From the Head of Secondary 11.05.2024
The KIS Coffee Morning series continued this week with “Homework & Supporting Students with Learning at Home”. Many thanks to those mums and dads who attended; it is always good to have a healthy-sized audience! Homework, unless carefully managed, can be the cause of stress in students and so knowing its purpose, and the best way to be organised around it, is the starting point for eliminating as much of that as possible.
During the presentation I spoke about the basics:
- It’s best if homework is completed on the day it is given. Prevarication [and we all know the dangers of that] can ultimately add to stress levels.
- Make sure there is an appropriate and well-organised space for your child to sit and complete their homework, whether that be in their bedroom or in the family room, or even at the kitchen table.
- Social media, YouTube, Gaming and suchlike can be a huge distraction. Eliminate those distractions, by, for example, have a ‘charging station’ for phones that is in a different room to where homework is being done.
- If your child is struggling with completing a task, simply write a note explaining this for the teacher in the Homework Diary, and ask your child to show it to them. The teacher will then support the student, perhaps by offering a more detailed explanation of the task or question. We definitely do not want any child to be staying up late into the evening trying to finish questions!
- A homework timetable for each year group is given out with the Homework Diaries at the beginning of the academic year. It is based on the subject timetable.
I do hope that the attendees enjoyed the session and found it useful. I did suggest that perhaps we could consider expanding the scope of our Coffee Mornings by having parents organise and run a few, perhaps with such themes as ‘How to Parent a Teenager’!
Next week, on Thursday 16th, the Coffee Morning will be on the theme of ‘Launch of the New KIS Academic Year’. Mr Gipson will be talking about all the wonderful things which will be happening in 2024 – 2025, so please do come along. It starts at 8am and all are welcome!
On Thursday morning at 7.45am 21 Year 10 Duke of Edinburgh Silver Award student participants departed to Kota Belud district for their 2-night 3- day practice adventurous journey, accompanied by our redoubtable DoE staff leader Miss McNutt, Mr Williams and Ms Watt. I am sure we will hear more about this in next week’s newsletter, and in the meantime we wish them all the very best for an enjoyable and successful adventure!
