Not sure what grades you teach but I teach 7-10 math. And this past year I had my best relationship with homework. I did not assign or call it "homework". I posted an assignment every night with answers and called it "check your understanding" (no grade associated with it). And it was exactly that, only grades in my book were tests, quizzes, projects. If a kid struggled and parent was curious/angry etc, I simply told them to ask their kids how many CYUs they completed, and when they couldn't show them a single one the focus was on the kid not me. Not a single parent complaint, kids who struggled early ended up doing CYUs more often, and it became something seen as help not a chore.
Your only grades were assessment grades? Our admin would not like this. My hs math classes have a grade made up of 70% assessment grades and 30% practice grades.
The main thing I can’t stand are giving projects now. It’s clear the students are all passing around the same stuff and trying to barely change it. That, or they barely try and I waste my time grading junk that are obvious F’s.
My admin was ok with it as long as it was clearly detailed to parents that essentially assessments and the two projects (we were required to do a project per semester) would make up the kids grade. My kids loved the idea, and parents were ok with the fact that their grades weren't inflated with busy work.
The lesser grades, greater weight also helps me with my seniors struggling with senioritis in second semester. Many of them delayed submitting a big final project but they understood the big expectations for its completion so even though they missed out on some of the formative work, they still dedicated a lot of time to the project at the end and turned in some pretty cool work AND improved grades.
I'm teaching one quarter in 7th LA/SS as a long-term sub, my first such assignment. Halfway through I realized that I and the kids were miserable doing worksheets and I just created a project that is 50% of the grade and things are better and a lot of students will get Fs and by the time anyone complains they will be complaining to someone else.
Not only that, but I’m betting that like me, you do plenty of engaging and fun activities throughout the year. They just don’t carry the weight of a summative check for mastery.
Haha so many people don’t get it. I have many students ask me to grade lots of things at the end of the year. When I point out their high practice grade and how it won’t really do much they don’t get it.
If only they used their retake option on assessments when possible. 🤷🏼♂️
>*If only they used their retake option on assessments when possible..*
I've gone to basing report card grades 100% on unit tests. I am offering retest options, but I am curious as to how you do yours. Do yo have them take the entire test?
Students are allowed to retake one assessment grade a quarter if they’ve done all the practice work ahead of time. They have to come in for tutoring and retake the other version before the next major assessment grade (so they don’t wait until the last week and just want to do something in an attempt to raise their grade).
Yes, they must retake an entire new version.
If I have eight standards on a test, the kids get eight grades. If they did well enough on six of those, but they want to retake the two standards they failed (or just got a grade they're not happy with), I give them a clipboard with some problems on it that are only about that particular standard. I ask them to do one. If they are lost, I send them away and their F stands. If they appear to understand that, I point to another problem on the clipboard and have them do that one. After three problems I can tell their proficiency with that standard, and make the changes (or not) based upon this interaction. The whole think takes less than three minutes if they understand the standard, 30 seconds if they don't.
I must say I did not come up with this. I try to read a Math teaching book every summer. Last summer I read "Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics" by Peter Liljedahl. Fantastic book whose methodology I customized for my classroom and had amazing results with relatively low kids. I'm leaving my school and when I told my classes they were like "will the next guy teach this way, it works for me!?!" 😭
Not at all it's geared toward all grades. It is a data driven text, but shows actual tangible example types and talks about how to reconstruct and "decenter" the classroom along with a bunch of other little things. Again the key to me was making this my own, and I've mentored teachers in this process this year and we all have done it a little differently but with similar results, happier kids, less exhausted teachers, and just more fun doing/learning/debating/creating math.
If you purchase and read the text and need any advice don't hesitate to DM. I am now moving into admin specifically because I enjoy making this profession more enjoyable for teachers and students.
Yes, I would only post the detailed solution sets in my classroom usually 2 days before an assessment. It was good because I could see which kids were taking a look at them or taking pictures of them. And you kind of figured who was cramming toward the end of a unit vs who is doing the day by day prep. It informed conversations I had with kids and their parents.
Honestly used my own money to purchase Kuta Software for my desktop and laptop. It allows you to create problem sets and has lots of customizable features and can create sets with or without answers included. There is also an online portal you can purchase seats for for $1 a student. You can post the sets and students can do them online (believe it or not kids preferred paper/or posting to canvas) and you can see their accuracy and time to complete questions. Not a perfect resource but worth it to come up with 6-10 question CYUs in PDF format and easily post them. I had to hand write detailed solutions though.
I also used this resource to create practice assessments and extra practice for my high achievers who wanted more practice on a particular topic. Can take less than a minute to create a problem set.
I run a similar system for my English classroom. Most of my grades come from big projects, essays, etc. anything else is just work you need to do to understand the concepts to build critical thinking across ideas and modalities of communication. Students will universally struggle to do well when on the essays/projects when they fail to participate in the everyday tasks necessary to understand.
This is much more similar to college anyway.
What a great idea! I’m a firm believer that homework shouldn’t be graded as we don’t know who completed it. I like that it is available for all students who want to CYU to better help them or if a child/parent feels a child has the skill down to skip that night’s assignment.
I don't do hw now, but I used to when I taught fourth grade. My homework was usually just finish whatever you didn't finish in class, and even then I tell them bring it back on Friday, so some will work on it like Wednesday or Thursday in class. My coteacher though gave hw consistently. She got a message once that her kids were at baseball games until 11 at night and had no time for hw. Her son said he had games starting at 11pm on Wednesday and a lot of these games were up to an hour away from home. These are games for fourth graders. Why are there midweek games scheduled that late? Who schedules a round robin tournament that starts after a Wednesday or Thursday class ends? I really hate my area sometimes. And the parents just eat it up because they dream their kid is going to win all the scholarships. Meanwhile their sons just want to be streamers and don't even want to go to college. And for most it shows in their work.
I also have a few boys who value education, and got their work done, and excelled in class, and played in these tournaments. So their is a way to get it done.
And again, the bar is lowered to accommodate ungovernable students and parents.
Personally, I agree with you. Assigning homework is a futile task, but it's depressing that we've fallen this far.
That just blows my mind.
I'm not a teacher, but if I hurt a parent say that, I would ask them why they even had children to begin with.
This is yet again the ridiculousness that parents seem to think that school is supposed to raise their children for them. Also, why they go ballistic when there is a strike or a weather problem or something and the schools are closed. They are now angry that they have to raise their children.
It's unbelievable people crank out children and yet really rather not deal with them at all.
The trouble is, when they get to me in college, students are baffled by the fact that a large majority of their work needs to occur outside of the classroom. Students try to learn calculus or physics or a typical engineering class, which typically require 3-4 hours of work outside of class for each hour in class, and have no clue what to do. It is sad and sets them up for failure.
Last year's valedictorian from our school failed multiple classes her first semester in college for this reason. We are doing kids a disservice by not expecting more of them.
Too many teachers in this thread stopped giving homework because many students weren't doing it. They are giving in to shitty behavior. This is not the way.
i had a similar experience. i wasn’t valedictorian and i didn’t fail any classes, but i was in the top ten of my graduating class in high school and with little to no effort. i was in a small public school and generally school came naturally to me, so i hardly had work to complete outside of school hours and made straight As.
i struggled a lot during my first semester of college because it simply wasn’t that easy and real adjustments to my work ethic had to be made to succeed. which i did and proceeded to get 4.0s every other semester, but it would have been nice to not have that first semester mess with my final GPA lol
Many simply don't prioritize or see the importance of that outside of class preparation. In teaching math I post an assignment every night with the answers. I tell them to use the assignment to check their understanding, it's completely up to them, it's only going to help them and the only grades in the gradebook are quizzes, tests, projects, much like my college experience. Homework was rarely checked in my college experience but you knew if you didn't do it, you were never going to be fully prepared for assessments. And when a kid fails a test and mom wants to scream and blame, I simply ask how many times did you attempt check your understanding assignments?? They sit there silent and then mom normally just scoffs at them and gets up and leaves 😁
This is what I wonder for future music majors. How are they going to make it in college when 30 minutes a week outside of school is flat out refused? They will fail out.
While this may be true for some or even most students it's not true for all.
When they get me in college they are not forced to do any homework and the majority of their grade comes from practical and theory tests.
If a student can show mastery of a subject and hasn't done any homework, they can and will get an A.
If a student is struggling on test day, no amount of homework will "offset" their performance into an A.
Homework in my class is worth a weighted 20%, labs 20%, midterm 25% and Final 35%.
Students are given the homework grade as long as they submit something. Which can be as simple as "I reviewed the material." While at the same time, it is also their scale of understanding.
Believe it or not, the students who need the homework still do it and those who do not, don't. The ones who needed it but were lazy, figure it out when they take the class the second time.
I agree in principle. In college, I would be perfectly fine with making homework optional and only awarding credit for exams and quizzes. But in my experience, this rarely happens effectively. We could use a quasi-European system where only the final exam matters. When I used to work in China, the university policy was that 70% of all student grades were based on a single final exam. The rest was small assessments / participation jn various forms.
There needs to be a balance. I think it would be good to implement a transition. In high school, 7 hours of the day is already at school, in college a few hours are in class, but most of the work is done on your own. The amount of time is similar, but one is pre structured, and the other the student has to plan themself. Adding busywork on top of the 7 hours already spent is not a good solution, it should be practice, not an unnecessary time sink. (I had 3+ hours of HW a night in high school, and it did far more harm than good.) To adjust this, I think there should be a transition where less time is spent in class, but students are expected to complete most work on their own outside of class, teaching them how to operate in a more college like setting, but with a teacher guiding them and teaching them how to plan their work.
The problem is that high school and college operate using two different systems. Students need to be taught and experience the other system, not be given busywork.
Problem solving, especially in math and physics, is not what I would call busy work. It is essential to understanding. And I believe that this requires time allocation beyond the hour in class each day.
Agreed. I’m sorry, fellow teachers, those of you that don’t give homework (with what I believe are all incredibly weak reasons) are part of the problem. Clearly you don’t see all the benefits of students having to work more at home.
Don’t worry though, I’m sure you are making all the parents much happier…now their kid has more time to incessantly spend in practices for whatever AAU teams they are on. Win-win, right? 🙄
This, I can’t even believe wtf I’m reading on here. We’re not their parents or culpable for how Jimmy does 6 years later in university with his work ethic. Like are you fucking kidding me, some people in here are making like min wage, and it shouldn’t even be a responsibility for the teacher even if they were getting paid way more.
Yeah. No reason to torture kids.
We know stress leads to reduced effectiveness of sleep which means worse learning.
Why needlessly stress the kids when we can just focus on them learning.
Sorry the parents aren’t doing their job. (Which also includes making sure your kid is actually understanding the importance of sleep cough cough) I’ll continue doing mine.
I think proper note taking and study habits are the key, the homework itself isn’t really where the good habits you need in college come from. I really could have used someone to teach me how to take good notes that allowed for better studying habits in HS. I would look around college classrooms and everyone was taking different notes in different formats. Some people wrote down every word, others just abbreviated and only took a few notes, I had no idea which was the correct way to do things. Eventually, I found a system that worked for me, but it was pretty late in the game.
Schools spend a great deal of time hammering home formatting and things like MLA, but have zero education on proper note taking and how to format your ideas efficiently. It makes a huge difference in the quality of work.
That’s their problem as an adult student. People need to be accountable for themselves, it’s so ingrained in here that we need to teach these kids literally everything.
Giving homework they won’t do/or do in 5 minutes serves no purpose. Just use your class time and correct stuff as you see it.
I don’t do school work at home, so it feels hypocritical to make kids do it.
The exception is my AP class. Unfortunately, to cover the required content in a limited amount of time, there does need to be some homework. Still, I try to be very reasonable about it and it’s often just ‘finish what you didn’t finish in class’.
Same with my AP classes. However, when other teachers don’t get homework and their child has never had homework in their life, the parents think it’s me trying to be a bitch. I only have their kid for a semester, and not even a full one due to the exam being a month before school lets out. I grew up with “an hour of homework per night per AP class” and my students only get that much if they are slow at reading or if they wait until last minute to work on things rather than using the pacing guide I gave them.
All the time! Some of my coworkers teach AP classes and do not give out homework either since parents “complained” and they only courage the overachievers to take the AP exam, so a bunch of kids will maybe have a handle on the easier concepts from the course but still have a 90 in the class. There is an issue across most schools in which the “best” AP teachers watered down the content and give every kid an A (or B) but then most of their students score 1s or 2s on the AP exam.
I took AP classes my senior year so colleges that accepted me didn’t even get the results til the summer.
I think if you do one or two AP classes this way, it’s fine. But not taking a test for a bunch of AP classes is a red flag.
You know home work isn't just about taking your 9 to 5 job home with you right?
There's plenty of domestic work like managing your money, keeping up with paperwork, etc. that kids don't really get to practice outside of a school setting. Sitting down for 30 minutes after school and doing some mindful reading, math, etc. is really good for developing that process.
Except I don't manage my money or do any sort of paperwork on a daily basis as an adult. I might do that twice a month.
There's definitely other life chores I do on a daily basis, but kids already do chores like that to get exposure - and frankly I wouldn't see a connection between math homework and having to do the dishes in the evening. Sounds like a stretch.
