A Few Questions to Consider
Homework should be practice of essential skills and essential learnings. So......
1. Do students need practice?
2. Should practice be graded?
3. Perfect practice makes perfect. How do we make sure students perfectly practice?
4. Do all students need the exact same practice?
5. Do all students need the exact same amount of practice?
6. What should feedback look like?
If we don't grade homework......
1. How do we make sure they do their homework (is it important that a student who has mastered the content do the homework)?
2. How do students and parents know how the student is doing?
3. What are the assessments that are graded and how frequent are these assessments?
If homework is practice, which of the following makes sense?
- Word Finds
- Homework every night, no matter what
- Homework over a topic that hasn't been taught yet
- Homework over non-essential learnings
- Extra Credit over non-essential learnings (or extra credit in general)
- Completion grades
- "D+" written on the practice assignment by the teacher (or A+ or B-)
- One opportunity to practice an essential learning
- Late work is not accepted
- Feedback on homework is infrequent or not given
1 comment:
I agree with all of these comments on homework and I often wonder if we are hitting on the skills students most need to be successful in the future. Many of our students will be placed in jobs that don't exist yet - how are we best preparing them for this future? I wish we had something in place that would allow kids to practice and gain more insight into things they are passionate about: cooking, woodworking, electrical engineering, construction, automotive repair, computer security, city planner, etc... So many of our students are turned off to school when we should be igniting their passion for learning, in whatever areas they want to learn more about! What are your thoughts???
Shelly Whitman
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