At Gorran School, we try to foster resilience and a ‘can do’ attitude. The staff praise effort and encourage the children to use mistakes as a tool for improvement. This is based on research from psychologist Carol Dweck, amongst others. We would encourage you to praise effort rather than natural ability. A short explanation for parents is here.
The school does set homework. Children will arrive home regularly with various tasks and requests. Your support in completing these is really valuable. When the children are learning to read they will bring home tasks or books appropriate to their needs for you to read with them. As they become independent readers they should bring home books from the Library on a regular basis.
Each teacher will set tasks for the children. At first these will be quite simple requests on an irregular basis. As the children reach the later years at the school they will be set more regular tasks. These are likely to be related to Topic work and/or work in English and Maths. You should ask your children what tasks, if any, they have been set each week.
We do recognise that homework is not a life or death issue! Sometimes other issues crop up that mean that homework is not done, relatives visiting, clubs, beach visits, family time etc. As a school we recognise that there must be a balance in work and life. Whilst we would prefer that the children would complete any work set, we would not belittle any child that had not completed the task. Nor would we want homework to become a battle at home – if you find that is the case, then we would urge you to speak to your child’s teacher.