer 2020

By the end of Year 4, pupils are required to learn the all of the times tables up to 12 x12. As of 2020, in the Summer Term all Year 4 children across the country will be required to complete a multiplication check testing their ability to recall times tables up to 12 x12. This online check requires children to answer 25 multiplication questions, getting 6 seconds to answer each one with a 3 second interval between each question. The children must input the answers themselves in the time provided. They are most commonly tested on the 6, 7, 8, 9 and 12 times tables. Therefore, pupils are encouraged to practise these number facts as part of their weekly homework. You can practice online using links found in the 'Useful Information for learning' section.

Reading

Throughout the day children will read for a variety of purposes. They will be taught specific reading skills with the teacher and the teacher will also read a variety of quality stories to the children. To support this, we recommend that all children read for at least 15 minutes a day before or after school. Home books are suitable, but we encourage the children to read the 'Big Cat' books provided. The Big Cat scheme provides children with age appropriate content across a variety of fiction and non fiction genres, alongside rich vocabulary appropriate to your child's reading level. These books are changed weekly. Please sign your child’s Reading Record book each time they read.

Reading records are checked daily and Dojos are given as awards and incentives for reading at home.

Please ensure that you discuss what has been read with your child by asking a range of comprehension questions. See the link to 'Reading Vipers', attached at the bottom of this page. This document will give you invaluable information about the kind of comprehension questions that you should be asking your child whilst reading.

Clued up Spelling

In KS2, children follow the 'Clued up' Spelling scheme. This two part scheme consists of teacher led sessions which teach children about particular spelling rules in the English language, along with child led sessions which give children a chance to practice individual spellings. There are 11 sets of spellings of varying difficulty and your child will be supplied a set depending on their confidence with spelling. They move across the sets once they can independently spell each word in a set.

Rather than weekly spelling tests of generic words, the children have short, daily spelling sessions to support their ability to recall them. Your child will be supplied with their spelling set in their homework book for them to practice at home. You could test your child with 10 words a week, or they could practice using the words in sentences. When your child moves to a new set, this will provided in their homework book for your reference at home.

English/Science/Foundation

A learning menu will be sent home at the beginning of each half term that provides a range of activities based on our English objectives and wider topic learning. Children are asked to choose on activity to complete each week. Activities are not necessarily book based and include art activities, design technology, creating music and leading research. Sometimes project based learning will be set to help you learn about a new topic that you will be starting at school. This will normally be given over a holiday or half term. Learning Menus will be stuck into homework books, but please see our most recent Learning Menu in the Homework Archives.

Homework Club

Homework club runs on a Thursday lunchtime and is for children who may struggle to complete homework at home. Attendance at the club is by invitation only, but please speak to your class teacher if you think that your child might benefit from this. It is children's responsibility to make sure they hand homework in on time to their teacher.