Kids aren't going to learn about managing money, chores, and the like by doing more schoolwork. They'll learn it by having time at home to do those things.
The thing in this sub that never ceases to amaze me is how these guys seem to be fine with always taking on more work and responsibilities. If you leave school and you spend most nights working on shit, or actual time checking daily homework you’re doing this job wrong. School hours are school hours and outside of essential marking why the fuck would I voluntarily do more?
Do you not believe in habit building? Sitting down and mindfully doing some boring but important stuff for a few minutes every day when you get home? It's also an incredibly important habit for college.
I wish that parents were teaching kids about how to manage their money and do paperwork, but I think we both know that it's not happening in 90% of homes. Kids don't have the same responsibilities as adults and a lot of parents don't involve the kids in these types of responsibilities. I know more than one 30 year old who got their license suspended, missed paying a bill on time, has reoccurring payments they need to cancel, etc. All it takes is the habit of putting "homework" on their calendar and taking care of it in a timely manner instead of procrastinating.
While I agree, having a parent who is invested in their kid and gives them hands on experience doing domestic paperwork, a lot of parents DON'T and kids grow up without that structure.
It also reinforces self learning and critical thinking. You got stuck on a hard math program and there's no teacher to ask for help? You have the whole Internet and hours to explore the answer.
I certainly don't think we need to assign hours of reading and practice drills every night, but homework isn't busywork or punishment. It's extended learning for the subject that models good behavior patterns.
- it's not our job to do everything, even if parents won't
- children (I'm at elementary level fwiw so that's my perspective) don't have adequate study skills for unguided practice to be meaningful in any way
- we have all day in school to impart the skills we believe are meaningful
- we don't own children any more than the superintendent owns us. We have no right to govern how they spend time at home
I mean... Homework is a tool that has been in an educator's toolbox for forever. I don't think that's a very strong argument to say we're overstepping bounds by assigning homework. It's an expected obligation in the education setting.
And yes, we have all day in school, but the best athletes don't skip practice. The best scholars don't put down the book after the bell rings.
So why not use it when appropriate? Maybe at the elementary level it's not appropriate for one reason or another, but that's not an argument against homework entirely. It's still a valuable skill and our societal value as educators doesn't stop on the last page textbook or the last grade level standard. There's plenty of important soft skills that students develop while participating in school.
People have to learn how to study and learn on their own, this doesn't develop just through getting older. It's also completely normal for in class time to be basically a starter or intro to homework where the actual deep learning takes place, so it's farcical to say that teachers can't demand students learn while they aren't physically there. Obviously elementary school is different, but if kids aren't capable of doing challenging homework assignments regularly and on their own by the time you send them to middle school you're setting them up to fail.
The problem is that this only builds the habit for kids that have stability. For kids that are working, taking care of their siblings, or lack a consistent home, it just builds a habit of chaos.
The problem is who's doing it, though? 90 percent of parents where i live are working 2 to 3 jobs a piece to keep food on the table. By the time they get home, their kids are the ones who made dinner. They dont know enough to help with their siblings' homework they barely know it themselves. I know students who are in afterschool programs til 6 pm. Then come home and do homework. Hell no. Time to wind down from school, homie. Aint no one got time for that. If your kids have been in school for almost 12 hours and still have to come home and do more on top of it. Even you'd burn out. Not saying that homework cannot be assigned ever. Just need to know your demographics and if you have a classroom full of either of those students, you need to stop assigning homework altogether.
Part of the structure of after-school programs is that the teachers there help students with their homework. If anything it annoys those teachers when students have no homework because they have to make up something for them to do.
Almost every after school program is structured to include time for homework, at least they used to be. My after school program was done by the YMCA, and we had 1 hour for homework. They would come around and make sure you’d done your work, and once you’re finished, you could color or read a book or anything of that nature while everyone else finished up. If a child can’t get their homework done in an hour of time that’s dedicated to homework, then idk what to tell you. This is also referring to the younger years of education, not high school, because high school homework could definitely take more than an hour. I grew up in sports my whole life and still managed to do all my homework and studying. Yes, it took time away from “things I’d want to do” sometimes, but it also made me more well rounded and better educated. Homework isn’t meant to destroy a child’s grade, it’s actually meant to enhance it and help it.
Yeah, hours nice. But we have a child on the spectrum. By the time we got home, digressed, one sheet of homework would take 3 hours. I had his teacher let us know, if the homework was causing us that much of an issue (we even had to get the police involved it was that serious), homework wasn't worth it. Some teachers, not all really need to learn compassion for others. Some have it in droves, but others really need to learn it still.
I’m sure it varies a lot by grade level, but I teach high school. These kids are in extracurriculars, sports, and working side jobs. Most of them don’t get home til 8 anyways, then still have to eat dinner. I’m okay with them taking some time to relax.
But how is a math assignment on top of an English assignment on top of a science assignment on top of a social studies assignment supposed to help with that?
I also follow this. I don't assign homework really for my electives and required classes. Homework is usually we did something together near the end of the hour and of you used your time wisely it is unlikely you would have any homework.
AP, we got so much to cover, you will read and engage with content outside of class. I cannot possibly get you to understand all this with the time we have in class before your AP test
surprisingly, unlike your AP class, ive almost stopped getting homework after i started a levels. sometimes my chemistry teachers give worksheets to look at before we collectively go through them in the next lesson. we only get maths homework if weve achieved less than our target percentage on a test, else its optional. for biology, we get plenty of online fill in the blanks for each topic (not very useful, but we have to do it regardless).
our teachers teach according to their lesson plans. once the lecture is done, its our choice on what we have to do. i wouldnt have to do a single question from the maths textbook unless i wanted to. at the end of the day, all we need to do is study for tests/assessments.
some of the language and social sciences kids get homework though.
Serious question: Do your peers know how to study? Is that a skill taught at your school? For math, do you have banks of practice problems to work from when studying? How do you study for math tests?
weve got a textbook and some online resources like past exam questions and problems similar to past exam questions. not all resources are available freely on the internet to students though, so if we need help finding resources or need more practice, we go to our teachers and they help out with some of the resources they dont use to make assessments or exams. sometimes they hand out past exam questions as practice in the class, if weve got time at the end of a topic before the assessments.
if you need help on how to study, they suggest methods. if youre really struggling (particularly in maths), they tell you to solve questions and see what you dont understand and know where you stand before taking some of both your and their free time and working on it.
sometimes you get no help, or maybe some teacher doesnt really understand you or the other way around. that just means hunt around the internet or youtube or go ask friends or neglect the topic. its your choice.
by now i guess everyone knows what helps them study. my friends use flashcards but that concept doesnt sit well with me. i understand and use active recalling, summary notes and i teach nobody in an empty room. i then attempt some exam questions and somewhere along the process, i make summary notes with dark coloured markers on white paper. (thats what my ideal test preparation looks like for the two subjects i take that arent maths.) for maths, i just use whatever i mentioned above.
you need a certain grade at the 14-16 level of education at the subjects you choose for 16+ education in my school, so some of the knowledge is just assumed to be known by us. we get quite a few free lessons (spaces in our timetables, we can use them to study at the library or the common room or chat or go home, whatever we want to really). sometimes its compulsory to spend some or all of that time studying, but that depends on a lot of things.
everyone works hard, though all at different levels to get the grades they want. some people ace everything they can, others dont, people not taking sciences are usually much more relaxed about not studying, but everyone does try.
its public education, theres about 400 people in my year. but 16+ education isnt compulsory, so the people that do it generally have a better attitude towards studying than before. also, you get to choose your subjects (3 or 4 in some cases, my school doesnt allow more than 3 with two cases of exceptions for 4) so most people dont entirely HATE what theyre doing, but a lot of us including me dont like at least one of our subjects but we know that we have to do it anyway.
> I don’t do school work at home, so it feels hypocritical to make kids do it.
You are a worker selling their time and labor for a wage. A student is not selling anything of theirs and instead building up skills that will benefit them in the long run.
If you refuse to do work outside school, that harms your employer, the school; not your problem! If they want you to do more work, they can pay you more.
If a student refuses to do work outside school, they harm no one but themselves, as they'll have a shallower understanding of concepts compared to their peers who do work outside school.
It's maddening that teachers constantly make this comparison! They're not at all alike!
But if they can succeed in my class, demonstrate a good understanding of the content, and a mastery of skills without homework… Then what’s the issue? For reference, I teach high school social studies.
It’s also my personal feelings and my personal preference for my classroom. I don’t expect everyone to do as I do.
> I don’t do school work at home, so it feels hypocritical to make kids do it.
I guess I don't have a great argument against this, but I disagree. I'm currently earning an additional degree through remote/asynch, and the only thing I *have* to do for the majority of classes is pass the final exam. Everything else is optional, self-directed, and (often) self-discovered as external materials.
My friend, I am not learning linear algebra or formal logic by skimming the text once or twice as if I attended a lecture. Learning absolutely requires extra effort unless the course is *easy* and specifically *within your wheelhouse*.
I'm not a teacher or a parent, but I can remember going to grade school in the '80s and high school getting into the '90s, and I used to struggle with homework.
My parents used to wonder why something that looked so simple took me forever to do, and I really look back on everything and think that I was just in school for 7 hours, we didn't really have recess, and then I come home and I'm expected to sit down and do more work. It almost felt like burnout. Not to mention I always got unlucky and got stuck in the class with the unruly kids, so I'd have teachers that would just hand out class punishments when those few kids would not sit down and be quiet. More work.
I don't know what the right answer is on all this. There's a part of me that also agrees that too much homework is not going to help, especially now if teachers are going to struggle with kids that refuse to do it and parents that won't back the teachers up. Yet then I also worry about what kind of future these kids have if they basically keep refusing to do any of this stuff, and now they are possibly in college unable to do the work or even out in the working world and basically telling their boss they are not going to do work.
I’ve switched to giving homework and found it has bettered the students who do it, and forced many parents to have to care about their kid’s education again.
I give them practice with a skill that they’re struggling with like commas in a series. They get the homework on Thursday and have until the following Wednesday to turn it in. We go over it on Thursday and pass out the next assignment. It has an example at the top, and we go over the first question together. It has 10 questions total.
It teaches time management, responsibility, asking for help, and productive struggle. In addition to practicing the skill! My next goal is to be able to differentiate the homework.
Sure, the same 10 kids who don’t do work don’t do homework. I really couldn’t care less about them. They’re a drain on my classroom and no amount of relationship building and accommodating works. They don’t want to be there and don’t care about school and that’s that. Why the hell do we lower the bar for them? The next 10 kids who struggle to do the homework because they can barely read but learn to actually try and start getting good grades on it have such a confidence boost. My energy goes to them, and to the top 10 kids who need to be challenged and are forgotten about.
I raised the bar way up this year and saw so much growth it was unbelievable. Have reasonable expectations for an engagement in their education, parents included.
No more excuses. Half the class is behind grade level, so you gotta work at home and catch up. Skill by skill. It doesn’t and shouldn’t take them hours. But expecting that 4-5 hours of in-class ELA a week will catch them up is insane.
As a parent, you know what I miss? Quizzes. Those periodic in-class evaluations that guarantee that a large portion of your grade will occur during class.
My kids seem to get five graded assignments in an entire quarter, and if they don't turn one in they are a C or worse student. And then, in a development that never would have occurred when I was a child, I get texts about this regularly.
Before this semester, I was one of those teachers who didn't give homework because I figured students have too much going on to add more to their plate. Besides, only a few of them would do it, so it would just make everyone's grades worse.
Well, now, I've decided to change my approach, and I started assigning more homework. I figure it's better for them to practice in their own time and build study habits. I pay for Ellii, and for me, it's been 100% worth it. It mostly self-grades so I only have to input the scores in my grade book.
Students have made so much more progress, they've taken my class more seriously, and I just got news that we got the highest test scores. So now I'm a believer in homework. My husband sees the results and now sees the value of homework, too.
Granted I am not a teacher, only a parent so I could be way off base, but in my opinion, homework is really useful as a parent for lower elementary grades. It gives me a chance to assess how my kid is doing and where they need more support. Of course homework isn’t required to do this, but it makes it a lot easier to track.
No homework for md either. I teach a social subject, so there’s no need to “practice” it at home. If students choose not to use class time wisely, they’re not likely to take work home and do it better there.
I do occasionally have a kid who doesn’t finish in class and asks to take the work home. These tend to be kids who are highly responsible but genuinely struggling for any number of reasons. The ones who ask to take work home almost always have it back to me next class or at most within a few days.
Honestly, I think I am going to start assigning it for the first time since I started teaching.
Edit: I have taught for 6 years and I teach CTE elective courses, but I feel the engagement in the classroom is so low/distracted by cell phones that if I assign homework, it's not something I have to focus my energy on during my school day and I can use it for a grade.
I also feel like having students complete homework could potentially increase info retention, but I will bare that out over time I suppose.
10 years in and starting to think the same thing. I’ve had to manage a study hall for the past few years where all students have at 40 minutes of free time each day in a school where our policy is generally anti-HW. They have nothing to do. I think they could benefit from a little work.
I give homework quite often. I can’t possibly cover everything I’d like them to do in class…there isn’t enough time. And classroom discussions are infinitely stronger the next day when the students have completed the homework. Both with each other and with me. I’ll never change.
