Making Homework Learning-focused - Homework meets AFL

Homework offers great scope for extending student learning outside of school at all Key Stages, but our immediate
focus is on improving homework provision at KS3. The key principles of AFL are relevant to homework as an
extension of learning outside of the classroom; if we are using AFL as the core process by which we promote and
organise student learning, it follows that our approaches to homework should pay attention to the same key
principles. This document contains some guidance, thoughts and ideas about how homework can be used to support
AFL practice. Please also refer to department AFL handbooks for further information and ideas to stimulate your
thinking in this area.
Learning intentions and Homework
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Students should be clear about what skills or knowledge they are learning, practising or developing through
completing a piece of homework.
These skills or this knowledge may be directly linked to their current learning, or be from another part of the
course. It is important not to try to force a link to current learning if it isnt sensible or appropriate to do so;
if homework does not seem to fit with the current classroom learning, its fine to go for something refreshing
and different instead.

Case Study:
In Geography, if the students are learning to understand geographical concepts by completing work on rivers, they
may be asked to apply this knowledge by completing a task which relates to this topic.
Alternatively the teacher may choose to set homework in which the students engage with geographical learning
from a totally different part of the course. An example would be a homework which aims to develop their
responsibility as global citizens.

Success Criteria and Homework

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Homework needs success criteria of some sort, in order to provide challenge in the learning, and avoid a
very task-focused approach. This requires reflection and communication on what the features of successful
work will be.
Often, success criteria from the lesson will apply to the homework task. For example, if students have learnt
to write in a particular style or for a particular purpose, they can use the SC from the lesson and apply them
to a piece of writing completed at home.
Success criteria can be used to differentiate homework. A useful approach to achieving this is by making
clear the qualities required for competence, and then making suggestions as to what might characterise
exceptional work.
Skilled criteria tell the student how to complete the task to a skilled level, showing what needs to be done to
complete the task adequately. They will often engage with concepts such as clarity and accuracy.
Excellence criteria can then suggest ways that students can engage with higher order concepts such as
precision, sophistication, originality, flair, detail and development etc.
It can raise student levels of independence and engagement not to be too controlling and exact with
Excellence criteria give them the opportunity to think for themselves, rather than making explicit exactly
what you think they should do.
Whilst the All must ..., Most should ..., Some Could ... method can be a useful tool for differentiation, this
works best when there is a clear hierarchy of skill evident in the tasks. Avoid using this to provide different
levels of quantity, eg All must find 3 examples, Most should find 5 examples, Some could find 10 examples
if the student is able to do something five times, they may not need to prove that they can do it another five

times! Instead, reflect on what the next step up is in terms of the skill they are developing how do we
make the task harder, not longer.
Case Study Success Criteria in English Homework
Where the class have been learning to write with more accurate and varied sentence structures, they might be
asked to complete a piece of persuasive writing. Success Criteria can be organised using the concepts of Skilled /
Excellent:

Skilled work will: show that you can write with accurate, clear sentences
Excellent work will: show increasing sophistication / precision / flair in the ways that sentences are used

Feedback and Homework

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In order to be learning-focused, homework does need feedback and assessment

This might be teacher marking, but peer / self assessment should also be used
If success criteria are clear, this makes the assessment and feedback process focused and easier to manage,
because it is clear what the assessor (teacher, peer or student) is looking for in the work.
Avoid trying to give holistic feedback, ie feedback which comments on all or many aspects of the work.

Case Study: Feedback in History

If the learning intention is to learn how to show the links between different causes of World War 1, the task
might be to write a paragraph explaining this. When differentiated success criteria make it clear how this might
be achieved at various levels, the feedback can be focused explicitly and exclusively on this skill, using the success
criteria to guide assessor comments.

Skilled work will: explain the links clearly and with historical accuracy
Excellent work will: explain the links with increasing precision, fluency and sophistication

Activities and Homework

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Homework activities can take many forms, eg written response, research, reading, summary, illustration.
Variety can be valuable in homeworks, giving students a range of activities and opportunities.
However, there is also much to be said for offering routine, with students building strong learning habits by
completing regular homeworks of a similar type vocabulary learning in MFL is a good example of this.
In order to ensure that homework activity is useful, reflect on what the raw materials for success in the
subject area are, and set work which develops these areas.

Differentiation and Homework

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Homework must be appropriate for all levels of current achievement. It should therefore be accessible and
provide an appropriate level of challenge for SEN students, as well as students who are currently high/low
achievers. For most students, this can be achieved through your success criteria as discussed above.
For students working at very low levels of attainment, more differentiation may be needed; this might mean
setting a different task for these students. It is not appropriate to set work for students that they cannot
access, understand or complete, and this needs to be kept in mind when, for example, setting work which
involves reading lots of text. Look out for support materials from the SEN department in the near future.

We also need to take care when setting homeworks which require specific resources it may not be the case
that students are able to gain access to some materials or resources including computers at home.

Homework types for supporting learning

Preparation: these tasks might ask students to learn in preparation for a lesson or unit of work. Openended questions work well, so the task Find 5 facts about Picasso becomes Why is Picasso so famous?
this offers choice and independence in terms of content, form, scope and ambition of the response.
Alternatively, consider asking students to come up with discussion questions about the topic that theyve
prepared. In any case, setting simple, differentiated, quality-focused success criteria can add challenge and
structure to these sorts of tasks.
Research research can be valuable, but clear guidance and structure need to be provided in order to help
students to engage. Again, setting differentiated success criteria can help to make research a much richer
and more challenging task skilled research might feature accuracy, relevance and clarity, whilst exploring
excellence in research might display depth, originality, sophistication, precision etc.
Practice work which asks students to practise a skill that theyve learnt in class. This gives students
opportunities to review and reinforce skills.
Learning/ revision homework where students are asked to memorise information, eg topic content, key
words, spellings, vocabulary. As long as the content is appropriate to the student, these are absolutely
valid homeworks; all aspects of education require acquiring and learning knowledge at some levels.
Extension after learning about a topic, students are asked to expand on skills or knowledge taught in the
course. For example, a class might be asked to read an article which extends their knowledge and report
their findings.
Creative / empathetic responses students might be asked to demonstrate or explore their
understanding of a topic through a creative response. In Science, for example, they could write, in
character A Day in the Life of a red blood cell. Its important to retain a sense of intention in the learning
with these types of tasks, through considering questions such as: what knowledge am I hoping for the
students to consolidate or apply? How might their responses demonstrate this knowledge? What might be
the features of an excellent response?