Home Learning: Learning In Other Settings

The term 'Homework' often creates negative mindsets in our students and conjures up thoughts of boring and monotonous “same old” tasks that are done at school and have to be repeated at home.

More positive terms to describe Homework include 'learning in other settings' or 'home learning', for purposes of this reading, the term 'home learning' will be used.
- our students are in a continuous cycle of learning in everything they are involved in
- students often learn more effectively when they can apply their learning to real life situations
- this arouses curiosity to discover and connect more and extend their thinking to other things

'Home learning' is an essential ingredient in the building of:

• individual inquiry, curiosity and a genuine willingness to create and innovate
• deep understandings and new connections, ensuring long term memory retention
• an efficient and effective study program and sound time management practices

Traditionally, during the 20th century, “home learning” had four main roles to play:

• completing unfinished learning from the school day
• practising further to reinforce and consolidate concepts in our students’ minds
• studying and revising for exams/tests
• reviewing subject material using summarising, listing, idea maps, posters, recordings, reading

In many schools, the reality is that parents, while expecting “home learning” for their children, are often frustrated by variation practices between teachers. When a school adopts a planned and consistent school wide approach across each year level, students and parents accept it as a valuable opportunity to extend learning in a creative way

Following are some suggestions to inspire our students with enjoyable and engaging pursuits in “home learning” in the 21st century, the concept era:

• firstly, let’s not forget that students learn more from what is caught than what is taught
• it should extend and encourage thinking through application, not rote learning
• ensure it is relevant, challenging and fun
• it connects learning to real life situations and what students have learned previously
• it allows and encourages students to employ their dominant Multiple Intelligences and Habits of Mind
• rather than do more of the same from class, set students a challenge to use what they have learnt in something that interests them; authentic deep learning
• make predictions from what they have learnt to other situations
• after agreeing on a set of criteria with our classes to how their learning will be assessed, then so long as they try, then anything goes; there is no right or wrong, only differing perspectives. Would the world have benefited from many wonderful inventions had same old views prevailed over new eyes to create?
• allow students to venture off on any tangents that they so desire, so long as they meet the agreed criteria
• as part of the “home learning” process, ask students to present their extended learning to the class and their parents
• powerfully curious peer learning will occur among students; adolescents are intrigued by experimentation
• a workable strategy is for each student to present their learning to the class twice a Term using their dominant Multiple Intelligences; make it fun and ensure they link thinking and learning
• encourage 'wild' and exploratory application; creativity is the aim. Professor David Perkins, from Harvard University, makes the analogy that learning and teaching should be a wild jungle, not a neat lawn; time for all of us to deeply reflect on our professional practice.

Adopting such consistent approaches to 'home learning', will inspire our students, win parents and build genuine learning partnerships between home and school.

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world” Mahatma Gandhi