One of the major goals for our cluster over the next year is to foster home school partnerships and I have been being doing a good bit of thinking about how we might approach this.

Tonight on Twitter there was a conversation around Ian Lillico’s homework grid concept and  Claire Buist asked if I had any good examples of how I use Ian’s ideas.

I started off by writing a Google Doc that I was going to share with Claire but thought it might be better as a blog post. So here it is…
I used to do the traditional ‘fill in the gaps’ homework but became a convert to the Lillico homework grid idea which lets children create together with their parents at a pace that suits them. Those who want to spend hours following up on a project can. Those who aren’t so keen need not go into it in as much depth. It allows freedom and creativity to thrive.

Once you ‘get’ the concept of co-constructing homework you can easily adapt it to suit your situation.

Here is a blog post I wrote last year about what I do.

https://allanahk.edublogs.org/2010/02/17/homework/

Ian Lillico’s website can be found http://www.boysforward.com.au/

I also shared some of our homework philosophy in my last year’s K12 On Line Conference Keynote

http://k12onlineconference.org/?p=606

First of all we start with a brainstorm around the ideas of things we could do based around a theme.

1. This is a brainstorm about the sorts of things we could do for Home Work

http://moturoa.blogspot.com/2007/03/homework.html

2. One of the things we decided on was tidying our bedrooms. The kids took before and after photos.

http://moturoa.blogspot.com/2009/05/homework.html

http://moturoa.blogspot.com/2009/05/homework-bedrooms.html

3. We had a music week

http://moturoa.blogspot.com/2007/10/music-homework.html

This led to Miriam sharing her incredible voice with us. Would never have happened if our homework was confined to ‘filling the gaps’ stuff!

http://moturoa.blogspot.com/2007/11/miriam-shares-her-voice.html

5. This is our physical activity brainstorm.

http://moturoa.blogspot.com/2007/05/our-physical-homework.html

6. Reading

http://moturoa.blogspot.com/2007/03/reading-homework.html

7. ICT

http://moturoa.blogspot.com/2007/03/ict-homework.html

One of the tasks was to send an MMS

http://moturoa.blogspot.com/2007/03/ict-homework_26.html

And to share a Google Doc/presentation with me

http://moturoa.blogspot.com/2010/05/google-docs-for-homework.html

8. Making

http://moturoa.blogspot.com/2010/05/making-homework.html

9. In this one I was sick at home but podcasted what we had to do for homework.

http://moturoa.blogspot.com/2007/06/homework-task-podcast.html

10. Here is what the homework grids looks like for us

http://moturoa.blogspot.com/2009/03/homework.html

http://moturoa.blogspot.com/2010/03/reading-homework.html

11. Here is some feedback about what people feel about the homework. If parents left a comment then the kids didn’t have to do the homework next week! A good number left a comment!!!!

http://moturoa.blogspot.com/2009/06/questionaut.html

12. Kids loved doing their homework and even took it away on fishing trips!! Overdoing it slightly!!

http://moturoa.blogspot.com/2009/12/fishing-trip.html

13. And not particularly to do with the homework grid but the children used the side bar of the blog to get their spelling lists and individual spelling practice through Spelling City and used our Basic Facts wiki to learn their basic facts with downloads and hyperlinks to worksheets and Digital Learning Objects for their level of attainment.

http://basicfacts.wikispaces.com/