Research School Network: Homework is tricky: how can we make the most of it? Johnny Richards from Greenshaw High School considers homework for KS3 in the English department – and how it has evolved.

We know that when setting homework there’s a danger of widening the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged pupils. But, we eventually want pupils to be able to study at home when it comes to their public exams plus findings show that society largely values homework.

For pupils to study well at home, we need to teach them strategies in order to do independent study, and help them build better habits. Therefore, setting something at Key Stage 3 feels necessary, but with consideration.

For the last few years, we have not set any English homework at Greenshaw High School for Key Stage 3 pupils (Years 7 and 8). This has been the domain of Maths, Science and Modern Foreign Languages, and has been purely online.

As an English department, we have dabbled with online programmes, but we have often found that staff do not buy-in to them as much.

And even though online programmes are easy to manage and seem to remove workload, if individual teachers do not buy-in to it, they are less likely to check completion and celebrate pupil achievements, which in turn makes it harder to hold pupils to account and motivate them to continue with completion.

Evolving homework in the English department

After we implemented Reading Fluency Development in our English lessons at Key Stage 3 last year, and seeing the buy-in from our department and pupils, this felt like something we could try for homework.

We first tried the ready-made Reading Progress in Teams with a few classes, but quickly realised it was not for us (this is based on the programme in 2024):

• some pupils and parents felt the analytics did not match their reading
• setting and checking homework completion was difficult for our large cohort
• pupil logins were complicated (Single Sign On or school credentials are best where possible)
• if we wanted to choose texts that were not pre-loaded they would not have a modelled reading.

Of course, for a smaller setting, or where pupils do not use so many online platforms as ours currently do, this may well suit. But we are a large department, and had implemented reading fluency, so we decided to try and create our own fluency practice homework.

To make it the best thing possible, we wanted the following:

• to mirror and build on what pupils do in lessons
• make it as easy for pupils to access (logins, steps, process) and for teachers to check
• the texts to be of suitable challenge, diverse, and interesting
• a booklet to support (our teachers like paper – our KS4 homework is on paper)
• find a way to check completion for the whole cohort (so school leaders can support).

While we cannot echo our fluency practice in lessons in its entirety, or at least not control it, we have been able to add an additional element that we could not in lessons – and one which Timothy Rasinski** recommends as an important part – Performance Reading.

So, our fluency homework is formed of these steps:

1. A Model Fluent Reading of a text selected by us
2. Text Marking
3. Comprehension Questions
4. Practice Reading (repeated reading)
5. Performance Reading.
   

These steps never change, only the text and comprehension questions, as you can see in a sample of our booklet:

We of course encourage pupils to listen to the model and practice with someone at home, but we understand we cannot manage this. This is where it is important for class teachers to monitor and feedback in order for pupils to maintain motivation.

And we support each step in the following ways:

• A recording of a model reading for each text from one of our own teachers
• Sounding out and descriptions of any particular difficult vocabulary
• Teachers read the text aloud at the beginning of each week when setting the homework
• Marking codes, the same used in lesson, on the homework pages
• Teachers partially text mark the extract with pupils in lessons
• Line numbers to support answering comprehension questions
• Guidance for pupils to evaluate their reading
• Guidance page and video of the uploading process
• Teachers sample pupil recordings and provide timely feedback alongside celebration.

Feedback on our new homework model

Since we have built up our Fluency homework, from selecting great texts to making the recordings, we have greater buy-in from teachers than we have typically seen from the online platforms.

We love the fact that we have full control of the texts, and hearing our pupils perform readings of texts such as Maya Angelou’s Still I Rise, Lemn Sissay’s Let There Peace, and Shakespeare’s The Tempest, is a wonderful thing.

Of course, it is not perfect. We need to do more to celebrate the pupils’ efforts, and to bring parents into the process more going forward. We also have a small proportion not completing homework, but this is echoed in other subjects and not necessarily unique for our homework, which is encouraging.

As it should be, it is ever evolving, and we like what we have built so far.