One of the things we talked about at the end of last school year was having a discussion about homework. This summer I have spent time doing research and reading what really is the best homework practice.
My research included reading the book Rethinking Homework. It is a good title because for so long it has been in our school system that we must give homework yet we never really look and see if it has any benefit for our students. There are two extremes to homework that they discuss in the book. On one side there are the "All Academics All the Time" parents. These parents want their students to have homework and being doing school work all the time even if that work has little value to their student. On the other side we have the "No Homework Ever". These parents believe there should never be homework. Like most things in life a balanced approach is most reasonable, although most research points to the no homework ever crowd being closer to right than wrong.
One of the things the book talks about are reasons we give homework. If the goal for them is to learn, there isn't a lot of research that shows that homework actually helps with learning. From the book, "although never proven by research, parents assume an automatic relationship between homework and future success."
I hear it from both teachers and parents and one reason to give homework is it teaches kids responsibility. The book talks about how there is no research to actually support that doing homework teachers responsibility. Here is what the book says about responsibility: "Even in the task of homework itself, children are rarely given responsibility for choosing how they wish to learn, how they might show what they have learned, or how they might schedule their time for homework. True responsibility cannot be coerced. It must be developed by allowing students power and ownership of tasks."
Our goal is to foster life-long learning. Forcing them to do things they do not want to do is not helping in our goal. Also while both teachers, principals, and other working professionals do work after their work hours, very few do it every single night. You might work hard getting things ready on a Sunday and not do it Monday because you have your child's baseball game to go to. Plus we have to remember, our young students are not adults, they are children.
If you find an article or research showing the benefit of homework for younger students please show me. There definitely could be research out there and would love to see it.
Here are a few suggestions for homework:
-Make sure it is homework that they understand. It should never be something new. They should not need an adult to help. This means we really need to think about giving math homework from what they just learned in class. Do we know that 90% of our students are proficient at the skill they just learned in math that day? If the answer is no then we should not be giving it to them for homework. This also includes expecting students to know how to do something for projects like create a Google slideshow. If you have not taught them and they are not proficient at it then they should definitely not be expected to do that at home.
-Weekly. Students have a busy schedule and having it nightly is not fair to families or our students.
-Let students know the purpose of homework. Is the homework for pre-learning, checking for understanding, practice or processing? Teachers should think about this before they assign homework so they know what they want to get out of the homework.
-Have them read. There is research showing the benefit of reading. First we need to develop students that love to read. Here is a great article on The 5 Truths of Reading. Second we need to follow up with them to make sure they are reading. As a staff we can discuss the best ways to make sure they are reading.
-If you are doing writing prompts weekly ones are better. Also consider giving them a chance to do whatever they want for writing. Here is an article we can share with parents about why we don't always grade spelling in a student's writing. Why is My Kid Allowed to Make Spelling Mistakes.
-If homework is taking over a certain period of time parents should have the option of writing a note. No student should be spending hours on homework at night.
-Do not grade homework. When you grade homework you give them the option to fail. Another option is suggested by Alfie Kohn in the article Rethinking Homework, that teachers should move "toward a model in which students explain and explore with one another what they’ve done. Homework in the best classrooms 'is not checked – it is shared.' If students conclude that there’s no point in spending time on assignments that aren’t going to be collected or somehow recorded, that’s not an argument for setting up bribes and threats and a climate of distrust; it’s an indictment of the homework itself."
-Do not punish for not doing homework. The book talks about how when a student does not do homework it is usually because of two reasons: they do not know how to do it or they have a home life situation that does allow them to do it. It does talk about finding other time for them to finish what they didn't at home but that time should never be at lunch or recess.
-This does not get rid of independent practice. As Alice Keeler writes, "Students can and should do independent practice in the presence of their highly skilled teacher. When we shift what our classrooms look like, we can rethink the need to assign homework."
- One idea especially for older students is to flip your classroom and have students watch a video on instruction that way they are ready to learn the next day and they can practice in class with you, the expert, there to help if needed.
-Spiraling homework. When I taught math all of my tests spiraled. There is a lot of benefit to spiraling information. In the New York Times article, The Trouble With Homework, they state "Spaced repetition” is one example of the kind of evidence-based techniques that researchers have found have a positive impact on learning. Here’s how it works: instead of concentrating the study of information in single blocks, as many homework assignments currently do — reading about, say, the Civil War one evening and Reconstruction the next — learners encounter the same material in briefer sessions spread over a longer period of time."
-Give the choice in their homework and how they study.
John Hattie is an educational researcher. He has looked at the effect size different influences have on student learning. He came up with a hinge point of .4 meaning anything above .4 is worth our time and beneficial to student learning. Out of the 138 influences on student learning, homework came in with a score of .29 and ranking 88 out of 138 influencers on student learning. You can read more here. There are 87 influences that have a larger effect on student learning than homework and yet for both parents and teachers we spend a lot of time worrying so much about it.
I can't wait to discuss this more with our staff. I do not have all the answers and really do want to hear input from all of you. Many of you have already made the shift in your homework practices and we will see if we can come up with some guidelines that we can roll out schoolwide that way I can best explain to parents why we are moving in the direction we are with homework.
I am not saying we get rid of homework all together, we just need to change the way we think about homework. There can be a place for meaningful homework that develops skills and allows students to acquire the knowledge necessary for them to succeed. We obviously want our students to learn; it sounds more and more like traditional homework is not the way to get there.
Below are more resources and articles:
Why Parents Wonder So Much About Homework
Alice Keeler, Stop Giving Homework
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