Teaching Tuesday: Homework

I hate homework.

I hated it when I was a student. I hated it when I was a teacher and I hate it even more as a parent.

It is not that I'm opposed to learning out of school hours; I wasn't even when I was a kid. But it really irked me to have to write my (already memorized) spelling words 5 times each when I could have been reading a book or climbing a tree.

Which may have been why I hardly ever did my homework. When I was older and my homework mattered - for my grade, if not for my learning - I did it during a free period or before school started in the morning.

College was the only time were homework made sense to me and where I actually cared about it. Possibly because it never involved reviewing stuff I already knew in some utterly pointless way that involved no higher level thinking skills.


Which could definitely not be said for the homework I gave as a teacher. In my defense, I was required to give it. And it's not that my students didn't need to practice things at home, but many of them didn't have a parent or sibling who could or would help them even remind them to do their homework. So whatever I sent home, they had to be able to do totally independently. When you're talking about first graders, most of whom can't read by themselves, that severely limits your homework options. But I at least tried to make things short, sweet and relevant. Practicing spelling words they didn't already know, practicing handwriting, memorizing sight words and math facts. For the average first or second grader in my classes at the time, homework took about 15 minutes each night.

People still complained. I still hated checking it - it was rare that I learned anything about my students' learning from stuff they'd done at home, other than whose older siblings were told to finish their work for them when it got too hard. I hated it and I hated myself for not being more instructionally creative with it.

Then I went from creating the homework to reading the directions on the homework. And learned what hate really means. Well, that's not entirely accurate. Kindergarten and first grade were fine. The homework was short, simple and not too repetitive. But last year Ironflower hit second grade and I wanted to hit somebody.

So. Many. Worksheets.

The math was all worksheets - usually "Reteach" pages from the curriculum, so that Ironflower, who already claimed to be bored in math, was practicing (but not extending or extrapolating) the stuff she already knew. The spelling was a choice of simple, worksheet-like activities. There was a reading log and and requirement to read 20 minutes a night, but they never had to do anything with that reading. And sometimes it would take her an hour, even though it was all easy for her, just because there was so much of it.*

If you look at the research, this is neither appropriate, nor especially helpful. To summarize the (long, as far as the internet is concerned) article, research says homework should be:

• Purposeful: introducing a new topic, practicing a skill they can do independently but not fluently, elaborating on what they've learned in class or researching a topic that interests them.

• Carefully monitored so that it does not take too much time - one formula is ten minutes times the grade level, so a third grader would have 30 minutes a night. Other studies show that homework does not improve academic achievement in the elementary grades at all. The effectiveness of homework increases as students get older; but the effectiveness decreases altogether if students get too much homework.

• Designed to maximize students' chances of completing it. Meaning that it has to be challenging enough to retain kids' interest but easy enough so that they have a lot of success with it. 

• Involve parents appropriately. If parents have to teach material or hover for their child to complete the work, that's a concern. Parents should be used as a sounding board for ideas or for reading aloud.  

If your kids' homework doesn't fit into the criteria, try talking to the teacher. And the principal. And anyone else who will listen. Ask if you can do alternative activities, like a family journal, reading, a dictionary of new words, pictures books that illustrate science and social studies concepts, building a go-cart or a treehouse or a table, writing and performing a play for the neighborhood or running a lemonade stand. 

*And no, it wasn't stuff she didn't do in class because she was playing around. I checked.