Home Learning Tips

Home Learning Tips from Teaching & Learning 

As the school community recovers from the interruptions of the global pandemic, teacher had to focus their attention in Term 1 on re-establishing the school day routines. The impact of learning, and teaching, from the family home has required students to readjust to the school day, from arriving to school on time, prepared and ready to learn, to engaging for the full 75 minutes of a lesson. As we now undertake Term 2 it is important we turn our attention to the importance of home learning. 

In junior school the students are being encouraged to make good use of the school diary with a focus on entering homework tasks in their diary at the end of the lesson and remembering to take the diary home so they may remember work that is required. Further to the homework that is set by teachers, there is also the responsibility of independent learning that students should seek to improve as they progress from junior to senior school. Our recommendation is for students in the junior years 7&8 to engage in 30 minutes of wider reading every evening, reviewing of learning of maths and languages lessons by repeating the tasks that were undertaken. Any student that is struggling with their literacy or numeracy may also attend Homework Club in the library every Monday after school.  Further to this, in an effort to develop their independent learning strategies, we encourage students to allocate time in the fortnightly cycle to review their learning in all subjects. Over the 10 day cycle, students should look to read over class notes for each of their subjects, make glossaries, flowcharts of key process, create a journal or produce single page summaries of their learnings.  

As student progress through the middle school into VCE the importance of managing independent study time to include ingoing revision becomes increasingly important. At this stage of schooling the pace and volume of content increases at a greater rate as a student progresses from one year to another. Students should create a home study schedule that facilitates both completion of set tasks and ongoing learning. The amount of time allocated will differ for the year levels, however, the types of tasks that students engage in should be similar to the ones mentioned for junior students. Keeping up to date with class learning and reviewing of learning enables students to arrive to class equipped with areas they wish to address. 

 To support children’s learning, families should make use of the online Compass lesson plans to enable you to discuss with your children the learning they are undertaking and their level of confidence.  The learning intentions and success criteria are articulated for students to have a clear understanding of the required understanding and the ways of demonstrating their competency of the subject matter. If students feel overwhelmed with the workload it is important they communicate with their classroom teacher in an attempt to develop a manageable workload. It is important to acknowledge that all our students are different and while some may manage all their work effectively, others may struggle with the balance. Teachers understand this and aim to support individuals in finding their best learning approach. In VCE every little bit counts!