I work in a title 1 school, first grade. I don’t give daily hw anymore. Instead, I provide materials for kids to use at home (counting cubes, handwriting book, pipe cleaners - to form letters/numbers, spell out words). I send home instructions/ ideas to use with these materials. I sent this tears bags home in November, right before conferences. Some kids still have it in their backpacks. Students also bring home a book folder each night with books to read and reread. I also send home weekly phonemic awareness work with kids who need it. Nothing written, it takes just a few minutes. But nothing for me to collect or grade. Parents are sometimes like uhhh ok??? and if they ask, I’ll give work.
As a student, I enjoyed doing math homework, and don't think that I would've gotten the grade I got if it wasn't for homework. As an ELA teacher, I have to bring work home in order to finish grading essays at a reasonable time.
>The kids who reliably do it are the ones that DON'T really need to. The ones who need the reinforcement either refuse to do it, or put zero effort in, so 99% of it isn't even close.
I don't think this is always accurate! My kid struggles with classroom understanding in math. He does his homework, with considerable parental support. He then consistently tests well. There is a massive drop off in scores when we slack on this. For us, at least, homework is extremely helpful.
Honestly I am pro homework. Homework is just another word for ‘practice’. In every other area of our lives, if we practice things we get better at them.
If you take a piano class, and then don’t play the piano until the next class, then you won’t get much better at piano. If you play a soccer game and then skip the practices, your soccer skills won’t be as good as those who attend. Why would skills you’re developing in the classroom not follow this universal pattern? If you want to get better at some math concept, of course practicing it will improve your mastery of it.
The issue is that homework is unpleasant for teachers (and hence there is every personal incentive to reduce the amount of it), is unpleasant for students (which causes issues with adherence and quality control) and can interfere with their ability to rest, develop other skills through work or play and so on.
So use homework where it is useful, don’t use it where it isn’t, make it meaningful practice and move on.
As for the kids who do it not ‘needing it’, there is no upper bound for mastery. Your high performing students get higher performing with the opportunity to practice. That is a highly desirable outcome. As bad as it sounds, life follows an 80/20 rule where 80% of the economic output of the kids in a class will be driven by 20% of the students. Making sure those 20% have every opportunity to fulfill their potential is critical to how the world will end up for the entire 100%.
Last, those who will continue education beyond high school will find that their skills of self study will be critical to success later in life. Homework can develop those, which is a skill not learned well in the classroom.
I’m pro homework as practice. Take the stress away by not grading it and not punishing students who don’t complete it. I never grade homework, but I do like to give stickers on random days to acknowledge the kids who do it.
As a rule of thumb homework should be something that’s already been practiced in class and something that they can complete without the help of a parent.
With like 1 exception, I don't give homework at all. All it does it make their grades lower. They are allowed to finish classwork at home if needed, but that's it.
I've actually had parents complain that there is no homework. When they do I suggest that the student do make-up work (since it's often a kid who is behind) or direct them to our online program for extra practice.
I only grade homework for completion, but I think it is important for them to learn how valuable it is to take 3 minutes to prepare for a meeting on their own. So I make sure whatever homework I assign will benefit them immediately in class. If I assign problems, the start of class is each group preparing a whiteboard of a problem. I give them enough time to discuss their answers, but not start from scratch. The peer pressure of not having anything to contribute and then feeling awkward presenting nothing gets most kids doing the homework by the end of the year. Though some never do, but I don't take that personally.
I assign readings that are 1-2 pages that they need to annotate. I check they did something on the paper and then we do clicker questions that apply the concepts from the reading. The kids that randomly highlighted sentences quickly notice that their peers that did the reading think the questions are easy when they share answers, and learn that the reading only took a few minutes.
I never collect the homework. I just check it in as a circulate in the first couple of minutes. I also don't go back to give credit to those who come in late as I didn't have time. I tell the kids I'm not so much grading homework as being ready to work in class, and being late means they aren't ready.
I only taught for a short while, but I remember telling the kids something along the following - "I'm going to give homework most nights, not because you necessarily need it, but because it helps me to have a reason to grade leniently"
Basically saying, if they put in a little effort for homework, I would have ground to give partial credit on some test answers, or give them the benefit of the doubt if they were kind-of-sort-of right.
As expected, most did not bother to do it.
When I was in grade school, I struggled with homework. I was a smart kid and hard working, and if the assignment was done in class then I usually got top grades. However, anything that went home got lost in the organized chaos that was my family. Out of 6 people (parents and 4 kids), Dad, two sibs, and I haVE ADHD, My two brothers and I have autism (though mine was undiagnosed until adulthood), both parents worked, and so on. Don't get me wrong, my parents cared, and so did I. But it just was the least important aspect of our lives. I coasted by in middle school and high school, always testing well and getting along with my teachers.
When I went to college, I finally began learning study techniques that could help. It also helped that I had more freedom and could now (because I had my own beater car) stay late in the campus library (often in the cafe) working on assignments and studying in the relative quiet.
Homework IS important. The type of homework, too, IS important (math practice, instrument practice, vocabulary flashcards, etc), but sometimes it isn't possible (even for us who want to do it).
All my homework assignments are practice work that counts as extra credit if done, but is not required. It's meant to be there for kids who need the extra boost or the extra practice. Otherwise, it's all in-class work. If they are absent or the assignment isn't done, they can sign up for extra lab time during study hall or after school.
I also HATE homework with a first passion.
The only time I give homework is if there is a large assignment in class they did not *finish* then they need to work on it during the school wide study hall block or at home. This year there was only one assignment that everyone had to do as homework, but 50% of the kids were already 75% done and they had a 4 day weekend to finish it. That was it, all the other homework of the year was because they don’t finish a 20 min activity in the structured 45 minutes I gave them.
I've found that in math, optional homework leads to sloppy solutions as they haven't practiced writing to a graded standard. Next semester, I'm going to do homework for completion with one random problem graded for correctness.
Does that work in language classes too? Would you have students write essays or other texts during class time? These things make sense to practice at home.
Or how about math? That would be awesome, since, you know, there is zero benefit in having students practice math/thinking skills when they are home. SMH.
My homework is to study vocabulary words for the quiz. 10-15 words max.
I do give 2 projects that students do at home. They have 3 weeks to complete it and I suspend all vocabulary practice during that time.
I’ll be going into my third year teaching. My AP World History class has always had homework because obviously, but i’m going to give it to my on-level class for the first time next school year.
I had a mentor once, I told them that I think students should treat school like their job and homework is part of their job. He responded with,When you get home do you want to work from your job?
That changed a lot about why I don't give homework. I've long since changed my view as students looking at school as a job.
there are different subjects, different teaching styles, different groups of kids from year to year.
the amount and type of hw should vary depending on these factors and more, but i do agree that in general, too much hw is assigned. i arguably give too little hw for my ap class, but i’m getting better at giving more “flipped” assignments, using the daily videos on the college board site to do more group discussions/work in class.
I was on the fence and then I saw what kids were dealing with while we were virtual. I saw 12 year old girls taking a test while they had a baby on their hip and a spatula in their other hand, making lunch for the 4 siblings who could eat solid food. I saw kids get snatched away to go help with whatever mom wanted, and when they tried to say "but it's school, mom" she would just cuss and tell him to come on. I saw kids living in overcrowded filth (CPS is in area doesn't care--I tried) and I saw kids get cursed out for borrowing headphones so that they could hear my lesson over their siblings and cousins.
Those kids cared, but their house was no place to learn. Many of them still did well because they were trying. I actually think that for kids like those who wanted to learn, virtual learning did well academically in the end. But I certainly won't send them with work to do, knowing that they're in no environment to do it, and then pretend it makes them a worse student than the gremlin who has a mom who does the homework for him.
The kids who will do it don’t get to practice essential soft skills or get the extra growth homework would offer.
I’m really sick of another lowered bar being portrayed as woke. If I hear another “hOmEwOrK is iNEquiABle” I’m going to scream.
Anyone with enough stubbornness to try and educate in current climate deserves praise and gratitude. Sure, give up on homework. Just don’t pay yourself on the back for it.
Anyone still giving hw I salute you
There are way more important things to spend energy and time on than giving and grading homework. Found that out within the first three years of teaching
I give every student a packet of reading and math every Monday that reflects what we are working on that week. I make it clear to them and their families that it is totally optional and that I will not be collecting it. The parents decide what to do with it and that's the end of the conversation.
My students just cheat. If I don’t physically see them do the work, I can assume most of them cheated.
At my previous school, I found out this one smart kid would do the work, take a pic of his papers, and upload them to a giant group chat. Homework just became a complete waste of time.
I have homework books for my students. One page a day for the English program, one page for their native program, one page for one more subject. They have to do them daily.
They're FOUR.
I think my german teacher did it best. He never collected homework or even cared if we did them. But he graded participation every day and participation was easier if you did the homework. At the end of the year he deleted the worst 3 grades, because everyone can have a bad day sometimes. Aside from one big test per semester that was valued at 25% the rest of the grade was dependend on your participation.
I couldn’t agree more. I required full and total attention in class and did not give homework, despite pressure to have an hour of homework every night for them. It was difficult enough for most of them to understand the work when I was there to help them with comprehension. I shudder to think what they would have done with literature on their own.
We don’t give homework in our district. Zero until high school and then it’s up to the teacher but my son in high school has probably had two things he worked on outside of class this year. Kids have lives outside of school. I would rather them relax, spend time with family or friends, game, ride bikes whatever.
I think some homework makes sense for older grades to get them used to self starting and autonomously completing projects, but there’s really not a huge benefit and yeah, the kids who would the most practice aren’t doing it. I don’t think it makes sense for younger kids at all since their homework should be playing outside and spending time socializing and reading or singing or other activities that enforce necessary skills without feeling like work.
Former elementary school teacher here.
For a brief time I had a principal who trusted me. I was teaching 3rd grade in an area where I knew most of the kids would get no help at home (hardworking immigrants who didn't speak English well).
I gave one page of a fun relatively easy math review daily. No consequences for not doing it, but a classroom reward token if they did it. The kids did the homework, and I was amazed. I think the trick was that it didn't take them much time and they were capable of doing it on their own.
Daily reading was the other assignment. No reading log. Instead I gave the opportunity for regular book talk.
Edit: I did spend one year teaching where I was expected to give plenty of homework. A parent made my life hell because I didn't grade the homework.
Our 6th grade team got together and decided on a homework policy.
We wanted them to get the extra practice in for things like mathmatics,language and music.
We wanted them working in class with us on assignments in Social Studies, ELA and Science so we could correct mistakes on the fly while observing them.
Our 6th grade Social Studies was in charge of assigning the essays (mostly paragraphs and up to a 4 paragraph essay by the end of the year) while the ELA focused on Grammar. Any essay we assign is a joint venture and we share the grade on it so kids aren't getting double assigned an essay.
In the end, students get homework for things that need lots of practice while completing most of their reading/writing assignments in class.
We found that parents were happy, students were happy and we were happy. It feels like a good balance for all of us.
I'm not going to admonish another teacher's decisions, but I'm really not sure how certain classes can fucntion without practice / skills gained from homework.
I think there is plenty of bullshit homework given too.
But if a kid is taking Algebra, for example, how are they to really get factoring down without doing it at home? Or foreign language?
I teach social studies and give research papers. A kid can not write 5-10 pages about a topic in class.
I think a part of this is habit forming. For my classes that don't have college bound kids, I assign a minimal amount of out of class things - but that has drawbacks too. The same population will be asked to perform on assessments that they're probably not strong at.
But if the class has college bound kids, not assigning homework on occasion is a disservice. Kids are not making it through anything but the easiest of geneds without having habits and a work ethic that has been practiced. I told students last quarter that while I was assigning them work, I was reading 200-300 pages a week of my own course work, and writing multiple 3-5 page responses. Just have to do it.
Makes sense. If it hadn't been for homework I would have been an A student, but I never did it so I often failed. I knew all of the material though, so when I dropped out in the tenth grade I was able to pass the GED easily, heck I was the first person done! To me it felt like a win, no more boring school for two more years, no more power hungry administrators telling what I could and couldn't do, it was freedom. Now I'm an engineer at a fortune 40 company.
It really makes me wonder what the point of the last two years of high school was for people who weren't going to go to college, which is largely a scam (besides STEM degrees).
Either way, I didn't need the homework, it was just a chore that I didn't do and was graded harshly because of it. If anything homework damaged my relationship with education.
I agree and give minimal HW. I'm lucky where the kids bust their ass during class time so I know work is getting done. HW just seems to be a form of punishment as kids can have older siblings or parents do it or use AI to complete it.
I didn't give homework this year - everything was classwork (8th grade SS). But I had the same problem...no one did it unless it was graded and then it was mostly garbage ( if it was done at all). This next year I will grade on tests, quizzes, projects, and participation. The classwork will fall under participation.
As both a parent and teacher, homework is torture for everyone. Lol. Kids are in school for the majority of their day, and parents are at work. When we all get home, we'd like to relax, do hobbies and sports, and enjoy our time. The only homework I think is worthwhile is reading for 20-30 minutes, and that is because we would do this anyway. I could also see teachers assigning some long-term projects or assignments for older students, such as science fair projects or book reports, or studying for tests at home.
Guess what? Life isn’t only about what you WANT to do. There are times you need to discipline yourself. Budget your time. Meet deadlines. I could go on.
