As a student, homework is a daunting task, with all our countless responsibilities, sometimes, homework can seem like a trivial formality. However, if you think about homework from the teacher perspective, it's a whole different story. Teachers assign homework for various reasons, for practice on subjects taught in class, to read more content for the class, or projects to get kids to do new learning. Whatever the reason, teachers usually have a plan for class that somewhat relies on the completion of the previously assigned work. If students constantly come into class without their homework done, how do you move forward?
In the past, to solve this problem, teachers were able to grade homework. Students would have to complete their work or their grade would drop. However, in the new age of standards-based grading, where Habits of Learning and homework are ungraded, teachers don't have this power. So the question is:
How do you get students to complete their homework?
The easy answer is to go back to forcing kids to do their work by dangling a grade over their head. But we have learned through research, by Daniel Pink and other leading motivation experts, that "Carrot and Stick" motivation is a short term fix that leads to disengagement. "Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement." This quote by Daniel Pink is about the concept of intrinsic motivation. When students are given the freedom to explore and learn with the sole goal of learning, their engagement levels actually exceed any engagement from grades. With all of this research about intrinsic motivation (I encourage you to read Daniel Pink's Drive), we know that grading homework will only lead to stress, not engagement.
Now all of this knowledge is great background information for overall education reform, but, none of it helps with the short term problem of homework completion. Here are a few tips from a student to help you improve homework completion without sacrificing long term engagement.
1) Give students time in class to work on homework.
Now I know that this idea might seem like a time suck. However, I have seen first hand how well this strategy works. In classes I have taken where the teacher gives us time in class to work, it ends up saving them time in the long run and increases the quality of the work. When you think about it, a lot of teachers end up having to go over homework, line by line, during class because no students did it in the first place (or they rushed through). A student's schedule is very busy, with sports, SAT practice, college prep, and countless other things; we sometimes don't have time outside of school to do anything, let alone time-draining homework. By giving students time in class, it gives us a designated block that lets us work with no distractions from outside responsibilities.
2) Give students a time limit for working on their homework.
This may seem like a small insignificant detail that won't change anything about students' motivation for homework. However, this small parameter often lets students plan accordingly and give themselves time to complete their work. Students work things up in our heads. A simple 10-minute task can seem like a five-hour project if we don't know how long it is supposed to take. By telling students, "Don't work on this longer than 15 minutes," it takes almost all the pressure away and helps us plan our schedule more effectively.
It's easy to overthink homework, for both the students and teachers. By giving students these tools and focusing on what is most important, we can decrease student stress and increase class productivity.
Great article! I definitely agree with giving class time to start homework. It's a chance for students to start a momentum that they can pick up later. It's a time where they can get clarifying questions answered and in general experience support. A time limit is also critical. I would often tell kids to work for 20 minutes which had different benefits for different learners. For the 'over achiever' it lets them know when 'enough is enough' and for those who can become paralyzed with the fear that an ask might be too much, it helps them see that perhaps the assignment is in fact doable if it means only spending x amount of time on it. And it helps those students who maybe might be less than motivated to start it at all, because they can hopefully rationalize that 20 minutes really isn't that much time.
ReplyDeleteI once heard a teacher say what 'the teacher's job is' regarding homework. It's a large striving but one worth reaching for: "Our job as teachers is to make the work so engaging and pique the curiosity enough, that students leave our classrooms and schools wanting to know more. Ideally, teachers don't assign homework but rather leave students hungry enough that they take up additional practice, exploration and creation outside of school because they truly want to know." I don't know how successful I have been with exercising that mantra, but it has been my personal striving.
Even though at times I assign some amount of homework, I don't actually believe in homework per se. To my knowledge, no study yet has shown that homework improves class performance and learning in proportion to the typical amounts that are asked of students. Hopefully if I have left my students hungry enough, they will take up 'homework' in a way that is very meaningful to them. But also just as important, the amount of homework across the board needs to be carefully monitored. If healthy activities and lifestyles are equally important to school performance (which I believe they are) then students can't go home with hours of additional school work. Family time, sleep, extracurriculars, hobbies and even boredom are extremely important for learning to develop balance in life and to discover ourselves. If a student comes home to simply repeat the school day hours, then we as teachers have not used our school days efficiently.
Well done, Beckett! Thank you for sharing and getting the conversation out there with your voice behind it.
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