homework

To be honest, homework has always been a little bit tricky for me. I am not a huge supporter of busy work, homework has to be meaningful, but also at the child’s independent level. If students are able to complete the work on their own, then it is a good fit for homework (Hill, 2009). Mostly, I see homework as something that provides extra time on a skill that can only be learned through repeated practice. I also think it should be based on something that parents can easily understand. The parents in the community I teach want to be involved in their students’ learning. They just don’t always know how. Homework can be a nice vehicle for communication for this purpose (Hill, 2009).

               I provide one week’s worth of homework on Monday, and it is due on Friday. The homework includes math practice. Usually practice around math facts or number sense. Students like to do hands on applications like help mom and dad measure out dinner, use a ruler to measure items in their home, estimate prices at the store, and determine the number of calories in a bag of chips. Also, students always have to read. I tell them they need to read an hour at home. (I am thinking primary here; it would be 90 minutes if it were intermediate.) They can do 20 minutes for three nights, 10 minutes for 6 nights, or an hour at a time. They can read extra time and it will help them with the rewards down below. I do this because many of them have outside responsibilities and it makes the reading flexible.

               For math we usually talk about the experiences throughout the week in our morning meetings. If it is a worksheet I check it over and return it in the next week’s homework folder. For reading we have individual and class goals for minutes read. They get small rewards for reading 5 hours, 10 hours, and so on. When the class as a whole gets to 100 hours or 100 books we have parties. We also share any good reads at our morning meetings, and I chat with them during guided reading time about their reading logs, and ask them questions. Some students pick their reading at home. For many there are no books, so they take home whatever book we are reading in our guided groups and read them for extra practice at home. It helps their fluency.

               I don’t use as much technology as I would like because my kids don’t have access to it at home, but I would like to have homework listed in my googledocs school account so parents and students could access it, print lost copies, ask me questions, or ask fellow students questions.