Assignment #5: Complete the 4 part assignment format as you read, reflect, and respond to Chapter 5 – Homework and Practice.
Remember: Although your course packet asks you to post to blog for parts A, B, C, and D…we are asking that you only post part C and D. We’re trying to make the blog easier to read and more user- friendly. Thanks!
A. Self Assessment of Current Beliefs and Practices: This component asks you to reflect on how and why you currently use the instructional strategies of Homework and Practice in your classroom. The intent of this is to activate your prior knowledge of your strategy use so that you can make comparisons as you read the chapter. Below are the questions to help you complete your self-assessment. After completing your self assessment please post a thought or two as a comment (click on comment link below) to this posting labeled Week Five: Homework and Practice.
• Think about the kinds of homework you assign to your students and what some of the purposes of those assignments might be.
• Do you have questions about using homework?
• How do you decide which skills students need to practice a great deal and which skills they can just have a basic proficiency in?
• What makes skill practice effective?
B. Read & Reflect “Research & Theory”: This portion of the assignment asks you to read chapter 5 and reflect briefly on your thinking after reading the “Research and Theory” section for both homework and practice. You may want to think and respond to one of the bulleted thoughts below. After completing your chapter reflection, please post it as a comment (click on comment link below) in the posting labeled Week Five: Homework and Practice.
• Reviewing the research on homework emphasizes the importance of commenting on students' homework assignments. What strategies would your recommend to a teacher who wants to assign homework but claims that it is logistically impossible to comment on students' work?
• The research described in this chapter suggests that, especially for older students, homework seems to be positively correlated with student achievement. Even when some parents who are opposed to homework become aware of this research, they express strong negative feelings about homework. What do you think are some of the reasons for these feelings?
C. Practice: Choose one of the specific “classroom practice” strategies or techniques shared in this chapter to teach to your students (If you are not currently teaching, you may share how you would use this strategy in your classroom). Please post a brief reflection of how this went to the posting labeled Week Five: Homework and Practice. Click on the “comment” link below..
D. Final Strategy Reflection: Use the following sequence of questions/promps to reflect on what you’ve learned about both the strategies presented in the chapter and what you’ve learned about yourself as both a teacher and a learner. Please post your brief reflection to the posting labeled Week Five: Homework and Practice by clicking on the “comment” link below.
How has the information you read in this chapter on homework and practice effected your thinking about teaching and learning? What have you learned about yourself as a teacher and learner? Use the following questions to assist you in writing a brief strategy reflection:
• How might I change how use both homework and practice in my classroom?
• What is something you now understand better about homework or practice?
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C.
Long division requires practice, practice, and more practice. Once the students have an understanding of the steps for long division they need to keep practicing to become familiar with the process. It would definitely be the perfect skill for students to track their speed and accuracy on a chart.
Sending long division problems home with the direction to work on them for 30 minutes, and then to stop, would solve the problem of some homework being quick and easy for some, and long and arduous for others. It would also do away with assigning different numbers of problems to different students. I can see getting less notes from parents explaining how long their child worked on the problems and still didn’t get finished. As well as the opposite, about it being too easy. You are requiring all students to do as many problems as they can in 30 minutes, with as great as accuracy as possible. Standards are clear, and individualized.
Charting the number of problems they completed, as well as the number they answered correctly, would be a great visual for them. They could see their individual progress. The students would also learn the purpose of homework, and practice, as they watched their chart increase. I can see this form of homework, and practice being a winner for the parents, student and teacher.
Wow, I am really missing a classroom of students to implement all of these great ideas in! I hope I can remember all of this in a couple of years when I return. I will have to keep this book in a prominent location.
C. Practice
First off let me say that I love Kay's idea for long division. It certainly is a way to make homework more fun and more interactive for families. Working with the wee ones I am unlikely to do anything like this for homework. I could however see myself doing something like this in class with our sight words. It would be fun to see how recording our speed would play into learning and practicing these words in class. To the future.
For my practice I decided to work on my goal of having homework be purposeful and clear. I send homework home over the weekend and have systems in place to acknowledge kids that complete and are successful with this work. What I did was to add a piece in my weekly newsletter (which goes home with the homework) that carefully explains the goal and purpose for parents. I also added time onto the end of the day schedule to go over with my students what the goal is and have them repeat back to me the steps I wish to see completed.
It worked famously! I have done a lot of this in the past but not very explicitly. When homework returned today the #'s were astounding. I was very pleased to see almost everyone complete AND return their homework.
