students weigh in on Homework

9/5/2015

My students have been doing homework for five years and that makes them experts on this topic.

Take a stand

My students came in today and read an article about the value of homework. I asked them to make some notes on a T chart of the reasons that the article offered both in favor of and against homework. I told them to include their own ideas and experiences as well, reminding them that they have been doing homework for five years and that makes them experts on the topic. After reading the article and making their notes, I had the students turn and talk to their "elbow partner" about the pros/cons of homework, weighing the evidence on both sides of this issue before coming up with a statement of their own opinion.
Note: using the elbow partner, back partner, and face partner directives help to vary the audience for student talk

Students weigh in on homework: Two classes with very different results

After the discussion, I asked the students to "Take a Stand" for what their partner believes about this statement: Homework is helpful and we should have homework every night. I have labels along the wall for students to stand under to show if they agree/disagree or are neutral on an issue. In the class on the left, you can see many students are gathered in the middle under the neutral sign, meaning they feel that the pros/cons of homework are equal, or that they don't have any strong feelings either way. In the class on the right, there was a rather large group under the disagree sign that felt that homework does more harm than good. Once the students had taken their places along the wall, I called on them to explain who they are standing for, and why they were standing in that particular area. I'd love to share a video of the students speaking for their partners, but unfortunately not all of the students in the video have turned in the photo/video release form-maybe I can add it later. I have summed up some of the most popular reasons given both for and against homework below.

Homework: Pros

According to my students:

Homework is practice and practice makes perfect
You can get good grades
You can learn about more stuff
It keeps you off of electronics
It keeps you from getting bored at home
Homework helps you learn
It helps you get smarter
It teaches you time management skills
If you do a project for homework it is fun
You can learn a lot from it
It lets us learn things out of class

homework: cons

According to my students:

It's too much of a time waster
It can be confusing/it's too hard to do by yourself
Kids hate homework
Students earn bad grades if they can't do their homework
If we want to hang out with out friends after school, we can't because we have to do our boring homework
Some teachers give way too much homework and kids never get to finish it, then they get in trouble
Kids do enough work in class-we need to have fun too
It's a waste of paper
If you don't know a problem, you can get stressed out
You should get to spend time with your family

my own thoughts on homework

I have a lot of experience with homework: doing it myself, assigning it, grading it, and comforting my own children when they are crying over it.

The first experience that caused me to question my homework policies, actually happened as I was playing the role of parent-not teacher. My daughter had a homework assignment that she was struggling with, to the point of crying in frustration. When I tried to help her, I could not figure out the problem either. There was a whole set of the same type of problem, so we couldn't do any of them. She was terribly upset. I have a Master's degree in education and I can't figure out how to do this homework, so I was feeling a little upset myself. This really got me thinking about my students. What do my students do that don't have parents at home that can help them? How many of them have parents that can't help them with their work? That work nights? That are caring for small children and are overwhelmed with family obligations? That don't speak the language that the homework is written in? Is it fair to grade homework? Are students actually being graded on their family situation? I had more questions than answers.

My daughter spends approximately eight hours a day in school. I pick her up at three. She plays sports, so school doesn't actually end until 6-7 PM. Then we go home and have dinner and she gets cleaned up and ready for bed. By this time it's about 9 PM and she still has 3 or more hours of homework to do. I often ask her to do things with me and her response is, "I can't I have too much homework." Some days she misses games or practices because she either has too much homework to finish, or she is too tired from staying up until the AM hours finishing homework.

So do we have homework?

I was surprised when we did the "Weigh In on Homework" lesson that quite a few of my students actually wanted homework. I explained to the class that if you play a sport, you go to practice. If you play an instrument, you practice to get better at it. If you want to do better in English class, what should you practice? Reading! Writing! Speaking!

In answer to the question "Do we have homework?":

I hope that you will be reading books, poems, articles, content on the web, recipes, instructions, directions, menus and so much more. I hope that you will be talking and communicating with friends and family.
I hope that you will write letters, blogs, and create content around topics that interest you.
I hope you will engage in conversations about our learning in our online blogging community here on this website and on our class Instagram.

Will these activities be graded? No. Will these activities improve your skills in communication, reading, and writing which are vital to being successful in English class? Yes. Much of the time, assignments in an English class require a student to draw on their own experiences. I would like you to be having experiences, whether it's going to boy scouts, playing basketball, hiking, taking pictures, or just hanging out with friends. I don't want my students to miss out on experiences because of a worksheet packet that has to be completed by Friday.

Sometimes students will have to take their classwork home and finish it for homework and sometimes students will have a class project that they want to work on at home. If you really want to do more homework than I am giving you, look at the menus of extra credit projects that I have created for each unit that we study in English, there are some really fun projects that will extend your learning. I am not fond of workbooks, but I do understand that not everyone shares my opinions. If you want an English workbook to keep at home, I will be happy to give you one. Completion of workbook pages will not affect your grade, whereas extra credit projects will improve your grade. Ultimately, I respect everyone's unique family values and want to support your child in their academic, social, and emotional learning.

Here are some helpful links. If the button doesn't take you to a document, that means I haven't yet transferred that Word Doc to my Google Drive. Check back for updates.

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