Study Skills Guide

(B) Planning your homework timetable

Sixième students should be working at home around nine hours each week. Ideally, these nine hours should be spread over six days - with the students working about one and a half hours each day.

However, most students have extra-curricular activities which prevent an even distribution of homework time. The school believes these extra curricular activities to be extremely important for its students. It is necessary, therefore, that each student makes his or her personal homework timetable. Each student must:

• distribute the nine hours as equally as possible over the week
• work for one hour minimum or two hours maximum each day.
• work for two hours on Saturday or Sunday morning, making sure to leave one day during the week-end free from school work.

There are six rules which each student must follow:

1. You must keep to your timetable.
2. You must work in a quiet room, your bedroom for example.
3. You must have a desk or a table in this room and work at it.
4. On the wall, above your desk, you must attach clear and tidy copies of your school timetable and your homework timetable.
5. On the wall, next to these timetables, you must place the personal work procedure list which is on the next page.
6. You must use your full, allotted homework time each day. There is always enough work to keep you busy.

Note to Parents:

Many students believe that, when they have completed all the written work required for the next day they have finished their homework. This is not the case! Each lesson needs to be learnt, although this is not always noted down in their Cahier de Textes. Language lessons are particularly important to learn before the next lesson. Some students try to complete all their written homework in school so that they have "nothing" to do at home. It is essential that they realize that they must use all of their homework period. There is always something they can be doing. The homework procedure list is to be found on the next page.

It is also important that they are supervised while they are working. This means that there is an adult present to keep an eye on their progress, not to do the work for them! Many parents are not at home when their children are doing homework. It is strongly advised that these parents arrange for a student to be present to supervise their children's work.

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© A.W. Damon 2011

Last modification: 2011-03-01