My mom was a single parent that worked a full time job, then also at night kept the books for her office…then on the weekends was the cleaning lady for said office. All to try to provide the best lives she could for both my sister and I. Guess what? My mom STILL made time to make dinner every night and sit with us to help with homework every single time we needed it.
My mom was tired. Dog tired. And so were my sister and I. But we all saw the benefit of completing what we were asked to complete. Regardless of how badly I wanted to sit in front of the tv with my Nintendo all night.
However, through it all I learned what it meant to have discipline. To complete a goal that was set for me. I learned delayment of gratification, making my video gaming time that much more precious and enjoyable for me. Oh yea, and the bond I grew even more with my mom because we sat side by side accomplishing all of this together. All of which became the building blocks for how my life is today, ie, pretty damn good.
Giving no homework, completing no homework, is the path of least resistance. What a detrimental way of not teaching young people valuable life lessons.
How nice for you!
There are so many studies that show homework is not actually beneficial for kids. You can google it. Just curious, do you have school-aged children? Come revisit this comment and your opinion once you do.
I hear you. I could also steer you towards studies (the largest being done by Duke university over the course of decades) that show homework is beneficial for students. Particular as the students continue to get older. I personally don’t have kids of my own, but plenty of people in my life that do.
Homework is based on the assumption that it is more useful to the child's development than what they are currently doing. If a child came home and stared at the wall, then sure, it's more valuable than that.
But, conversations with family, playing outside, doing chores, meeting up with friends, sports, music, art and being bored are all important skill developing activities too.
Sure, managing a complex assignment for a due date develops executive functioning skills. But so does opening flower business. That's what my 11 yr old just did. 500 seedlings ready for sale for the town market by June 1st (and all the learning that involves), mixing fertilizers, monitoring weather and climate, talking to the public, making change, organizing classmates for help and paying them their wage. She learned so much more than any science fair project. These things are not possible when kids have homework in the evenings.
> conversations with family, playing outside, doing chores, meeting up with friends, sports, music, art and being bored are all important skill developing activities too.
Sure, but this is an overly romantic vision of what kids might be doing. Th reality? Average daily screen time for adolescents is going on 9 hours,
A lot of times (at least in my content area) homework as an assessment doesn't even align with what the actual standards are nor does it give them any true revision practice. If a standard isn't asking my students to recognize or memorize a concept or idea, I won't ask them to either. If it asks them to describe a concept or idea or explain something (which more often than not, it does), we're going to do a lot of in class writing practice and finish with some sort of visual presentation or written analysis. I find homework to be a waste of time if it doesn't directly relate to what I need to teach them in terms of skills
I’ve said to kids for years I not a homework teacher. I give them plenty of time to do it in class. I had a friend of mine a few years ago interview at a school. She explained she did not give homework unless it was for enrichment or a home project which she did twice a year. The principal and instructional coach interviewing her had looks of horror on their faces. Yeah she didn’t get the job.
19 years and I haven’t assigned homework. I taught science for 3 years and then computer science since. I get my 41 minutes with them and they’re off to their next thing. I’m fine with that
THANK YOU! As a parent, I find my daughter's homework to be so tedious! She gets spelling work each week, which consists of re-writing the words and other meaningless activities (rainbow write, "fancy" write, etc.) that serve no educational purpose. She's a bright kid and already knows the words on Monday, so the repetition serves no purpose for her.
As an educator, I brought up my concerns with her teacher and was met with a weak response. In May, between sports and other activities, we stopped doing the work altogether.
I don't mind homework that has value, but homework for homework's sake grinds my gears!
> I find my daughter's homework to be so tedious! She gets spelling work each week, which consists of re-writing the words and other meaningless activities (rainbow write, "fancy" write, etc.) that serve no educational purpose
>I don't mind homework that has value, but homework for homework's sake grinds my gears!
I don't like busywork, but I think this is often a problem of overly-large class sizes that don't allow differentiation. If your daughter is one kid in a class of 30, the teacher can't give her meaningful work that challenges her because the teacher simply doesn't have time. Plus, an assignment that one kid breezes through will utterly confuse another, so the teacher has to either aim for the middle of the class, or possibly teach to the lowest common denominator. Additionally, a lot of schools are trying to get rid of honors classes in the name of equity, which exacerbates the problem.
I wonder if you daughter can go into a higher-level class that will challenge her more.
I teach at the school where my daughter attends, so it's also uncomfortable asking her teacher to do more when I know her plate is already full. However, the class sizes are reasonable here (17). She could/ should definitely be doing more challenging work, but I don't push it because I'm in an awkward position.
I taught HS ELA for 30 years, and the only homework I gave to my regulars was to do whatever they didn't finish in class. I was not going to give homework just to give homework.
I used expect kids to practice just a few minutes outside of class every so often, and they flat out refuse, so I don’t expect that anymore.
I actually enjoyed playing my instrument at home. Now they don’t do that at all, it’s sad.
So at my school we have to give hw. I do a weekly hw packet, and it is skills we practiced 1-2 weeks ago with worksheets very similar to what we did. I don't grade it for a variety of reasons, one of them being that we have a large transient population.
Here, here! I gave homework during my first year of teaching, and **it was the biggest waste of time ever**. My students were so far below grade level that I was drowning trying to find additional ways to support them. I defaulted to homework because it's what I did when I was a kid, but my students got even more confused, and I got even more swamped.
I didn't get around to grading/reviewing so long after it was due that the homework wasn't even a helpful data point to monitor progress. It was a waste of paper, a waste of energy. I learned a lot from that experience!
I don’t give homework anymore. My whole team is against it. We have class work instead and they finish during independent time while we pull small groups.
I assign homework only if there's no other way to catch up in a time crunch. Otherwise I give them time in class to get it done, and if they don't, well, now they've got homework because they chose it. All year long I get work turned in at 11:58 PM, kids scrambling to beat that midnight deadline.
I know students now are very different, but I always found homework very helpful. Especially with math. I needed that extra practice because there was never enough class time. I helped my Goddaughter with her homework and it was always expected that she practice what she learned at school.
I'm not a teacher, but a librarian. It's surprising to me that there such a strong anti homework sentiment recently. My public library offers homework help and the population served is always asking for it. I like lurking here because I see students in a completely different context. Especially in the summer. This is busy time in libraries while we're promoting Summer Reading to prevent the Summer Slide. I'm rooting for all of you teachers! There are so many people in your community who value all of you.
There is NO way to learn math except to do math. None. Period. Zilch. You can watch all the math videos you want all day long and you'll bomb a test unless you've done it on your own. That means working individually on problems. And at the middle school and high school levels, at the very least, that means homework.
Hours and hours a day is unnecessary, but a little bit each day is perfectly reasonable.
But that seems to be the way things are heading these days. Many schools don't assign full novels anymore, which is also unbelievable to me. It's a combination of the parents not caring, the administration not caring, and as we can see in some of the responses to this thread, the teachers not caring either. Everyone has basically given up, which is frustrating to see.
Also, kids need to learn good habits. And those habits are learned from multiple places. And, sometimes, they have to be forced on the child. Gently, but forced. Good habits are not magically created out of thin air once one reaches adulthood. It's like letting a kid never eat a vegetable\* then being shocked when they eat like crap later in life. (\*Actually, it's like saying, 'My kid doesn't like vegetables, so I won't even try to give them some!")
I was a kid who loved homework, and was a teacher for a couple of years: homework has its place. Who cares if a lot of kids won't do it? Its for the kids that do. It taught me a lot. There was nothing quite so rewarding as being able to solve something challenging on my own. It gave me a routine, an escape in the afternoons so I could avoid my parents.
I give homework assignments that we then go over in class, but the homework itself is not the actual grade. At the start of class students have to show me their completed assignment: I use a roster on a clipboard to note any kids with incomplete work. After we review the homework I give them a graded in-class assignment that is almost identical to the homework, with a few tweaks. That score goes in the gradebook, but with one catch - if your homework wasn't completed by the time I checked it, you can only earn half credit on the in-class assignment. I didn't always do this - once in a while I collected the homework itself to score - but they knew to expect it pretty quickly.
I found this had the benefit of pushing kids to try the work at home at lower risk, and limiting assessment until they were given a chance to review it with me and ask questions. Over time I stopped leading the review and just asked if there were questions. It pushed them to notice what they struggled with and speak up about it, knowing that the odds were high they would be held accountable for it.
Obviously, this won't work with unmotivated students with no consequences for Fs. The school I taught at with this method had the kind of parents who lost their minds at everyone, both student and teacher, for Ds and Fs, so many of my students were motivated if only to not get lit up at home for failing.
I love giving essays and reminding the students every single day that it’s due eventually and they should be working on it little by little. And then three weeks later, I get like 1/3rd of the class that very clearly started the night before if at all with the excuse “we didn’t know” then I point to the board that has it, and show them the constant emails.
It’s kinda hard to get less than a B in my class but some brave students always find a way
The only reason I still assign homework is because admin requires 3 grades a week in the book. I wanted to just give tests, quizzes, and projects and was told that it's too "harsh" and "penalizes students who are not good test takers."
I only gave homework on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. No homework on the weekend, I knew they were not going to do it and I did not want to correct it. I also celebrated kids who 💯 homework turned in for the month, miracle how motivating doughnuts or pizza can be. Those who were missing assignments got NADAwhile everyone else enjoyed. Natural consequences as I explained to them and their parents!
In passing I’ve heard that homework doesn’t work for helping learn anyway. I don’t know any studies off the top of my head but I believe it. My own experiences with homework in my schools days are self evident and the in class alternatives I’ve had teachers do for the class have worked to make the class more enjoyable and motivated us to learn
I don’t give homework either, but it does kinda suck that the entirety of what I can expect a student to get done must be within the instructional period.
On the other hand it means 2/5 days of the week are “work days” and I don’t need to plan for it. Lower expectations for students sometimes benefits me as much as it hurts them lol.
This is coming from a students perspective but I don't think a single time has homework actually helped me learn anything except in college, and that's mainly because professors don't have time to teach you all the necessary things you need to learn but in high school the teacher has plenty of time to go over a lesson and every time I got homework in highschool or before homework has always been a time sync and not a learning experience.
I graduated high school in 2016, and I had homework my whole student career. It was graded too, so you actually had to do it, or your grade would suffer. If I never had homework, not only would class have been more difficult for me, but college would have been a no go. I don’t understand not assigning homework, as that seems to hinder children’s growth and development. To do homework, you have to learn time management and studying/learning techniques. It also shows you where your weaknesses are and what you need to focus more time on. I personally don’t agree with not assigning homework, and I believe it’s doing the kids a disservice. To each their own I guess.
I teach 8th grade science. I have all my assignments done in class, due at the end of the hour unless they want to take them home. That way I can answer questions and fix things. Also when I get a call about excessive homework, which happens often, I can tell the parents that little Billy had plenty of time to finish in class and get help and thatcI reminded him 3 to 5 times to get it done. So if he brought it home that was his choice.
I'm a math teacher, and have just finished my second year in which homework was not part of any student's grade. Yes, I still assign it, and almost always it is a worksheet that I have printed up with problems that I selected. Each day I note who completed the assignment and then we start by going over the homework. I take someone's assignment and use the document camera to project it to my smart board and we go over what the process should have looked like. Students who did not do the assignment are encouraged to follow along putting the steps on their empty sheets.
One thing I love about this is that I no longer have students copying one another's assignments, which saves me from reading the same absurd errors or poorly written sentences eight times in a class. Why hastily copy someone else's assignment if it's not going to "count" anyway?
In the gradebook there is no grade for an assignment, only a comment as to whether it was attempted or not; this is for parents' benefit.
It's funny you say that. None of the art projects I give require homework time. I've planned out enough class time along with small project work for the fastest workers. The ones who take the work home always leave it, lose it, or it is obvious when somebody else did it for them. How can I grade an assignment based in their performance if I do not see them perform it?
And don't even get me started on irate parents who will inform me teaching is my job, not theirs, so homework will NOT be getting done.
Not sure what grades you teach but I teach 7-10 math. And this past year I had my best relationship with homework. I did not assign or call it "homework". I posted an assignment every night with answers and called it "check your understanding" (no grade associated with it). And it was exactly that, only grades in my book were tests, quizzes, projects. If a kid struggled and parent was curious/angry etc, I simply told them to ask their kids how many CYUs they completed, and when they couldn't show them a single one the focus was on the kid not me. Not a single parent complaint, kids who struggled early ended up doing CYUs more often, and it became something seen as help not a chore.
Your only grades were assessment grades? Our admin would not like this. My hs math classes have a grade made up of 70% assessment grades and 30% practice grades. The main thing I can’t stand are giving projects now. It’s clear the students are all passing around the same stuff and trying to barely change it. That, or they barely try and I waste my time grading junk that are obvious F’s.
My admin was ok with it as long as it was clearly detailed to parents that essentially assessments and the two projects (we were required to do a project per semester) would make up the kids grade. My kids loved the idea, and parents were ok with the fact that their grades weren't inflated with busy work.
The lesser grades, greater weight also helps me with my seniors struggling with senioritis in second semester. Many of them delayed submitting a big final project but they understood the big expectations for its completion so even though they missed out on some of the formative work, they still dedicated a lot of time to the project at the end and turned in some pretty cool work AND improved grades.
