About the homework


Unlike a school teacher, who has plenty time with students and is able to offer feedback daily, our academy only meets once a week for 2.5 hrs. In order to exceed the quality and content taught in schools, we embed questions from the next week’s teaching content into the current week’s homework. This allows students to become familiar with their nature and to form questions to ask in next week’s class. This means that we do not expect all students to complete every single question perfectly each week. In fact, the homework questions are designed to contain harder content to challenge even the best students in each class. Challenging students and pushing them beyond their comfort zone is a critical part of learning. Students may encounter more difficulties when they are new in the class, when we are in the middle of a subject area or when we are at the end of a unit where we are focussing on challenging extension questions.Roughly speaking, for the whole term of work, just about 20% are harder ones. Please encourage your child to persevere and they will soon catch up. When students are approaching their homework, it is better to allocate a fixed period each day to attempt current material as well as a fixed period to work on the extension questions from the week or weeks before. For example, a student may spend three hours each week completing that current week’s homework and get through 75% of it. In class that weekend, the student may ask questions about the 25% of homework they did not understand. In the following week, they will spend three hours on the new week’s content, while spending one hour on the 25% from the week before. It may take several weeks for the student to fully understand the concepts from previous week but it is important that they persevere, keep asking questions and working at it. We support students learning at their own pace and we accept late homework as long as it is handed in within the current term before the final lesson. An individual term report is released to students on the final day.


How parents can help students


Please allow students to attempt and complete the homework on their own. Despite your best intentions to assist your child’s learning, too much input either from parents or home tutors will be counterproductive. Students must struggle in order to learn and the homework questions are for students to finish, by themself, sooner or later. If you have time, the best way to help is to circle a student’s unsolved problems each week and keep asking the student to revisit those questions week after week, until the student is able to complete all or most of them. It is natural for students learn at different paces- if it takes additional time for your child to master certain material, be patient and encouraging, knowing that they are learning among students of the very highest calibre. Remember that we believe in teaching and learning mathematics in the traditional way, to standards higher than the bare minimum required to score a good HSC mark. If your child aims to achieve a good HSC score but does not intend to pursue further studies in university sciences, mathematics or engineering, you may be happy to let your child complete about 80% of the homework each term. Our curriculum will allow all diligent students to secure a score of 98 or above in the HSC. However, we strive to motivate and nurture students so that they may achieve their maximum potential. Our society is complex and ever-changing and the challenges to come for the young minds of today are uncertain. Mr. Guan wholeheartedly believes that mathematics is the educational keystone that will form the foundation for success in university studies and beyond.


 

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