I question the value of most homework.
Example: A math teacher teaches a concept to 30 students, then assigns 40 questions in the text. Here is a typical breakdown of student experiences…
Group A+: These 3 students knew the concept before it was even taught, not a single of the 40 questions are remotely helpful in teaching anything new… in fact, the homework is useless, boring and I’d even argue punitive.
Group A: The lesson was great, it taught these 6 students very well. The first 25 questions were unnecessary as the concepts were really simple and the last 15 questions were helpful and challenging (especially the last 5 word problems that required some critical thinking). Still, more than half the homework was pretty much a waste of time, and quite honestly, if the last 15 questions were the only questions they had to do, they could have finished all, or at least most, of them in class after the lesson.
Group B: For these 10 students, the homework was good. After the lesson they are able to tackle the questions and actually find them challenging. The practice was needed and good to have. However 2 of these students get too challenged with the last 15 questions and get more wrong than right. They have essentially gone home and ‘practiced’ doing these more challenging questions wrong.
Group C: These 6 students found the lesson tough. They found the homework even tougher and like the 2 struggling students above, they do a good job of praciticing how to get practice questions wrong at home… But 1 of these students has a really smart mom who ‘gets’ math and who sits and helps him. This student gets the support at home to make the homework achievable and useful. Beyond him, students in this group will all struggle significantly with the last 15 questions. It will be a frustrating learning experience!
Group D: You knew these 5 students couldn’t do the homework even before you assigned it. At best they’ll get the first 10 to 15 questions done, and they don’t have a hope of being successful on the last 15 questions even if they tried… but they won’t.
Score card: A class of 30 students and 9 of them find the homework experience valuable, (8 from Group B and 1 Group C). I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t be too proud of a 30% success rate. I know my student breakdown includes sweeping generalizations, I know you do more to meet students’ needs, but I think you can see the truth behind the value of homework to the different ‘categories’ of students I describe.
As a math teacher, my first lessons were not about Math they were about life. I wrote this formula on the board:
Equal is not equal to fair.
Sometimes certain students didn’t get homework, or they got alternate homework. Some didn’t write the pre-tests, some only did every other question, some only had to do 5 questions, some had to do them all. It’s not fair to give 3 students the same number of questions when one student is bored to death by them, one can do them in 20 minutes and still another student will struggle with them unsuccessfully for an hour… it would be equal, but not fair.
But still, with all my attempts to differentiate and make the homework meaningful, homework was still an area of my teaching that I found challenging to manage well. It was different when the students were doing their Science Alive project, going home and adding to their wiki pages. But most of that homework was done by student choice… it wasn’t imposed upon them.
My last post was about flipped classrooms with the lesson/instructions watched at home, and the practice done at school. This could be a great strategy to help make class time effective, but as I also mentioned, those lessons need to be well thought out, well produced and engaging enough to get kids to actually watch them… you need to work at making it meaningful homework that actually gets done. In a comment response to that post, David Deubelbeiss wrote:
I’ve written and workshopped about flipping our classroom instruction in ELT and being more inductive. Usually teachers – prepare, practice, produce – a kind of behavioral and assembly line approach. However, for language learning which is a skill – production is most important, the doing. Students usually don’t do much there because the bell cuts the lesson short, the teacher takes ages explaining/pontificating and doing the chalk talk. So I suggested to teachers to FLIP. Just let students have a go. Monitor and then plan and instruct from that basis – after you see what they can do, do know. So instruction becomes about dealing with the holes in student understanding, not giving them the whole enchilada beforehand.
Done well, the flipped classroom could potentially be a useful way to assign homework. I’m sure there are other examples, but I’m willing to bet that most homework is neither effective nor is it something that encourages a love of learning… and if that is the case, then why continue?
Other things to consider:
How much class time is dedicated to explaining homework? How much class time is committed to checking homework answers? How valuable is the ‘homework checking’ time? Are the students who struggle most with homework the ones who get the most attention during ‘homework checking’ time? How much of your time is spent policing homework completion? How many positive conversations do you have regarding homework? How many students truly get value from homework? How many don’t? How valuable is homework?
Note: I’m currently at an international school where there are very high expectations for homework to be given. My philosophy on homework does not match my reality. My kids go to my school and I’d say conservatively that they spend an average of 1 hour on homework a night, and that’s in Grades 3 and 6. I see value in the discipline, and there have even been (sparsely experienced) moments where we’ve enjoyed working on something together. I also think the (student choice) reading they are required to do is excellent, and the response journals are worthy activities to do… but for the most part, I’d rather they had much less homework. At my school, I am definitely a parent in the minority in that regard.
I have previously asked and shared re:
The purpose of homework…
Is homework an effective practice?
What is it intended to accomplish for student learning?
How do you use it effectively?
How do you deal with homework that isn’t done? Is this the same as others on your team?
What feedback have you had from students? Parents?
What I’ve read to get me thinking about homework: (Each one already linked to above.)
And here are three more to ponder:
What do you think?