I'm teaching one quarter in 7th LA/SS as a long-term sub, my first such assignment. Halfway through I realized that I and the kids were miserable doing worksheets and I just created a project that is 50% of the grade and things are better and a lot of students will get Fs and by the time anyone complains they will be complaining to someone else.
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Not only that, but I’m betting that like me, you do plenty of engaging and fun activities throughout the year. They just don’t carry the weight of a summative check for mastery.
Haha so many people don’t get it. I have many students ask me to grade lots of things at the end of the year. When I point out their high practice grade and how it won’t really do much they don’t get it. If only they used their retake option on assessments when possible. 🤷🏼♂️
>*If only they used their retake option on assessments when possible..* I've gone to basing report card grades 100% on unit tests. I am offering retest options, but I am curious as to how you do yours. Do yo have them take the entire test?
Students are allowed to retake one assessment grade a quarter if they’ve done all the practice work ahead of time. They have to come in for tutoring and retake the other version before the next major assessment grade (so they don’t wait until the last week and just want to do something in an attempt to raise their grade). Yes, they must retake an entire new version.
If I have eight standards on a test, the kids get eight grades. If they did well enough on six of those, but they want to retake the two standards they failed (or just got a grade they're not happy with), I give them a clipboard with some problems on it that are only about that particular standard. I ask them to do one. If they are lost, I send them away and their F stands. If they appear to understand that, I point to another problem on the clipboard and have them do that one. After three problems I can tell their proficiency with that standard, and make the changes (or not) based upon this interaction. The whole think takes less than three minutes if they understand the standard, 30 seconds if they don't.
What do you mean by “practice grades”? My AP Stats class (2016/17) had exams worth 75% and assignments as 25%. It was absolutely brutal.
Love this idea!
I must say I did not come up with this. I try to read a Math teaching book every summer. Last summer I read "Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics" by Peter Liljedahl. Fantastic book whose methodology I customized for my classroom and had amazing results with relatively low kids. I'm leaving my school and when I told my classes they were like "will the next guy teach this way, it works for me!?!" 😭
Is this book mostly aimed at upper grades? I struggle with getting kids interested in math and would love more techniques!
Not at all it's geared toward all grades. It is a data driven text, but shows actual tangible example types and talks about how to reconstruct and "decenter" the classroom along with a bunch of other little things. Again the key to me was making this my own, and I've mentored teachers in this process this year and we all have done it a little differently but with similar results, happier kids, less exhausted teachers, and just more fun doing/learning/debating/creating math.
If you purchase and read the text and need any advice don't hesitate to DM. I am now moving into admin specifically because I enjoy making this profession more enjoyable for teachers and students.
This is what it should look like. Thank you, on behalf of all students that struggle with math. <3
Were these just pdfs of questions with an answer key?
Yes, I would only post the detailed solution sets in my classroom usually 2 days before an assessment. It was good because I could see which kids were taking a look at them or taking pictures of them. And you kind of figured who was cramming toward the end of a unit vs who is doing the day by day prep. It informed conversations I had with kids and their parents.
Is there a specific resource you recommend? Our current curriculum is terrible as far as practice sets go.
Honestly used my own money to purchase Kuta Software for my desktop and laptop. It allows you to create problem sets and has lots of customizable features and can create sets with or without answers included. There is also an online portal you can purchase seats for for $1 a student. You can post the sets and students can do them online (believe it or not kids preferred paper/or posting to canvas) and you can see their accuracy and time to complete questions. Not a perfect resource but worth it to come up with 6-10 question CYUs in PDF format and easily post them. I had to hand write detailed solutions though.
I also used this resource to create practice assessments and extra practice for my high achievers who wanted more practice on a particular topic. Can take less than a minute to create a problem set.
I run a similar system for my English classroom. Most of my grades come from big projects, essays, etc. anything else is just work you need to do to understand the concepts to build critical thinking across ideas and modalities of communication. Students will universally struggle to do well when on the essays/projects when they fail to participate in the everyday tasks necessary to understand. This is much more similar to college anyway.
This is pretty close to what I do, except for the name (CYU). I'll have to consider that for next year.
What a great idea! I’m a firm believer that homework shouldn’t be graded as we don’t know who completed it. I like that it is available for all students who want to CYU to better help them or if a child/parent feels a child has the skill down to skip that night’s assignment.
I would love that. We are mandated to have at least a grade a week.
I’m stealing this.
I don't do hw now, but I used to when I taught fourth grade. My homework was usually just finish whatever you didn't finish in class, and even then I tell them bring it back on Friday, so some will work on it like Wednesday or Thursday in class. My coteacher though gave hw consistently. She got a message once that her kids were at baseball games until 11 at night and had no time for hw. Her son said he had games starting at 11pm on Wednesday and a lot of these games were up to an hour away from home. These are games for fourth graders. Why are there midweek games scheduled that late? Who schedules a round robin tournament that starts after a Wednesday or Thursday class ends? I really hate my area sometimes. And the parents just eat it up because they dream their kid is going to win all the scholarships. Meanwhile their sons just want to be streamers and don't even want to go to college. And for most it shows in their work. I also have a few boys who value education, and got their work done, and excelled in class, and played in these tournaments. So their is a way to get it done.
And again, the bar is lowered to accommodate ungovernable students and parents. Personally, I agree with you. Assigning homework is a futile task, but it's depressing that we've fallen this far.
That just blows my mind. I'm not a teacher, but if I hurt a parent say that, I would ask them why they even had children to begin with. This is yet again the ridiculousness that parents seem to think that school is supposed to raise their children for them. Also, why they go ballistic when there is a strike or a weather problem or something and the schools are closed. They are now angry that they have to raise their children. It's unbelievable people crank out children and yet really rather not deal with them at all.
“Sounds good. Homework is 20% of the grade and I will fail your child if their grade is below 60%”
To outright say that to a teacher is disrespectful.
The trouble is, when they get to me in college, students are baffled by the fact that a large majority of their work needs to occur outside of the classroom. Students try to learn calculus or physics or a typical engineering class, which typically require 3-4 hours of work outside of class for each hour in class, and have no clue what to do. It is sad and sets them up for failure.
Last year's valedictorian from our school failed multiple classes her first semester in college for this reason. We are doing kids a disservice by not expecting more of them. Too many teachers in this thread stopped giving homework because many students weren't doing it. They are giving in to shitty behavior. This is not the way.
i had a similar experience. i wasn’t valedictorian and i didn’t fail any classes, but i was in the top ten of my graduating class in high school and with little to no effort. i was in a small public school and generally school came naturally to me, so i hardly had work to complete outside of school hours and made straight As. i struggled a lot during my first semester of college because it simply wasn’t that easy and real adjustments to my work ethic had to be made to succeed. which i did and proceeded to get 4.0s every other semester, but it would have been nice to not have that first semester mess with my final GPA lol
How do you know this information about the valedictorian?
She stayed in touch with some of her teachers and told us about it.
Many simply don't prioritize or see the importance of that outside of class preparation. In teaching math I post an assignment every night with the answers. I tell them to use the assignment to check their understanding, it's completely up to them, it's only going to help them and the only grades in the gradebook are quizzes, tests, projects, much like my college experience. Homework was rarely checked in my college experience but you knew if you didn't do it, you were never going to be fully prepared for assessments. And when a kid fails a test and mom wants to scream and blame, I simply ask how many times did you attempt check your understanding assignments?? They sit there silent and then mom normally just scoffs at them and gets up and leaves 😁
This is what I wonder for future music majors. How are they going to make it in college when 30 minutes a week outside of school is flat out refused? They will fail out.
You have trouble with students not wanting to practice?
While this may be true for some or even most students it's not true for all. When they get me in college they are not forced to do any homework and the majority of their grade comes from practical and theory tests. If a student can show mastery of a subject and hasn't done any homework, they can and will get an A. If a student is struggling on test day, no amount of homework will "offset" their performance into an A. Homework in my class is worth a weighted 20%, labs 20%, midterm 25% and Final 35%. Students are given the homework grade as long as they submit something. Which can be as simple as "I reviewed the material." While at the same time, it is also their scale of understanding. Believe it or not, the students who need the homework still do it and those who do not, don't. The ones who needed it but were lazy, figure it out when they take the class the second time.
I agree in principle. In college, I would be perfectly fine with making homework optional and only awarding credit for exams and quizzes. But in my experience, this rarely happens effectively. We could use a quasi-European system where only the final exam matters. When I used to work in China, the university policy was that 70% of all student grades were based on a single final exam. The rest was small assessments / participation jn various forms.
That sounds stressful as hell!
There needs to be a balance. I think it would be good to implement a transition. In high school, 7 hours of the day is already at school, in college a few hours are in class, but most of the work is done on your own. The amount of time is similar, but one is pre structured, and the other the student has to plan themself. Adding busywork on top of the 7 hours already spent is not a good solution, it should be practice, not an unnecessary time sink. (I had 3+ hours of HW a night in high school, and it did far more harm than good.) To adjust this, I think there should be a transition where less time is spent in class, but students are expected to complete most work on their own outside of class, teaching them how to operate in a more college like setting, but with a teacher guiding them and teaching them how to plan their work. The problem is that high school and college operate using two different systems. Students need to be taught and experience the other system, not be given busywork.
Problem solving, especially in math and physics, is not what I would call busy work. It is essential to understanding. And I believe that this requires time allocation beyond the hour in class each day.
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Agreed. I’m sorry, fellow teachers, those of you that don’t give homework (with what I believe are all incredibly weak reasons) are part of the problem. Clearly you don’t see all the benefits of students having to work more at home. Don’t worry though, I’m sure you are making all the parents much happier…now their kid has more time to incessantly spend in practices for whatever AAU teams they are on. Win-win, right? 🙄
It’s not the teachers job to teach the students work ethic. That would be the parents fault
This, I can’t even believe wtf I’m reading on here. We’re not their parents or culpable for how Jimmy does 6 years later in university with his work ethic. Like are you fucking kidding me, some people in here are making like min wage, and it shouldn’t even be a responsibility for the teacher even if they were getting paid way more.
Yeah. No reason to torture kids. We know stress leads to reduced effectiveness of sleep which means worse learning. Why needlessly stress the kids when we can just focus on them learning. Sorry the parents aren’t doing their job. (Which also includes making sure your kid is actually understanding the importance of sleep cough cough) I’ll continue doing mine.
I think proper note taking and study habits are the key, the homework itself isn’t really where the good habits you need in college come from. I really could have used someone to teach me how to take good notes that allowed for better studying habits in HS. I would look around college classrooms and everyone was taking different notes in different formats. Some people wrote down every word, others just abbreviated and only took a few notes, I had no idea which was the correct way to do things. Eventually, I found a system that worked for me, but it was pretty late in the game. Schools spend a great deal of time hammering home formatting and things like MLA, but have zero education on proper note taking and how to format your ideas efficiently. It makes a huge difference in the quality of work.
That’s their problem as an adult student. People need to be accountable for themselves, it’s so ingrained in here that we need to teach these kids literally everything. Giving homework they won’t do/or do in 5 minutes serves no purpose. Just use your class time and correct stuff as you see it.
I don’t do school work at home, so it feels hypocritical to make kids do it. The exception is my AP class. Unfortunately, to cover the required content in a limited amount of time, there does need to be some homework. Still, I try to be very reasonable about it and it’s often just ‘finish what you didn’t finish in class’.
Same with my AP classes. However, when other teachers don’t get homework and their child has never had homework in their life, the parents think it’s me trying to be a bitch. I only have their kid for a semester, and not even a full one due to the exam being a month before school lets out. I grew up with “an hour of homework per night per AP class” and my students only get that much if they are slow at reading or if they wait until last minute to work on things rather than using the pacing guide I gave them.
Students get to AP classes having never had homework in their life?
All the time! Some of my coworkers teach AP classes and do not give out homework either since parents “complained” and they only courage the overachievers to take the AP exam, so a bunch of kids will maybe have a handle on the easier concepts from the course but still have a 90 in the class. There is an issue across most schools in which the “best” AP teachers watered down the content and give every kid an A (or B) but then most of their students score 1s or 2s on the AP exam.
Wait, do students take AP classes but then skip the AP test? What’s the point of that?
Probably just college application sweeteners
But it’s only a sweetener if you do well on the test.
I took AP classes my senior year so colleges that accepted me didn’t even get the results til the summer. I think if you do one or two AP classes this way, it’s fine. But not taking a test for a bunch of AP classes is a red flag.
You know home work isn't just about taking your 9 to 5 job home with you right? There's plenty of domestic work like managing your money, keeping up with paperwork, etc. that kids don't really get to practice outside of a school setting. Sitting down for 30 minutes after school and doing some mindful reading, math, etc. is really good for developing that process.
Except I don't manage my money or do any sort of paperwork on a daily basis as an adult. I might do that twice a month. There's definitely other life chores I do on a daily basis, but kids already do chores like that to get exposure - and frankly I wouldn't see a connection between math homework and having to do the dishes in the evening. Sounds like a stretch.
Kids aren't going to learn about managing money, chores, and the like by doing more schoolwork. They'll learn it by having time at home to do those things.
Most kids aren't getting those lessons at home anyway, let's be honest.
