Prep for success

At Meridian High School we fully support our students progress and attainment. We know that better academic outcomes lead to a more fulfilling and ambitious future. We also know the detrimental impact of poor academic performance on later life. Students who complete additional learning outside of the classroom achieve better outcomes. This is supported by research conducted by the Education Endowment Fund Homework | EEF. We believe in preparing for success.

Key Stage 3 (Year 7-9) Strategy

                  

In Key Stage 3, we focus home learning on our core subjects. We believe that the essential and transferrable skills of core subjects benefits achievement in all subject areas. Following feedback from our students, their preference for home learning in KS3 is via online platforms. We have therefore significantly invested in SPARX Maths, Reader and Science as our chosen platform. All students have a log in for SPARX and are expected to complete their home learning via the SPARX platform. SPARX is an incredibly useful platform that personalises learning to your child’s ability and provides supportive videos to help students solidify their knowledge and skills.

Learning Spanish at home has never been easier with Duolingo. This fun, interactive app helps students build vocabulary, grammar, and confidence through short daily lessons that fit into any routine. By practising a little each day, students can steadily improve their language skills without feeling overwhelmed.

One of the key features of Duolingo is the “streak” system, which tracks how many consecutive days a student has practised. Keeping this streak going is a great way to build consistency, stay motivated, and turn learning into a daily habit. We encourage all students to log in every day- even for just a few minutes, to maintain their streak and continue making progress in Spanish.

All students in Year 7-9 are expected to complete their SPARX and Duolingo home learning each week.

The home learning will be set on a Monday with the submission deadline on the following Monday. Positive points will then be awarded to those who complete their home learning and additional prizes will be given to students who become the top scorers on the platform. Students who do not complete their home learning will be given negative points, if students miss all 3 subjects each week they will also be sanctioned with a 60-minute detention.

If you have any questions about home learning please contact Miss Wallace (r.wallace@meridianhigh.london)

Please watch this short video if you are having trouble logging in or you forget your password:

If you have any questions or queries about Sparx please contact Miss Small (j.small@meridianhigh.london)

Key Stage 4 (Year 10 and 11) Strategy

Home learning is an important part of preparing students for success at Key Stage 4. Every week, students are expected to complete their assigned tasks on Sparx Reader, Sparx Maths and Sparx Science.

These personalised activities help students revisit key knowledge, practise important skills and strengthen their understanding of the content taught in lessons.

Alongside their weekly Sparx tasks, students will receive subject-specific home learning from their subject teachers to support their exam preparation. This may include revision activities, past-paper questions and practice using GCSE-style questions.

Completing home learning regularly and on time will help students build strong study habits, identify areas they need to improve and approach their examinations with greater confidence.

 

Knowledge organisers

A knowledge organiser (KO) sets out the important, useful and powerful knowledge on a topic on a single page (Kirby, 2015). With the content demands of new courses, and schools adopting a knowledge-based curriculum, these are becoming increasingly popular in schools at secondary and even primary level.

For students to succeed in a particular area, they must have a foundation of factual knowledge, understand those facts in the context of a conceptual framework and organise knowledge in order to facilitate retrieval and application (Bransford et al., 2000). We can see knowledge organisers as a way to enable this, in a much more systematic way than traditional revision guides and textbooks

EEF Knowledge organisers-  what they are and their purpose 
Our students will receive the relevant knwoledge organiser at the time of learning. This will be available in their books to use as a learning resources throughout the lesson as well as at home when completing their home learning or revision or to close any gaps. 

Learning the key knowledge to a subject is the foundations that a student needs so that they can apply their learning as it progresses. 

We have also made the knowledge organisers avaialble electronically. Please click onthe link below to access our knowledge organisers by year group: