I don't believe in homework.
There.
I said it. It's out in the open. (Well, it's not really new.....anyone who has been in my class knows about it....)
As a grade 8 teacher, I get questioned about this a great deal. By parents, mostly. The kids think it's the best thing since recess. I love the looks on their faces when I declare that I don't assign homework. This doesn't mean that I don't expect my students to do work outside of the classroom, on the contrary, must students are often working on learning activities on their own time. What I mean is that I don't teach a lesson, and then, at the end of it, assign homework based on that lesson that is done entirely on their own time.
While this applies to all the subjects I teach, it is most prominent in my mathematics class. I have many memories of the teacher talking most of the class, with a few practice problems thrown in, and then being assigned 10 to 15 (or more!) problems to do at home. These problems were a repetition of the problems we did in class. Over and over. The same thing. What did I learn from these problems? I learned that I wasn't good at math. See, I went home, and did the required problems, and usually did them wrong. I did them wrong 10 times, or 15 times, or 40 times. And then went back to school and discovered while we 'took up the homework' (sometimes for a mark! sometimes 'marked' by a peer! Who can forget the "Pass your paper to the person behind you!" days?) that I had done it all incorrectly. And now my peers knew about it too. They knew I was bad at math, or that I hadn't understood the concept or that I made the same mistake over and over and over again. I don't believe that this was my teacher's intention when they assigned the homework. I think they assigned the homework to gather information about our understanding of the concept. But that discomfort, that discouragement that I felt as a student is the reason that I don't assign homework.
What does happen is that I provide a mini-lesson or a problem-solving task, and my students 'workshop' the concepts by working collaboratively, through completing activities in their interactive notebook, by working independently on a series of intentionally designed problems that scaffold learning or through guided math activities with myself. They work with their peers, they work on their own, and they work with me. And if, at the end of the time they have been given, they do not have their assigned materials completed, they take it home and complete it there. But they do not leave without all the tools that they need to complete the homework on their own. No one is seeing the work for the first time when they open their textbook at 4pm or 630pm or 930pm.
Okay, you're thinking, but doesn't that mean it takes you a really long time to get through the curriculum if you do everything in class? There are a lot of math expectations to get through! Yes. The short answer is Yes. It does take longer. But, I believe that less is more. We take longer on fewer things. And many of those fewer things don't get evaluated. I don't mark classwork, just the same way that I would never mark a 'homework' assignment. This doesn't mean that I don't assess it--I just get my assessment from other things. The work from yesterday's class is important for today's class, but not because I am going to collect it and mark it. I am certainly going to expect it to be done, but only because the learning we doing now, depends on that learning from yesterday. And if I student has been struggling with that learning, I know about it already from having worked with that student the day before or from gathering assessment data as I observed students working. That knowledge is built into my lesson. I don't start the class by taking up the homework and then discover that my students didn't 'get it' and then have to re-design my lesson. Or worse, just forge ahead anyway, because we have a lot to cover.
So, if you're considering ditching the homework or the worksheets, here are some alternate activities to consider:
1. Have students work on a set of problems that you have designed or that you have carefully screened from your textbook. Assign them to a 'professional learning community' where they work on the problems together, and discuss the solutions together. Visit groups to make notes, ask questions and interact with them as they learn. Have them then collaboratively create a solution to one of the problems to present to the rest of class in a gallery walk and/or congress.
2. Meet with students in small groups and ask them to complete a one or two problems while you are with them. Here you can gather data about their strengths, areas of growth and their understanding of the concepts.
3. Consider using an Interactive Notebook or other journal format where students complete one or two problems in an 'annotated' fashion. Collect the notebooks on a rotating basis to gather information.
4. Use entry or exit tickets to gain information about student's understandings of previous lesson or the day's lesson.
5. Investigate a "Math Daily 3" model that involves students working on a variety of different tasks at different times, allowing you to meet with students, while also allowing students to work independently or in groups. (See The Daily 5, Second Edition by Gail Boushey and Joan Moser.)
There are lots of ways to gather assessment data in mathematics without having your students do 'homework'. Believe me, your students (and their parents, and your markbook) will thank you for it.
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