After School Homework Assistance
Our after school Homework Assistance is an educational assistance programme in which we add special educational and technology tools to add a world learning dimension to the community homework programmes. We work collaboratively with schools, primarily focusing on homework completion whilst supporting school, elearning, stage and grade programmes.
Homework Assistance is provided to both students and tutors or coordinators, and will be a value-added support and service available to communities and schools throughout Trinidad and Tobago. It is therefore our aim to work in conjunction with schools and parent bodies to incorporate our Homework Assistance tools and programmes into more schools across the nation – helping more children meet their full potential.
Group Homework
Our principal program is the Group Homework. This is an after-school group that aims to focus on the following areas;
- Task completion,
- Literacy and numeracy outcomes,
- Learning to research for projects,
- Speeches and high school transition programs.
Our Group Homework program provides parents and guardians with a structured after-school service, focusing equally on relaxation as well as homework. This approach helps children with their social, academic and personal development.
Why use the Group Homework programme?
It is based on the idea that children can often become distracted when starting their homework at home, typically from television, computers, friends and family, which makes completion a challenge. This pattern of distraction can be habit-forming in children and adversely affects their attention span, their pride in their end result as well as their learning outcomes for the tasks.
Working with peers to complete homework is helpful and can be more satisfying for children. Children receive support from their classmates alongside our dedicated staff in order to overcome challenges in their study material as well as their work processes. This also nurtures the positive routine of completing homework directly after school, which helps to reinforce key concepts whilst the children are still fresh from the classroom.
Volunteers provide one on one attention to students that need extra assistance.
Best of all, by formalizing homework and task completion with us, parents and guardians are relieved of the necessity to supervise, catalyze and review all homework at home. This frees up valuable home time’ to be spent as quality time with the family. Our focus on task completion and on keeping track of progress for on-going tasks and projects continues to help children avoid anxiety over submission dates, and to better cope with competing priorities.
Our Program
Our daily routine allows our teaching staff to spend a proportion of the afternoon monitoring, guiding and assisting the students to complete set homework tasks. These include daily tasks, weekly tasks, speech preparation and research for projects.
Once the set homework has been completed the children may select an additional literacy and numeracy activity, allowing them to proceed with their own active, self-lead learning. We find this helps foster assertiveness, diligence and nourishes their curiosity.
Learning Profile
A Learning Profile serves as a common point of communication between a student, their Learning Specialist (who creates the profile), their teachers, and their parents that clarifies the most effective ways in which the student learns.
Profiles include information on student psycho-educational assessment, special-interests, and learning preferences. Additional information includes a student’s learning strengths, needs identification, academic recommendations, and strategies a student has acquired and actively used in the classroom. A learning profile is a dynamic document that evolves with the student as he or she grows and changes as an individual learner.
We operate after formal classes are over for the day and the children then meet with our staff in a designated area. Before starting, the children enjoy a short period of playtime, which helps refocus their energy prior to commencing their homework and set tasks.