'I like doing homework!' 'We get too much homework.' 'Homework is really boring.' 'The teacher doesn’t always check my homework.' What would your students say about homework? How can you make it a bit more fun?

Homework is generally part of any English course and is set with the aim of helping children absorb and build on work done in class and to extend their learning time. Doing homework also helps children on their way to becoming independent learners. Here are some ideas for using LearnEnglish Kids for homework.

Homework and parents
Homework provides a link between school and home. Parents like to see what their children are learning and children, especially very young learners, often like to show parents what they can do.

If you are setting homework from LearnEnglish Kids you need to get parents involved as their children will need permission to use the Internet at home. It might be a good idea to begin setting homework from LearnEnglish Kids following a meeting with parents where you have told them about the site. The ideal scenario for learners using the website to do their English homework would be to have a parent or guardian sitting with them as they do it, offering encouragement and support and sharing in the learning process. In reality this may not always be the case but if parents are at least aware of how they can help their children learn and practise their English at home, we’re increasing the chances of it happening.

Parents who want to know more about how to help their child with English at home might be interested in this page from the Learn English Parents site: http://www.britishcouncil.org/parents-help.htm There are downloadable booklets for parents explaining how young children learn languages (available in English and several other languages) here:
http://www.britishcouncil.org/parents-help-how-children-learn-languages.htm

This article, from the Cbeebies site about young children learning foreign languages, might interest parents too:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/grownups/about/howchildrenlearn/learning_f...

Parents who would like to be kept up to date with new content on LearnEnglish Kids can sign up for the newsletter here: http://www.britishcouncil.org/learnenglishkids-newsletter-subscribe-cc-2...

What kind of homework?

Reading
You could give your learners three stories to read at home and decide which they like best and why. Alternatively you could give your students some true or false statements or simple comprehension questions to answer when they have read the story online. These can be checked in the next class. Younger learners can listen to and read short stories: http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/short-stories

Listening
You could ask your students to listen to and sing along with a song at home and then have a group sing-along in the next class. There are lots of songs here: http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/songs

Your learners could watch a short video of children talking about interesting stuff from Kids talk and do one of the accompanying printable activity sheets for homework. Click on the orange box under the video to print out the activity sheets. Find the Kids talk videos here: http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/kids-talk

Writing
In the Your turn section, children are invited to write about something they are interested in. You could give students a choice of 3 topics from the Your turn section: http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/your-turn
Your learners can read any comments already posted under their chosen topic and then send in their own ideas to be published. All contributions are read by a moderator and then posted within 24 hours. Tell your students that you’ll be checking the site to read what they’ve written and point out that writing doesn’t have to be error free!

As children need to become members of LearnEnglish Kids before they can send in their writing, you could spend a lesson on completing the registration process in class with your students before asking them to send in writing as homework. This is lots of fun and involves choosing a username, creating a character and choosing a password. They will also need an email account (see the previous comment in the ‘parents and homework’ section).

To register click here: http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/user/register
For more details on becoming a member click here: http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/try/teaching-kids/new-learnenglish-kids

Playing games
Nobody could complain that playing a game for homework is boring! There are lots of games for one player here: http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/fun-with-english You could have a quick run through of the game that you are setting for homework in class to make sure everyone is clear about how to play it. In the next class ask students to compare their scores or tell a partner how many times they played the game at home. If you want your learners to revise a specific language area as they play, set them a game from the Language games section:
http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/language-games

Paper based homework
If you’re covering a specific topic in class you could choose a relevant activity sheet to print out for homework from the alphabetical list of topics here: http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/topics

Very young learners can take home something they made in class to play with or use with family members. There are loads of things to make including masks, puppets, clocks, and games here: http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/craft-downloads

Checking homework
It can be tricky to check that non-written homework has been done. Get parents on board again here. Make sure they know what homework their child has been set by having your students copy instructions from the board into their note books or diaries. It could be worth giving them a handout with instructions that include web addresses, as these can be difficult to copy correctly.

Keeping homework records is very handy if a problem arises and parents need to be shown hard evidence of occasions when their child hasn’t done his or her homework. It’s also nice to be able to show them a record that their child has always done the homework.

Sally Trowbridge

When you have used some of these ideas, why not come back to this page and leave a comment below to tell us how your class went. Let us know if you have any additional ideas!

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