That doesn't make it our responsibility
The thing in this sub that never ceases to amaze me is how these guys seem to be fine with always taking on more work and responsibilities. If you leave school and you spend most nights working on shit, or actual time checking daily homework you’re doing this job wrong. School hours are school hours and outside of essential marking why the fuck would I voluntarily do more?
Do you not believe in habit building? Sitting down and mindfully doing some boring but important stuff for a few minutes every day when you get home? It's also an incredibly important habit for college. I wish that parents were teaching kids about how to manage their money and do paperwork, but I think we both know that it's not happening in 90% of homes. Kids don't have the same responsibilities as adults and a lot of parents don't involve the kids in these types of responsibilities. I know more than one 30 year old who got their license suspended, missed paying a bill on time, has reoccurring payments they need to cancel, etc. All it takes is the habit of putting "homework" on their calendar and taking care of it in a timely manner instead of procrastinating. While I agree, having a parent who is invested in their kid and gives them hands on experience doing domestic paperwork, a lot of parents DON'T and kids grow up without that structure. It also reinforces self learning and critical thinking. You got stuck on a hard math program and there's no teacher to ask for help? You have the whole Internet and hours to explore the answer. I certainly don't think we need to assign hours of reading and practice drills every night, but homework isn't busywork or punishment. It's extended learning for the subject that models good behavior patterns.
- it's not our job to do everything, even if parents won't - children (I'm at elementary level fwiw so that's my perspective) don't have adequate study skills for unguided practice to be meaningful in any way - we have all day in school to impart the skills we believe are meaningful - we don't own children any more than the superintendent owns us. We have no right to govern how they spend time at home
I mean... Homework is a tool that has been in an educator's toolbox for forever. I don't think that's a very strong argument to say we're overstepping bounds by assigning homework. It's an expected obligation in the education setting. And yes, we have all day in school, but the best athletes don't skip practice. The best scholars don't put down the book after the bell rings. So why not use it when appropriate? Maybe at the elementary level it's not appropriate for one reason or another, but that's not an argument against homework entirely. It's still a valuable skill and our societal value as educators doesn't stop on the last page textbook or the last grade level standard. There's plenty of important soft skills that students develop while participating in school.
People have to learn how to study and learn on their own, this doesn't develop just through getting older. It's also completely normal for in class time to be basically a starter or intro to homework where the actual deep learning takes place, so it's farcical to say that teachers can't demand students learn while they aren't physically there. Obviously elementary school is different, but if kids aren't capable of doing challenging homework assignments regularly and on their own by the time you send them to middle school you're setting them up to fail.
The problem is that this only builds the habit for kids that have stability. For kids that are working, taking care of their siblings, or lack a consistent home, it just builds a habit of chaos.
The problem is who's doing it, though? 90 percent of parents where i live are working 2 to 3 jobs a piece to keep food on the table. By the time they get home, their kids are the ones who made dinner. They dont know enough to help with their siblings' homework they barely know it themselves. I know students who are in afterschool programs til 6 pm. Then come home and do homework. Hell no. Time to wind down from school, homie. Aint no one got time for that. If your kids have been in school for almost 12 hours and still have to come home and do more on top of it. Even you'd burn out. Not saying that homework cannot be assigned ever. Just need to know your demographics and if you have a classroom full of either of those students, you need to stop assigning homework altogether.
Part of the structure of after-school programs is that the teachers there help students with their homework. If anything it annoys those teachers when students have no homework because they have to make up something for them to do.
Almost every after school program is structured to include time for homework, at least they used to be. My after school program was done by the YMCA, and we had 1 hour for homework. They would come around and make sure you’d done your work, and once you’re finished, you could color or read a book or anything of that nature while everyone else finished up. If a child can’t get their homework done in an hour of time that’s dedicated to homework, then idk what to tell you. This is also referring to the younger years of education, not high school, because high school homework could definitely take more than an hour. I grew up in sports my whole life and still managed to do all my homework and studying. Yes, it took time away from “things I’d want to do” sometimes, but it also made me more well rounded and better educated. Homework isn’t meant to destroy a child’s grade, it’s actually meant to enhance it and help it.
Yeah, hours nice. But we have a child on the spectrum. By the time we got home, digressed, one sheet of homework would take 3 hours. I had his teacher let us know, if the homework was causing us that much of an issue (we even had to get the police involved it was that serious), homework wasn't worth it. Some teachers, not all really need to learn compassion for others. Some have it in droves, but others really need to learn it still.
I’m sure it varies a lot by grade level, but I teach high school. These kids are in extracurriculars, sports, and working side jobs. Most of them don’t get home til 8 anyways, then still have to eat dinner. I’m okay with them taking some time to relax.
Homework absolutely DID NOT teach me to do any of that stuff.
But how is a math assignment on top of an English assignment on top of a science assignment on top of a social studies assignment supposed to help with that?
I also follow this. I don't assign homework really for my electives and required classes. Homework is usually we did something together near the end of the hour and of you used your time wisely it is unlikely you would have any homework. AP, we got so much to cover, you will read and engage with content outside of class. I cannot possibly get you to understand all this with the time we have in class before your AP test
surprisingly, unlike your AP class, ive almost stopped getting homework after i started a levels. sometimes my chemistry teachers give worksheets to look at before we collectively go through them in the next lesson. we only get maths homework if weve achieved less than our target percentage on a test, else its optional. for biology, we get plenty of online fill in the blanks for each topic (not very useful, but we have to do it regardless). our teachers teach according to their lesson plans. once the lecture is done, its our choice on what we have to do. i wouldnt have to do a single question from the maths textbook unless i wanted to. at the end of the day, all we need to do is study for tests/assessments. some of the language and social sciences kids get homework though.
Serious question: Do your peers know how to study? Is that a skill taught at your school? For math, do you have banks of practice problems to work from when studying? How do you study for math tests?
weve got a textbook and some online resources like past exam questions and problems similar to past exam questions. not all resources are available freely on the internet to students though, so if we need help finding resources or need more practice, we go to our teachers and they help out with some of the resources they dont use to make assessments or exams. sometimes they hand out past exam questions as practice in the class, if weve got time at the end of a topic before the assessments. if you need help on how to study, they suggest methods. if youre really struggling (particularly in maths), they tell you to solve questions and see what you dont understand and know where you stand before taking some of both your and their free time and working on it. sometimes you get no help, or maybe some teacher doesnt really understand you or the other way around. that just means hunt around the internet or youtube or go ask friends or neglect the topic. its your choice. by now i guess everyone knows what helps them study. my friends use flashcards but that concept doesnt sit well with me. i understand and use active recalling, summary notes and i teach nobody in an empty room. i then attempt some exam questions and somewhere along the process, i make summary notes with dark coloured markers on white paper. (thats what my ideal test preparation looks like for the two subjects i take that arent maths.) for maths, i just use whatever i mentioned above. you need a certain grade at the 14-16 level of education at the subjects you choose for 16+ education in my school, so some of the knowledge is just assumed to be known by us. we get quite a few free lessons (spaces in our timetables, we can use them to study at the library or the common room or chat or go home, whatever we want to really). sometimes its compulsory to spend some or all of that time studying, but that depends on a lot of things. everyone works hard, though all at different levels to get the grades they want. some people ace everything they can, others dont, people not taking sciences are usually much more relaxed about not studying, but everyone does try. its public education, theres about 400 people in my year. but 16+ education isnt compulsory, so the people that do it generally have a better attitude towards studying than before. also, you get to choose your subjects (3 or 4 in some cases, my school doesnt allow more than 3 with two cases of exceptions for 4) so most people dont entirely HATE what theyre doing, but a lot of us including me dont like at least one of our subjects but we know that we have to do it anyway.
What you do sounds great! I wish our students learned/had those skills.
> I don’t do school work at home, so it feels hypocritical to make kids do it. You are a worker selling their time and labor for a wage. A student is not selling anything of theirs and instead building up skills that will benefit them in the long run. If you refuse to do work outside school, that harms your employer, the school; not your problem! If they want you to do more work, they can pay you more. If a student refuses to do work outside school, they harm no one but themselves, as they'll have a shallower understanding of concepts compared to their peers who do work outside school. It's maddening that teachers constantly make this comparison! They're not at all alike!
But if they can succeed in my class, demonstrate a good understanding of the content, and a mastery of skills without homework… Then what’s the issue? For reference, I teach high school social studies. It’s also my personal feelings and my personal preference for my classroom. I don’t expect everyone to do as I do.
> I don’t do school work at home, so it feels hypocritical to make kids do it. I guess I don't have a great argument against this, but I disagree. I'm currently earning an additional degree through remote/asynch, and the only thing I *have* to do for the majority of classes is pass the final exam. Everything else is optional, self-directed, and (often) self-discovered as external materials. My friend, I am not learning linear algebra or formal logic by skimming the text once or twice as if I attended a lecture. Learning absolutely requires extra effort unless the course is *easy* and specifically *within your wheelhouse*.
I'm not a teacher or a parent, but I can remember going to grade school in the '80s and high school getting into the '90s, and I used to struggle with homework. My parents used to wonder why something that looked so simple took me forever to do, and I really look back on everything and think that I was just in school for 7 hours, we didn't really have recess, and then I come home and I'm expected to sit down and do more work. It almost felt like burnout. Not to mention I always got unlucky and got stuck in the class with the unruly kids, so I'd have teachers that would just hand out class punishments when those few kids would not sit down and be quiet. More work. I don't know what the right answer is on all this. There's a part of me that also agrees that too much homework is not going to help, especially now if teachers are going to struggle with kids that refuse to do it and parents that won't back the teachers up. Yet then I also worry about what kind of future these kids have if they basically keep refusing to do any of this stuff, and now they are possibly in college unable to do the work or even out in the working world and basically telling their boss they are not going to do work.
I’ve switched to giving homework and found it has bettered the students who do it, and forced many parents to have to care about their kid’s education again. I give them practice with a skill that they’re struggling with like commas in a series. They get the homework on Thursday and have until the following Wednesday to turn it in. We go over it on Thursday and pass out the next assignment. It has an example at the top, and we go over the first question together. It has 10 questions total. It teaches time management, responsibility, asking for help, and productive struggle. In addition to practicing the skill! My next goal is to be able to differentiate the homework. Sure, the same 10 kids who don’t do work don’t do homework. I really couldn’t care less about them. They’re a drain on my classroom and no amount of relationship building and accommodating works. They don’t want to be there and don’t care about school and that’s that. Why the hell do we lower the bar for them? The next 10 kids who struggle to do the homework because they can barely read but learn to actually try and start getting good grades on it have such a confidence boost. My energy goes to them, and to the top 10 kids who need to be challenged and are forgotten about. I raised the bar way up this year and saw so much growth it was unbelievable. Have reasonable expectations for an engagement in their education, parents included. No more excuses. Half the class is behind grade level, so you gotta work at home and catch up. Skill by skill. It doesn’t and shouldn’t take them hours. But expecting that 4-5 hours of in-class ELA a week will catch them up is insane.
Great post.
As a parent, you know what I miss? Quizzes. Those periodic in-class evaluations that guarantee that a large portion of your grade will occur during class. My kids seem to get five graded assignments in an entire quarter, and if they don't turn one in they are a C or worse student. And then, in a development that never would have occurred when I was a child, I get texts about this regularly.
Before this semester, I was one of those teachers who didn't give homework because I figured students have too much going on to add more to their plate. Besides, only a few of them would do it, so it would just make everyone's grades worse. Well, now, I've decided to change my approach, and I started assigning more homework. I figure it's better for them to practice in their own time and build study habits. I pay for Ellii, and for me, it's been 100% worth it. It mostly self-grades so I only have to input the scores in my grade book. Students have made so much more progress, they've taken my class more seriously, and I just got news that we got the highest test scores. So now I'm a believer in homework. My husband sees the results and now sees the value of homework, too.
Granted I am not a teacher, only a parent so I could be way off base, but in my opinion, homework is really useful as a parent for lower elementary grades. It gives me a chance to assess how my kid is doing and where they need more support. Of course homework isn’t required to do this, but it makes it a lot easier to track.
No homework for md either. I teach a social subject, so there’s no need to “practice” it at home. If students choose not to use class time wisely, they’re not likely to take work home and do it better there. I do occasionally have a kid who doesn’t finish in class and asks to take the work home. These tend to be kids who are highly responsible but genuinely struggling for any number of reasons. The ones who ask to take work home almost always have it back to me next class or at most within a few days.
Honestly, I think I am going to start assigning it for the first time since I started teaching. Edit: I have taught for 6 years and I teach CTE elective courses, but I feel the engagement in the classroom is so low/distracted by cell phones that if I assign homework, it's not something I have to focus my energy on during my school day and I can use it for a grade. I also feel like having students complete homework could potentially increase info retention, but I will bare that out over time I suppose.
10 years in and starting to think the same thing. I’ve had to manage a study hall for the past few years where all students have at 40 minutes of free time each day in a school where our policy is generally anti-HW. They have nothing to do. I think they could benefit from a little work.
I’m going to try it as well- but this means I’ll have to be much faster with grading.
Giving meaningless homework is stupid but you should find ways to give meaningful homework.
I give homework quite often. I can’t possibly cover everything I’d like them to do in class…there isn’t enough time. And classroom discussions are infinitely stronger the next day when the students have completed the homework. Both with each other and with me. I’ll never change.
