A lot of people aren't sure what the benefits of homework actually are - at first glance, it may appear like your child is merely being given extra work and nothing more, but there are benefits to doing homework that you just won't receive in the classroom. In this blog post said benefits are broken down as follows:
Time Management Skills
Homework gives children an opportunity to exercise their independence, organisation and time management skills. Deadlines mean that your child gets practice with planning ahead, responsibility, overcoming procrastination, organising their time and understanding how long it takes them to complete certain tasks independently. These are all skills your child will carry into their GCSEs, A Levels and especially at University where students are expected to independently learn a majority of the time, and will be given very few reminders of what papers they have due, so it is best to get your kids exercising these skills early on.
Progress and feedback
Homework allows both teachers and parents to understand how their child problem solves, where they have strengths and where they have weaknesses. It allows parents to be clued into what their children are being taught, and allows parents and teachers to have a conversation over their child's learning style and progress. Over time homework sheets can be compared to chart your child's improvement and areas where they might struggle.
Revision Discipline
Once your child starts year 10, revision will become extremely important, and a lot of kids simply aren't prepared for such a huge change and consequently procrastinate until a few months or a month before their exams. Taking homework seriously earlier on is a great way to ease your child into the idea of consistent revision, so when GCSEs round the corner they will be revising for a half-hour in the evening instead of cramming for weeks, exhausted. Quality revision is much more important than revising for long periods of time, so encourage your child to really focus whilst revising even if it is only 10 or 15 minutes long.
There is No Place Like Home
Some children feel most comfortable studying in their own environment, so homework allows those children to exercise their educational skills without feeling pressure, using their own stationery, at their own desk in their favourite chair. Asking a parent for help may also be less scary for them than asking a teacher in front of all their peers, so homework allows these children to feel less afraid of asking for help.
Additional Learning & Learning Difficulties
Sometimes teachers don't have the time to help an individual child with a subject or area they are struggling with, so homework allows parents to tackle such issues and also identify any disorders or learning difficulties their child may be going through such as dyscalculia, dyspraxia, dyslexia, AD(H)D or autism. Young girls with learning difficulties are often more subtle in their behaviour and better at masking, meaning teachers are less likely to pick up on behaviour symptomatic of a learning difficulty, so the one on one time homework provides allows parents the opportunity to pick up on these more subtle, easily looked over signs.
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