Thursday, October 27, 2011
Homework: Worth it?
I think some of you out there did a book study on a book about whether or not homework is something that we should be giving students regularly. (Can't remember the name of the book?) I have not read the book, but am very interested in the topic. Homework (especially for non-honors students or AP track students) is something that I struggle with for multiple reasons (kids whose households aren't conducive to homework, do they really learn more with homework etc...). I would love to start a dicussion on the topic of homework. Is it worth it? Do you give a lot? Have you read the book??
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I think this is an interesting concept. What is homework? Sometimes teachers have students do something at home, that does not require them to do any writing. I think that homework can be beneficial when it challenges the student. I think I made many mistakes as a teacher by giving too much homework, just to give it. If there is not a purpose or if it won't improve the student learning, why do we give it? (I know I didn't love correcting it!)
ReplyDeleteI did not do a book study on homework, but it really is something I struggle with as well. I can't imagine that students couldn't learn more if they effectively completed homework. To me, it's more about assigning meaningful homework, varying it so that it's appropriate for each student, and having it contribute appropriately to the overall grade. I'm not a big believer in grades that reflect homework completion instead of content mastery. Mostly, I'd like to have my students think of homework differently. Unfortunately, I don't have a great way to help students think of homework as a meaningful pathway to learning instead of a menial task. That said, I try to keep the amount meaningful: what's the minimum require to preteach, reinforce, or supplement what we do in class? Of course, then I feel like maybe I"m giving into the demands of students instead of encouraging them to rise to the occasion, bite the bullet, and learn. I'm also with Wentzel on the correcting it thing - mostly, if we can't give meaningful feedback then it's not always a great tool. Overall, I don't think we get rid of it, I think we grade it in a constructive way, I think we show them how to use it as a learning tool, and I think we remain cautious of dropping a student's grade (that's supposed to reflect knowledge) over missing homework.
ReplyDeleteI agree that homework should have a purpose. I also think that homework for certain subjects is more necessary than others. I teach reading and language arts and I don't assign a whole lot of homework outside of class. Students have to read for so many minutes outside of class, but other than that the only time students have homework is if they don't finish an assignment in class. But again I think the biggest thing is that if homework is given it should have a purpose.
ReplyDeleteOur VT has been arguing about how to approach homework since I got here. Here's what I'm currently trying: My students know that work outside of class is implied every night, but I will only give assignments that I think are valid tools for formative assessment. Because Spanish is so heavy on vocabulary, I ask them to figure out how they study best (I have a slide that gives suggestions) and use that strategy to learn the words and be fully prepared for the very challenging vocab assessments.
ReplyDeleteSome reapond very well to this, but there are certainly some who don't seem to be doing things that aren't graded. I had previously assigned many small tasks and given them grades based on completion. More were completed, but I wonder if they were done as well as the ones I see now???
I agree with Ben that homework should be meaningful. And as Laura said, it depends on the class. I don't think Social Studies is a class that requires much homework. I told some teachers at the high school that my class is usually a favorite of students partly because of the lack of homework. I'm told that in high school, some of the most reading and writing intensive courses are social studies. Needless to say, we have a huge gap in expectations from 6th to 12th grade.
ReplyDeleteBecause I give homework so sparingly, the assignments we do are usually very unique and interesting. It isn't a menial task to them. Usually homework is a way of making vocab or a topic more relevant to their lives. The only other assignment I give is if they don’t complete something that should easily be completed in class so it motivates many to work hard in class.
The big problem with homework is that many students are simply not going to do work outside of class. But if they show mastery on summative assessments, they shouldn’t be punished too severely by a homework grade. Homework should still be enforced though because they need to form the habit early on in Secondary Education. I like the 70/30 grading scale for tests/homework. It seems to be a good balance for my class. My only caution with that grading scale is that any summative assessment that falls into that 70% test category should be something completed in class. Basing 70% of a student’s grade on something assigned as homework should simply never occur.
And to Dusty, I’ve found that using student response clickers for formative assessment is a really fun and exciting way to get kids to care about formative assessment. I almost never put the results of these clicker activities in my grade book and they are aware of that. Yet I still see that 95% of the students care about formative assessments in that format. And any misconceptions they have are quickly corrected by doing this.