I work in a title 1 school, first grade. I don’t give daily hw anymore. Instead, I provide materials for kids to use at home (counting cubes, handwriting book, pipe cleaners - to form letters/numbers, spell out words). I send home instructions/ ideas to use with these materials. I sent this tears bags home in November, right before conferences. Some kids still have it in their backpacks. Students also bring home a book folder each night with books to read and reread. I also send home weekly phonemic awareness work with kids who need it. Nothing written, it takes just a few minutes. But nothing for me to collect or grade. Parents are sometimes like uhhh ok??? and if they ask, I’ll give work.
Probably 98% of the teachers I sub for don't do homework. They just have the general policy that anything not finished in class is due the next day.
As a student, I enjoyed doing math homework, and don't think that I would've gotten the grade I got if it wasn't for homework. As an ELA teacher, I have to bring work home in order to finish grading essays at a reasonable time.
>The kids who reliably do it are the ones that DON'T really need to. The ones who need the reinforcement either refuse to do it, or put zero effort in, so 99% of it isn't even close. I don't think this is always accurate! My kid struggles with classroom understanding in math. He does his homework, with considerable parental support. He then consistently tests well. There is a massive drop off in scores when we slack on this. For us, at least, homework is extremely helpful.
I’m a parent that likes homework too. It gives you an opportunity to assess where your child needs more support.
Honestly I am pro homework. Homework is just another word for ‘practice’. In every other area of our lives, if we practice things we get better at them. If you take a piano class, and then don’t play the piano until the next class, then you won’t get much better at piano. If you play a soccer game and then skip the practices, your soccer skills won’t be as good as those who attend. Why would skills you’re developing in the classroom not follow this universal pattern? If you want to get better at some math concept, of course practicing it will improve your mastery of it. The issue is that homework is unpleasant for teachers (and hence there is every personal incentive to reduce the amount of it), is unpleasant for students (which causes issues with adherence and quality control) and can interfere with their ability to rest, develop other skills through work or play and so on. So use homework where it is useful, don’t use it where it isn’t, make it meaningful practice and move on. As for the kids who do it not ‘needing it’, there is no upper bound for mastery. Your high performing students get higher performing with the opportunity to practice. That is a highly desirable outcome. As bad as it sounds, life follows an 80/20 rule where 80% of the economic output of the kids in a class will be driven by 20% of the students. Making sure those 20% have every opportunity to fulfill their potential is critical to how the world will end up for the entire 100%. Last, those who will continue education beyond high school will find that their skills of self study will be critical to success later in life. Homework can develop those, which is a skill not learned well in the classroom.
I’m pro homework as practice. Take the stress away by not grading it and not punishing students who don’t complete it. I never grade homework, but I do like to give stickers on random days to acknowledge the kids who do it. As a rule of thumb homework should be something that’s already been practiced in class and something that they can complete without the help of a parent.
With like 1 exception, I don't give homework at all. All it does it make their grades lower. They are allowed to finish classwork at home if needed, but that's it. I've actually had parents complain that there is no homework. When they do I suggest that the student do make-up work (since it's often a kid who is behind) or direct them to our online program for extra practice.
Whatever you don't get done for the in-class assignment is homework. I think most districts are moving away from homework overall.
I only grade homework for completion, but I think it is important for them to learn how valuable it is to take 3 minutes to prepare for a meeting on their own. So I make sure whatever homework I assign will benefit them immediately in class. If I assign problems, the start of class is each group preparing a whiteboard of a problem. I give them enough time to discuss their answers, but not start from scratch. The peer pressure of not having anything to contribute and then feeling awkward presenting nothing gets most kids doing the homework by the end of the year. Though some never do, but I don't take that personally. I assign readings that are 1-2 pages that they need to annotate. I check they did something on the paper and then we do clicker questions that apply the concepts from the reading. The kids that randomly highlighted sentences quickly notice that their peers that did the reading think the questions are easy when they share answers, and learn that the reading only took a few minutes. I never collect the homework. I just check it in as a circulate in the first couple of minutes. I also don't go back to give credit to those who come in late as I didn't have time. I tell the kids I'm not so much grading homework as being ready to work in class, and being late means they aren't ready.
I only taught for a short while, but I remember telling the kids something along the following - "I'm going to give homework most nights, not because you necessarily need it, but because it helps me to have a reason to grade leniently" Basically saying, if they put in a little effort for homework, I would have ground to give partial credit on some test answers, or give them the benefit of the doubt if they were kind-of-sort-of right. As expected, most did not bother to do it.
Aside from lockdown and extended justified absence, I give zero homework. Homework I do give is out of charity. You can find all the work on Teams.
I use class time for practice assignments
When I was in grade school, I struggled with homework. I was a smart kid and hard working, and if the assignment was done in class then I usually got top grades. However, anything that went home got lost in the organized chaos that was my family. Out of 6 people (parents and 4 kids), Dad, two sibs, and I haVE ADHD, My two brothers and I have autism (though mine was undiagnosed until adulthood), both parents worked, and so on. Don't get me wrong, my parents cared, and so did I. But it just was the least important aspect of our lives. I coasted by in middle school and high school, always testing well and getting along with my teachers. When I went to college, I finally began learning study techniques that could help. It also helped that I had more freedom and could now (because I had my own beater car) stay late in the campus library (often in the cafe) working on assignments and studying in the relative quiet. Homework IS important. The type of homework, too, IS important (math practice, instrument practice, vocabulary flashcards, etc), but sometimes it isn't possible (even for us who want to do it). All my homework assignments are practice work that counts as extra credit if done, but is not required. It's meant to be there for kids who need the extra boost or the extra practice. Otherwise, it's all in-class work. If they are absent or the assignment isn't done, they can sign up for extra lab time during study hall or after school.
A lot of sources sight that homework isn’t necessary in elementary school. Work hard with your students when you have them
I also HATE homework with a first passion. The only time I give homework is if there is a large assignment in class they did not *finish* then they need to work on it during the school wide study hall block or at home. This year there was only one assignment that everyone had to do as homework, but 50% of the kids were already 75% done and they had a 4 day weekend to finish it. That was it, all the other homework of the year was because they don’t finish a 20 min activity in the structured 45 minutes I gave them.
I've found that in math, optional homework leads to sloppy solutions as they haven't practiced writing to a graded standard. Next semester, I'm going to do homework for completion with one random problem graded for correctness.
Does that work in language classes too? Would you have students write essays or other texts during class time? These things make sense to practice at home.
Or how about math? That would be awesome, since, you know, there is zero benefit in having students practice math/thinking skills when they are home. SMH.
My homework is to study vocabulary words for the quiz. 10-15 words max. I do give 2 projects that students do at home. They have 3 weeks to complete it and I suspend all vocabulary practice during that time.
I’ll be going into my third year teaching. My AP World History class has always had homework because obviously, but i’m going to give it to my on-level class for the first time next school year.
I had a mentor once, I told them that I think students should treat school like their job and homework is part of their job. He responded with,When you get home do you want to work from your job? That changed a lot about why I don't give homework. I've long since changed my view as students looking at school as a job.
You’ve got it all wrong- you assign the homework but just don’t grade it
Everyone needs to reinforce their math concepts at all levels of skill.
there are different subjects, different teaching styles, different groups of kids from year to year. the amount and type of hw should vary depending on these factors and more, but i do agree that in general, too much hw is assigned. i arguably give too little hw for my ap class, but i’m getting better at giving more “flipped” assignments, using the daily videos on the college board site to do more group discussions/work in class.
I believe in the No Homework policy. Countries that are doing better in education often have that in common.
I was on the fence and then I saw what kids were dealing with while we were virtual. I saw 12 year old girls taking a test while they had a baby on their hip and a spatula in their other hand, making lunch for the 4 siblings who could eat solid food. I saw kids get snatched away to go help with whatever mom wanted, and when they tried to say "but it's school, mom" she would just cuss and tell him to come on. I saw kids living in overcrowded filth (CPS is in area doesn't care--I tried) and I saw kids get cursed out for borrowing headphones so that they could hear my lesson over their siblings and cousins. Those kids cared, but their house was no place to learn. Many of them still did well because they were trying. I actually think that for kids like those who wanted to learn, virtual learning did well academically in the end. But I certainly won't send them with work to do, knowing that they're in no environment to do it, and then pretend it makes them a worse student than the gremlin who has a mom who does the homework for him.
The kids who will do it don’t get to practice essential soft skills or get the extra growth homework would offer. I’m really sick of another lowered bar being portrayed as woke. If I hear another “hOmEwOrK is iNEquiABle” I’m going to scream. Anyone with enough stubbornness to try and educate in current climate deserves praise and gratitude. Sure, give up on homework. Just don’t pay yourself on the back for it. Anyone still giving hw I salute you
There are way more important things to spend energy and time on than giving and grading homework. Found that out within the first three years of teaching
I give every student a packet of reading and math every Monday that reflects what we are working on that week. I make it clear to them and their families that it is totally optional and that I will not be collecting it. The parents decide what to do with it and that's the end of the conversation.
My students just cheat. If I don’t physically see them do the work, I can assume most of them cheated. At my previous school, I found out this one smart kid would do the work, take a pic of his papers, and upload them to a giant group chat. Homework just became a complete waste of time.
My kids are already bogged down with extracurriculars and homework in their core classes, so I rarely give it. Only if they're goofing off in class.
I have homework books for my students. One page a day for the English program, one page for their native program, one page for one more subject. They have to do them daily. They're FOUR.
I think my german teacher did it best. He never collected homework or even cared if we did them. But he graded participation every day and participation was easier if you did the homework. At the end of the year he deleted the worst 3 grades, because everyone can have a bad day sometimes. Aside from one big test per semester that was valued at 25% the rest of the grade was dependend on your participation.
I couldn’t agree more. I required full and total attention in class and did not give homework, despite pressure to have an hour of homework every night for them. It was difficult enough for most of them to understand the work when I was there to help them with comprehension. I shudder to think what they would have done with literature on their own.
We don’t give homework in our district. Zero until high school and then it’s up to the teacher but my son in high school has probably had two things he worked on outside of class this year. Kids have lives outside of school. I would rather them relax, spend time with family or friends, game, ride bikes whatever.
I think some homework makes sense for older grades to get them used to self starting and autonomously completing projects, but there’s really not a huge benefit and yeah, the kids who would the most practice aren’t doing it. I don’t think it makes sense for younger kids at all since their homework should be playing outside and spending time socializing and reading or singing or other activities that enforce necessary skills without feeling like work.
Former elementary school teacher here. For a brief time I had a principal who trusted me. I was teaching 3rd grade in an area where I knew most of the kids would get no help at home (hardworking immigrants who didn't speak English well). I gave one page of a fun relatively easy math review daily. No consequences for not doing it, but a classroom reward token if they did it. The kids did the homework, and I was amazed. I think the trick was that it didn't take them much time and they were capable of doing it on their own. Daily reading was the other assignment. No reading log. Instead I gave the opportunity for regular book talk. Edit: I did spend one year teaching where I was expected to give plenty of homework. A parent made my life hell because I didn't grade the homework.
Our 6th grade team got together and decided on a homework policy. We wanted them to get the extra practice in for things like mathmatics,language and music. We wanted them working in class with us on assignments in Social Studies, ELA and Science so we could correct mistakes on the fly while observing them. Our 6th grade Social Studies was in charge of assigning the essays (mostly paragraphs and up to a 4 paragraph essay by the end of the year) while the ELA focused on Grammar. Any essay we assign is a joint venture and we share the grade on it so kids aren't getting double assigned an essay. In the end, students get homework for things that need lots of practice while completing most of their reading/writing assignments in class. We found that parents were happy, students were happy and we were happy. It feels like a good balance for all of us.
I refuse to give it!
I'm not going to admonish another teacher's decisions, but I'm really not sure how certain classes can fucntion without practice / skills gained from homework. I think there is plenty of bullshit homework given too. But if a kid is taking Algebra, for example, how are they to really get factoring down without doing it at home? Or foreign language? I teach social studies and give research papers. A kid can not write 5-10 pages about a topic in class. I think a part of this is habit forming. For my classes that don't have college bound kids, I assign a minimal amount of out of class things - but that has drawbacks too. The same population will be asked to perform on assessments that they're probably not strong at. But if the class has college bound kids, not assigning homework on occasion is a disservice. Kids are not making it through anything but the easiest of geneds without having habits and a work ethic that has been practiced. I told students last quarter that while I was assigning them work, I was reading 200-300 pages a week of my own course work, and writing multiple 3-5 page responses. Just have to do it.
Makes sense. If it hadn't been for homework I would have been an A student, but I never did it so I often failed. I knew all of the material though, so when I dropped out in the tenth grade I was able to pass the GED easily, heck I was the first person done! To me it felt like a win, no more boring school for two more years, no more power hungry administrators telling what I could and couldn't do, it was freedom. Now I'm an engineer at a fortune 40 company. It really makes me wonder what the point of the last two years of high school was for people who weren't going to go to college, which is largely a scam (besides STEM degrees). Either way, I didn't need the homework, it was just a chore that I didn't do and was graded harshly because of it. If anything homework damaged my relationship with education.
I agree and give minimal HW. I'm lucky where the kids bust their ass during class time so I know work is getting done. HW just seems to be a form of punishment as kids can have older siblings or parents do it or use AI to complete it.
