Homework

Digital Learning at Home

Homework is an important tool to allow pupils to practice the knowledge they are taught in school. Practice is important when developing skills and understanding as it provides the additional opportunity to embed key ideas, and this needs to be repeated throughout the school year to keep ideas fresh in the mind and allow pupils to remember them in the long term.

At Folkestone Academy, we know that homework needs to be clear and easy to follow as pupils will be completing these tasks at home without their teacher being there. To support this we use digital platforms like Seneca or Bedrock Vocabulary to provide bitesize pieces of information followed by quizzing which has been shown in research to develop long term memory.

Frequency of homework setting

To encourage our pupils to develop their time management and independent learning skills, in key stage 3 and key stage 4, homework is set by all subjects every Monday, to be completed by the following Monday. This allows pupils (and their families) to choose the best time in the week to complete the tasks rather than a set day. This is designed to give flexibility for pupils who may participate in other out of school activities. For any pupils who would benefit from additional support in managing their time, there are suggested subjects written into the days of their Academic Diary.

Viewing and tracking homework tasks

Homework is set on Bromcom and can be viewed by pupils by visiting www.bromcomvle.com to login pupils need to click login with Google and use their Turner schools Google Account (they do not need to fill in a school code using this method).

To support our pupils in successfully completing their homework, we have a Homework club that runs after school on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays in the Yellow Chair area, which is staffed by teachers of a variety of subjects to help.

When pupils complete their homework they receive positive points and can receive multiple positive points for high effort and scores, but should they miss an assignment they will receive a negative point. Once a pupil receives 10 negative points for homework they will be booked into Homework club so a teacher can support them in completely their homework successfully.

Monitoring of homework by parents

Homework tasks set each week can be viewed by parents and carers using the My Child At School App but to further support parents and carers, we will send an email when your child has not completed a Homework task so you are aware to prompt your child if they have not been completing the homework without needing to check each week.

Post 16:

Homework is essential to achieving any sort of success at Post 16. Pupils will be set frequent, regular and challenging homework, amounting to one hour of independent study for every lesson taught (five hours per week, per subject). Free periods in the Sixth Form are in fact study periods, and students should use make good use of this time to stay on top of their subjects.

Technical support for additional platforms

We are currently in the process of updating our website to provide additional support for the different platforms we use for homework. Being a Google School the majority of platforms we use (like Seneca and Bedrock Vocabulary) can be accessed by clicking log in or continue with Google so pupils do not need to remember multiple usernames or passwords.

If you have a technical issue you can send an email directly to FAhomeworkhelp@turnerschools.com and we will aim to respond as soon as possible.