We encourage our parents to share in their children’s learning beyond school. This could be through enrichment activities such as visits, further reading, online research, watching documentaries or discussions. We also encourage our children to play with friends (both inside or outside), learn an instrument, attend extra-curricular clubs and share meals together talking with their families. Children work hard at school, achieve incredibly well and need to rest cognitively, emotionally and physically in order to be ready to learn again the following day. This is backed up by research into cognitive overload and spaced-learning.

However, we also know we have a very supportive parent community who wish to support their children in their learning beyond school. The research from the EEF shows that at primary school, the impact of homework is minimal unless personalised home learning is provided by the teacher for all 30+ children. At Brooklands, we know our children make better progress when our teachers focus their time on preparing, delivering and assessing high quality lessons instead of personalising home learning tasks, that may not get completed and may cause additional strain and stress at home. We want our children to be happy and we want our parents to be kind to themselves – you’re already doing a great job!

Our Home Learning Policy (included within the Learning & Teaching Policy) outlines what learning we expect pupils to complete beyond school. By following the links above, you can access both lessons from qualified teachers (the government’s Oak National Academy) along with the spelling (Spelling Shed) and mental maths (TT Rock Stars) resources that the children use (and love!) in school. Through the ‘Focus on Learning’ in the Bulletin, your child’s interim reports, class visits and discussions with your child’s teacher, you will know what they have been learning and what they need to do to improve.

We expect children to read (or be read to) every day for 15 minutes, which is in line with the latest research from Cambridge University. Your child will be provided with at least one book to read from school, but for further ideas on texts to read at home please see the ‘Home Reading’ tab within the Home Learning section.