How to get the most out of CENTURY for homework

As former teachers, we know that homework is time-consuming to set and mark and needs to be done in a purposeful way for it to be useful for both teachers and learners. We also know that homework can be used in a variety of different ways. In this blog we compile some best practice based on the ways our partner schools use the platform, so you can see clearly how CENTURY can be used as part of your homework policy:

Homework as assessment for learning

After teaching a concept in class, teachers can set a nugget (containing a video, slideshow and self-marking questions) at the end of the lesson as assessment for learning. Students’ responses and scores are displayed in the Teacher Dashboard, allowing teachers to easily identify any class-wide misconceptions and adapt any future lessons accordingly.

Homework can be set centrally by the head of department or by individual classroom teachers. 

Students can stay organised by working systematically through the assignments in their Due Assignments box.

Personalised homework 

Schools can assign learners a diagnostic assessment at the start of a unit. This starts the personalisation, ensuring each student’s Recommended Path is populated with nuggets adapted to their needs. The Recommended Path is constantly updating, so you can be sure students are completing the right work for them. 

Homework instructions can be as simple as ‘Spend 20 minutes on CENTURY,’ saving hours of teachers’ valuable time.

Flipped learning

CENTURY’s nuggets can be assigned to a class in advance of a lesson. Icknield Community College uses CENTURY in a number of ways across English, maths and science and find it especially useful “for teachers to see easily what students got right or wrong and what interventions we could put in place.”

Retrieval practice

It’s so important for students to revisit learning regularly to ensure it makes it into their long term memory. A key way of doing this is through retrieval practice, but deciding what students should revisit and when very much depends on the learner. This is where CENTURY’s memory boost comes in handy – identifying the optimal time for a student to revisit a specific concept.

Personalised revision before an assessment

It’s impossible to write personalised revision plans for every student but you can make sure that students are revising the areas that they need to work on by directing them to their Focus on to Improve sections of their account. If they need to be pushed further in a specific topic, they can choose to study a micro-lesson from their Stretch recommendations. 

Brighton Hill takes this approach with their learners, using CENTURY alongside PiXL’s “Diagnosis, Therapy, Testing” (“DTT”) strategy in science. 

If your learners might struggle to access CENTURY at home, you can follow the example of Sandcross Primary who let students access devices in the morning. They believe this home learning approach gives pupils an insight into what homework will be like when they start secondary school. 

To find out more about how CENTURY can support your homework policy, book a demo here. For more information about the power of good homework, click here.