Literacy

Take Home Reading

Our Educators and Co-Educators are spending time building relationships with children.  This is something we value at Mary Queen of Heaven.  Research tells us that children who feel seen, loved and valued are best placed for learning.

Educators are also gathering a range of data to support us to better understand children’s strengths and learning needs.  We will use this data to design learning experiences that support children to grow.

Over the coming weeks, children in Prep-2 will bring home ‘take home readers’.  Educators will share information regarding how to support children with this at home.

In the meantime, we encourage you to familiarise yourselves with our Homework Policy:

Learning Together:  Home learning

Rationale

At Mary Queen of Heaven we believe that learning at home, in context and with loved ones, promotes and enhances the learning that takes place in school. It strengthens home-school links, providing the opportunity for parents to support students with their learning in a safe, context appropriate and creative way. We recognise that parents are the first educators of their child(ren) and we value the lived experience each child brings to our school. It is the responsibility of the school to provide excellent contemporary teaching practice based on current evidence on how children learn best.

Current research supports the change from a traditional model of homework (one size fits all) to one where the learning tasks/experiences are personalised to each child, designed to meet their needs and reinforce the learning that is happening in the classroom. This supports the student’s strengths and builds on the relationship with the family and community. Home learning can include planning, organisation, creativity and self-discipline which are lifelong skills that will serve students for the rest of their lives. Home learning needs to be guided by family circumstances as families have varying schedules, with a range of time  and expertise available. If your family is away from school on an extended holiday, school based learning tasks will not be provided.

Definition

Learning at home is inclusive of the full range of experiences a student has outside the classroom, in formal and informal settings, including at home and in their community.

Formal settings include school directed home tasks, academic work set by families, tutoring, language classes or religious school. This combination of experiences engages students in their environment with the aim of creating lifelong learners.

Informal learning outside the classroom is experiential learning and ongoing. This can include incidental learning through daily activities (e.g. counting, pattern recognition, memorising activities, and reading), building relationships and social skills and giving children responsibilities in the home and visiting places of interest. (e.g. Library, Museum, Shops).

Aim

To ensure that learning outside the classroom provides positive and ongoing experiences that meet individual learning needs and interests.

Implementation

To implement our policy of learning outside the classroom, the school will:

1. Support parents to take an interest and understand what their child is learning at school
2. Provide learning task/s which will include students interests, explicit connections to classroom learning and opportunities to connect learning to the home and community environment
3. Ensure parents receive explicit ongoing communication around student learning through the school newsletters, website, texts and other relevant material
4. Seek ongoing feedback from parents and students, around the school’s effectiveness in communicating student learning

Process

We encourage reading every day and the practice of number knowledge and counting, this is supported by the school daily in classrooms (see table below).  We strongly believe that family driven activities, inspired by student interest, are the most effective and provide rich opportunities for home learning.

Engaging and rich tasks such as:

• Cooking, measuring, reading recipes
• Gardening, planting, waiting and observing seedlings grow
• Building: lego, robotics, etc
• Assisting with shopping, calculating and estimating
• Writing lists, stories and cards
• Reflection on the learning that has occurred at school and sharing thinking
• Family prayer time

Home Learning Expectations

Mary Queen of Heaven Primary School’s Homework Policy supports Mary Queen of Heaven’s Primary School Child Safe Policy.

Daniela De Luca
Literacy Leader