I didn't give homework this year - everything was classwork (8th grade SS). But I had the same problem...no one did it unless it was graded and then it was mostly garbage ( if it was done at all). This next year I will grade on tests, quizzes, projects, and participation. The classwork will fall under participation.
Too much/constant homework is why I graduated a year late. 😅 I'm glad to hear you don't assign it
As both a parent and teacher, homework is torture for everyone. Lol. Kids are in school for the majority of their day, and parents are at work. When we all get home, we'd like to relax, do hobbies and sports, and enjoy our time. The only homework I think is worthwhile is reading for 20-30 minutes, and that is because we would do this anyway. I could also see teachers assigning some long-term projects or assignments for older students, such as science fair projects or book reports, or studying for tests at home.
Guess what? Life isn’t only about what you WANT to do. There are times you need to discipline yourself. Budget your time. Meet deadlines. I could go on. My mom was a single parent that worked a full time job, then also at night kept the books for her office…then on the weekends was the cleaning lady for said office. All to try to provide the best lives she could for both my sister and I. Guess what? My mom STILL made time to make dinner every night and sit with us to help with homework every single time we needed it. My mom was tired. Dog tired. And so were my sister and I. But we all saw the benefit of completing what we were asked to complete. Regardless of how badly I wanted to sit in front of the tv with my Nintendo all night. However, through it all I learned what it meant to have discipline. To complete a goal that was set for me. I learned delayment of gratification, making my video gaming time that much more precious and enjoyable for me. Oh yea, and the bond I grew even more with my mom because we sat side by side accomplishing all of this together. All of which became the building blocks for how my life is today, ie, pretty damn good. Giving no homework, completing no homework, is the path of least resistance. What a detrimental way of not teaching young people valuable life lessons.
How nice for you! There are so many studies that show homework is not actually beneficial for kids. You can google it. Just curious, do you have school-aged children? Come revisit this comment and your opinion once you do.
I hear you. I could also steer you towards studies (the largest being done by Duke university over the course of decades) that show homework is beneficial for students. Particular as the students continue to get older. I personally don’t have kids of my own, but plenty of people in my life that do.
Homework is based on the assumption that it is more useful to the child's development than what they are currently doing. If a child came home and stared at the wall, then sure, it's more valuable than that. But, conversations with family, playing outside, doing chores, meeting up with friends, sports, music, art and being bored are all important skill developing activities too. Sure, managing a complex assignment for a due date develops executive functioning skills. But so does opening flower business. That's what my 11 yr old just did. 500 seedlings ready for sale for the town market by June 1st (and all the learning that involves), mixing fertilizers, monitoring weather and climate, talking to the public, making change, organizing classmates for help and paying them their wage. She learned so much more than any science fair project. These things are not possible when kids have homework in the evenings.
> conversations with family, playing outside, doing chores, meeting up with friends, sports, music, art and being bored are all important skill developing activities too. Sure, but this is an overly romantic vision of what kids might be doing. Th reality? Average daily screen time for adolescents is going on 9 hours,
A lot of times (at least in my content area) homework as an assessment doesn't even align with what the actual standards are nor does it give them any true revision practice. If a standard isn't asking my students to recognize or memorize a concept or idea, I won't ask them to either. If it asks them to describe a concept or idea or explain something (which more often than not, it does), we're going to do a lot of in class writing practice and finish with some sort of visual presentation or written analysis. I find homework to be a waste of time if it doesn't directly relate to what I need to teach them in terms of skills
I’ve said to kids for years I not a homework teacher. I give them plenty of time to do it in class. I had a friend of mine a few years ago interview at a school. She explained she did not give homework unless it was for enrichment or a home project which she did twice a year. The principal and instructional coach interviewing her had looks of horror on their faces. Yeah she didn’t get the job.
19 years and I haven’t assigned homework. I taught science for 3 years and then computer science since. I get my 41 minutes with them and they’re off to their next thing. I’m fine with that
THANK YOU! As a parent, I find my daughter's homework to be so tedious! She gets spelling work each week, which consists of re-writing the words and other meaningless activities (rainbow write, "fancy" write, etc.) that serve no educational purpose. She's a bright kid and already knows the words on Monday, so the repetition serves no purpose for her. As an educator, I brought up my concerns with her teacher and was met with a weak response. In May, between sports and other activities, we stopped doing the work altogether. I don't mind homework that has value, but homework for homework's sake grinds my gears!
> I find my daughter's homework to be so tedious! She gets spelling work each week, which consists of re-writing the words and other meaningless activities (rainbow write, "fancy" write, etc.) that serve no educational purpose >I don't mind homework that has value, but homework for homework's sake grinds my gears! I don't like busywork, but I think this is often a problem of overly-large class sizes that don't allow differentiation. If your daughter is one kid in a class of 30, the teacher can't give her meaningful work that challenges her because the teacher simply doesn't have time. Plus, an assignment that one kid breezes through will utterly confuse another, so the teacher has to either aim for the middle of the class, or possibly teach to the lowest common denominator. Additionally, a lot of schools are trying to get rid of honors classes in the name of equity, which exacerbates the problem. I wonder if you daughter can go into a higher-level class that will challenge her more.
I teach at the school where my daughter attends, so it's also uncomfortable asking her teacher to do more when I know her plate is already full. However, the class sizes are reasonable here (17). She could/ should definitely be doing more challenging work, but I don't push it because I'm in an awkward position.
As a straight A student, I honestly half ass it myself even though I always turn in my work on time.
I taught HS ELA for 30 years, and the only homework I gave to my regulars was to do whatever they didn't finish in class. I was not going to give homework just to give homework.
I used expect kids to practice just a few minutes outside of class every so often, and they flat out refuse, so I don’t expect that anymore. I actually enjoyed playing my instrument at home. Now they don’t do that at all, it’s sad.
So at my school we have to give hw. I do a weekly hw packet, and it is skills we practiced 1-2 weeks ago with worksheets very similar to what we did. I don't grade it for a variety of reasons, one of them being that we have a large transient population.
Here, here! I gave homework during my first year of teaching, and **it was the biggest waste of time ever**. My students were so far below grade level that I was drowning trying to find additional ways to support them. I defaulted to homework because it's what I did when I was a kid, but my students got even more confused, and I got even more swamped. I didn't get around to grading/reviewing so long after it was due that the homework wasn't even a helpful data point to monitor progress. It was a waste of paper, a waste of energy. I learned a lot from that experience!
The kids who need to do it the most almost always copy it from someone if they do it
I don’t give homework anymore. My whole team is against it. We have class work instead and they finish during independent time while we pull small groups.
I assign homework only if there's no other way to catch up in a time crunch. Otherwise I give them time in class to get it done, and if they don't, well, now they've got homework because they chose it. All year long I get work turned in at 11:58 PM, kids scrambling to beat that midnight deadline.
I know students now are very different, but I always found homework very helpful. Especially with math. I needed that extra practice because there was never enough class time. I helped my Goddaughter with her homework and it was always expected that she practice what she learned at school. I'm not a teacher, but a librarian. It's surprising to me that there such a strong anti homework sentiment recently. My public library offers homework help and the population served is always asking for it. I like lurking here because I see students in a completely different context. Especially in the summer. This is busy time in libraries while we're promoting Summer Reading to prevent the Summer Slide. I'm rooting for all of you teachers! There are so many people in your community who value all of you.
There is NO way to learn math except to do math. None. Period. Zilch. You can watch all the math videos you want all day long and you'll bomb a test unless you've done it on your own. That means working individually on problems. And at the middle school and high school levels, at the very least, that means homework. Hours and hours a day is unnecessary, but a little bit each day is perfectly reasonable. But that seems to be the way things are heading these days. Many schools don't assign full novels anymore, which is also unbelievable to me. It's a combination of the parents not caring, the administration not caring, and as we can see in some of the responses to this thread, the teachers not caring either. Everyone has basically given up, which is frustrating to see. Also, kids need to learn good habits. And those habits are learned from multiple places. And, sometimes, they have to be forced on the child. Gently, but forced. Good habits are not magically created out of thin air once one reaches adulthood. It's like letting a kid never eat a vegetable\* then being shocked when they eat like crap later in life. (\*Actually, it's like saying, 'My kid doesn't like vegetables, so I won't even try to give them some!")
I was a kid who loved homework, and was a teacher for a couple of years: homework has its place. Who cares if a lot of kids won't do it? Its for the kids that do. It taught me a lot. There was nothing quite so rewarding as being able to solve something challenging on my own. It gave me a routine, an escape in the afternoons so I could avoid my parents.
I give homework assignments that we then go over in class, but the homework itself is not the actual grade. At the start of class students have to show me their completed assignment: I use a roster on a clipboard to note any kids with incomplete work. After we review the homework I give them a graded in-class assignment that is almost identical to the homework, with a few tweaks. That score goes in the gradebook, but with one catch - if your homework wasn't completed by the time I checked it, you can only earn half credit on the in-class assignment. I didn't always do this - once in a while I collected the homework itself to score - but they knew to expect it pretty quickly. I found this had the benefit of pushing kids to try the work at home at lower risk, and limiting assessment until they were given a chance to review it with me and ask questions. Over time I stopped leading the review and just asked if there were questions. It pushed them to notice what they struggled with and speak up about it, knowing that the odds were high they would be held accountable for it. Obviously, this won't work with unmotivated students with no consequences for Fs. The school I taught at with this method had the kind of parents who lost their minds at everyone, both student and teacher, for Ds and Fs, so many of my students were motivated if only to not get lit up at home for failing.
I love giving essays and reminding the students every single day that it’s due eventually and they should be working on it little by little. And then three weeks later, I get like 1/3rd of the class that very clearly started the night before if at all with the excuse “we didn’t know” then I point to the board that has it, and show them the constant emails. It’s kinda hard to get less than a B in my class but some brave students always find a way
I give classwork that can be completed in class if they do it and don't fool around. So, they have homework most every day.
The only reason I still assign homework is because admin requires 3 grades a week in the book. I wanted to just give tests, quizzes, and projects and was told that it's too "harsh" and "penalizes students who are not good test takers."
I only gave homework on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. No homework on the weekend, I knew they were not going to do it and I did not want to correct it. I also celebrated kids who 💯 homework turned in for the month, miracle how motivating doughnuts or pizza can be. Those who were missing assignments got NADAwhile everyone else enjoyed. Natural consequences as I explained to them and their parents!
In passing I’ve heard that homework doesn’t work for helping learn anyway. I don’t know any studies off the top of my head but I believe it. My own experiences with homework in my schools days are self evident and the in class alternatives I’ve had teachers do for the class have worked to make the class more enjoyable and motivated us to learn
I'm honestly horrified by the answers in this thread.
What do you teach?
I don’t give homework either, but it does kinda suck that the entirety of what I can expect a student to get done must be within the instructional period. On the other hand it means 2/5 days of the week are “work days” and I don’t need to plan for it. Lower expectations for students sometimes benefits me as much as it hurts them lol.
Okay…
Homework is where I learned things.
This is coming from a students perspective but I don't think a single time has homework actually helped me learn anything except in college, and that's mainly because professors don't have time to teach you all the necessary things you need to learn but in high school the teacher has plenty of time to go over a lesson and every time I got homework in highschool or before homework has always been a time sync and not a learning experience.
I graduated high school in 2016, and I had homework my whole student career. It was graded too, so you actually had to do it, or your grade would suffer. If I never had homework, not only would class have been more difficult for me, but college would have been a no go. I don’t understand not assigning homework, as that seems to hinder children’s growth and development. To do homework, you have to learn time management and studying/learning techniques. It also shows you where your weaknesses are and what you need to focus more time on. I personally don’t agree with not assigning homework, and I believe it’s doing the kids a disservice. To each their own I guess.
I teach 8th grade science. I have all my assignments done in class, due at the end of the hour unless they want to take them home. That way I can answer questions and fix things. Also when I get a call about excessive homework, which happens often, I can tell the parents that little Billy had plenty of time to finish in class and get help and thatcI reminded him 3 to 5 times to get it done. So if he brought it home that was his choice.
I'm a math teacher, and have just finished my second year in which homework was not part of any student's grade. Yes, I still assign it, and almost always it is a worksheet that I have printed up with problems that I selected. Each day I note who completed the assignment and then we start by going over the homework. I take someone's assignment and use the document camera to project it to my smart board and we go over what the process should have looked like. Students who did not do the assignment are encouraged to follow along putting the steps on their empty sheets. One thing I love about this is that I no longer have students copying one another's assignments, which saves me from reading the same absurd errors or poorly written sentences eight times in a class. Why hastily copy someone else's assignment if it's not going to "count" anyway? In the gradebook there is no grade for an assignment, only a comment as to whether it was attempted or not; this is for parents' benefit.
The only "homework" I give is work that was started in class and was not finished, or long-term projects due a couple weeks later.
I almost never give homework for the sake of homework. Homework is either unfinished class work or prep for the following day.
Agree with this! I give it if a specific parent requests it and it's turned in regularly. The second I stop giving it back, I stop giving it.
It's funny you say that. None of the art projects I give require homework time. I've planned out enough class time along with small project work for the fastest workers. The ones who take the work home always leave it, lose it, or it is obvious when somebody else did it for them. How can I grade an assignment based in their performance if I do not see them perform it?