Homework enhances students learning, improves achievement and develops study skills
and is an integral part of the learning process.
An assigned task by teachers, homework is to be completed outside of class/Academy time: these tasks have been carefully planned and integrated into all curriculum areas.
Students should have homework that is set regularly, and is meaningful and appropriate to their age and stage.
Homework is set in order to:
- Develop essential transferable skills for life
- Enhance, deepen and foster a scholarly love of learning in the subjects studied
- Assist in the process of formative assessment to help teachers in adapting planning accordingly
- Foster a learning community, where teachers, parents/ carers and students work as partners in the educational journey of students
Recommended hours for Homework
At City Academy, we encourage all students to complete tasks to the best of their
ability. Homework tasks will be set using platforms (see below), or hard copies and
recorded in the student’s planner. The platforms/resources used are:
- Seneca Learning: History/Geography/RE
- Educake: Science
- Mathswatch: Mathematics
- Reading Plus: English
- GCSE Pod: All Key Stage 4 subjects
- Vocabulary Booklets: Modern Foreign Languages/RE
- Sketch Books: Art/3D Art and Design
- Microsoft Teams: Health and Social Care (KS4)/Business Studies (KS4)/Digital IT
(KS4)/BTEC Sport (KS4)/GCSE Geography
Students in Years 7, 8 and 9 should also be completing 1 hour of Reading Plus per week.
Reading is an important habit that will help our pupils to become successful. Studies
show that pupils who do not read daily are less likely to achieve the best grades at
GCSE, A Levels and beyond.
Advise for Parents
The list below is not an exhaustive list of tasks that could be set for homework, but
rather an indication of the type of tasks that are appropriate. There is an expectation
that students would receive a variety of tasks over time.
- Preparation for future learning (such as reading ahead and summarising or
planning tasks for future tasks) - Wider reading tasks for enrichment or consolidation
- Structured short-answer questions to consolidate learning in lessons.
- Choice of tasks with varying levels of challenge.
- Vocabulary or key-facts learning.
- Extended project work – either completed as individuals or collaboratively.
- Guided research with appropriate support at the start of the work, such as key
websites or printed references. - Timed essays or extended pieces of writing.
- Creative responses to the learning – such as pamphlets.
- Online homework tasks.
- Revision.
- Write-up of experiments or practical work.
- Rehearsal.
Pupils who fail to complete homework, or whose homework is not completed to an
acceptable standard will receive a notification on Classcharts. Three of these
notifications will result in the student being directed to Homework Club in the LRC (see
below for times) to complete their homework under the supervision and support of the
staff present. Failure to adhere to this direction will result in a detention (60 minutes)
being issued. Homework is also part of the rewards system, in that excellent homework
is recognised and rewarded using the ‘Value Credit’/’Value Award’ system.
Should concerns continue to persist, about either the quality or completion of
homework, the Curriculum Leader will raise this with their Head of Year, who will
arrange to meet with family to resolve this issue.
Homework Club is available in the LRC/Library/301 on the third floor of the academy,
and is open from Monday-Thursday from 3:10-4:10, rotating between KS3 (Years 7, 8
and 9) and KS4 (Years 10 and 11) each day:
- Monday (KS4)
- Tuesday (KS3)
- Wednesday (KS3)
- Thursday (KS4)
Within the LRC, there will be laptops and iPads available, which will allow students to
access the digital platforms mentioned above, as well as their school Microsoft 365
accounts to save and upload work. Academic coaches in the core subjects (English,
Mathematics and Science) will also be on hand to offer support in these areas.
The facility is open to all students on the days respective to their Key Stage; however,
students may be directed to Homework Club (as previously mentioned) due to repeated
non-completion/poor completion of homework.
Microsoft have published a helpful guide to logging into Teams as student here.
Your log in details are your school email address and password. If you have log in issues, please see your Head of Year.
Teams is also available on many SMART TV’s, PlayStation Consoles, and XBox consoles, by selecting the internet browser from the available applications in the Apps available on the device and navigating to Microsoft Teams in the browser application. The log in process is then the same as shown above.
Recommended Revision Platforms
- One website, 3 apps and over 6000 Pods (short videos with accompanying questions).
- Content is specifically designed to squeeze the content required for students to know into short 3-5 minutes chunks. It helps with learning, homework and revision.
- Seneca is a free online learning platform that students can use to help them study a wide range of subjects.
- The courses are linked to the exam boards used by the subjects they study and Seneca can learn the strengths and weaknesses of students and use this in the questions that it asks.
- This website can be used to help with your homework, revision and learning. You can find educational videos, step-by-step guides, activities and quizzes by level and subject.
- Curriculum aligned activities, games, simulations and puzzles are created with a focus on learning through fun.
- Python programming fundamentals and task available
- Extensive resources for all year groups that develop vocabulary, speaking and listening skills, etc.
- Students can self-quiz with the questions based on KS3 and GCSE Science exam questions. They can set themselves questions from specific topics they have found challenging in the past or help to get a head start on upcoming topics.
- Revision notes available
- For Secondary schools, Sparx Maths delivers personalised intelligent maths practice, that is proven to boost grades.
- Students can access exam papers, exam questions, GCSE revison, KS3 revsion, videos and walk throughs on topics.
- Students can access Online maths lessons, activities and homework. Tasks are marked, graded where student receive instant feedback.
- Students can access all topics, predicted exam papers, exam style questions.
- The resources from 1st Class Maths are very high quality. Click ‘Revision’ to access videos, questions and answers for all Maths topics. You can also access all the exam papers for Maths on this website, click ‘Exam papers’.
- There are 100’s of videos and resources you can use on Corbett Maths. Click here for a 100 day countdown, with a different video shown every day on a different Maths topic.
- This website contains topic-based compilations of questions from past GCSE papers. Sign up is FREE and takes 2 minutes.
- All GCSE Maths Past Paper questions by topic with answers including every question from Edexcel, AQA and OCR from June 2017 to Nov 2022: Home | Gcsemathsquestions
- Students in Year 7-9 all need to complete Reading Plus tasks every week. They need to read 5 books and complete their vocabulary skills test. The more students read; the more they will progress with their literacy skills and move on to higher level books.
- Youtube Videos
- On-line Science lessons covering the KS3 and GCSE topics
- Students can self-quiz with the questions based on KS3 and GCSE Science exam questions. They can set themselves questions from specific topics they have found challenging in the past or help to get a head start on upcoming topics.
- Use Quizlet for GCSE Sciences to learn about everything from culturing microbes to atomic structures. Discover curriculum-aligned study sets and learning activities for all subjects.
- Spaced repetition learning based exam questions.
- Increase your exam confidence with these GCSE science past papers. By practicing with past papers, you’ll get more familiar the exam structure and types of questions.