D. Reflection
This chapter has reminded me that my homework needs to be used as an opportunity to explicitly teach a skill. I recently went to a workshop that put up some statistics on how many exposures a child needs to have to new words before it becomes part of their vocabulary. I was amazed that the numbers for kids that come from low socioeconomic families was something like 450 exposures. Hearing this really helped me to make connections to the ideas that practice is so important.
I find that I do usually use my homework for either practice or preparation like the book said. I either give word practice with sight words or word families, or do more of a journal format to lead into a new unit. These are my favorites to do. Before my MLK Jr unit I asked the kids to go home and ask an adult what they knew about MLK Jr and draw a picture of their findings or write a sentence to go with it. It was fascinating to hear what they had to share before the unit even began. The preparation example is an amazing tool.
I'm not sure I'd change too much of what I do already with the exception of the explicit directions and communication with families and students. I would like to try adding the speed rounds to our sight word practicing, but this takes place in the classroom. I guess I could introduce the idea to parents as an option for home as well.
Overall I think I'm just reminded of the importance of explicit instruction. I also think it's important to communicate with even my little ones and tell them exactly why I'm having them do this. Is the purpose for them to get better at something or is to get them ready for something new.
c. Because I work with a variety of different classes and students, I do not send home any homework for reading. The classroom teacher sends home the homework. For my activity on this chapter, I focused on building skills with practice.
During reading, I am having students read the same passage for a week with a partner. This last week I made some folders that have a plastic transparency taped in them. Each student has a holder with their reading passage. When I ask them to begin, one student uses a marker to circle errors, while the other student reads the passage as fluently as possible. The students then writes down the number of corrects and errors for the day and then switches to time the other student.
The whole process takes about six minutes, and the students seem to really enjoy the fluency building time.
Currently, I am graphing the results for each student, but am in the process of teaching them how to keep their own graphs.
D. The section on homework really made me continue to rethink what I would like to do when I have my own class in the future. It sounds like the most important issue with homework in the younger grades is to build positive work habits.
I have a hard enough time grading the regular work that students hand in, and in the past have really struggled with grading homework. I think doing something where students can keep track of their accuracy and speed on something, and do the majority of their own correcting would make the homework work better for me in the future.
For Kay - Have you used a Visual Instruction Plan (like in the Fred Jones Tools for Teaching book) to teach long division? I find that really speeds up the learning process for students.
Hello all,
Homework can be such a controversial issue, and you can find research that supports both sides of the coin. Prior to this year, I taught in an Urban district (Norwalk, CT), in a building where the Principal had become very firm on teachers not assigning too much homework, and if any was signed, it needed to be purposeful and differentiated (I personally was his cheerleader). Too often, we had parents/caretakers who would complete homework or, on the opposite spectrum, working families or single parent families where children had no support for homework at home. Now, this year, I'm teaching in a very suburban district (Trumbull,CT), and the homework stakes are high. Students can have 1 and 1/2 hours of homework and at times, you still have some parents asking for more......Anyway, I digressed a bit. My hope is that all teachers choose meaningful/purposeful homework (and practice)for their students.
Kay, Carrah, and Sacha - I loved each of your purposeful and meaningful ways of incorporating homework and practice into your coursework (long division, sight works, and fluency practice). Each of these areas are definitely places in which most children will need to practice their skills....I was just wondering what you'd do with those that have already mastered these skills???
Sacha...thanks for offering your suggestion out to Kay!!!...I wasn't familiar with this "visual instruction plan", but will now have to check it out!
In our current science curriculum in Oregon, with the huge spectrum of things they expect students to know by the 8th grade, I find it very difficult to spend much time on any one subject. I call the state standards (this may be changing for '09-'10) a shotgun blast at the science world...very vague on what we should teach...rather just sort of a teach this list of vaguely broad concepts.
I try to spend as much time on practice for each section as humanly possible, but when it comes down to it, most of the time to clock runs the pace of the curriculum.
Regardless, balancing chemical equations is a section that I emphasize a lot of time on homework. I teach this more as favor to the 8th grade science teacher, who wants them to know this skill, rather than out of a feeling that 7th graders NEED to know it. This is more of a high school chemistry concept...though the concept is actually based on simple math skills.
We spend a LOT of time practicing in class. I teach the kids a step-by-step method for approaching them. We practice problems on scratch paper with partners, then write answers on dry erase boards. We have students figure out a problem with a partner, then draw a random name from a hat to solve the problem on the Smartboard.
Long story short, we do LOTS of practice so they can get familiar with the skill. We start out the first day with ONE homework problem of low difficulty. There is no grade assigned to this problem as it is PRACTICE.
The following day, after a class period of practice, I assign 5 homework problems. These again, are practice, but students will receive a score for at least attempting all 5 problems. I simply do a walk-around with a clipboard to check them offf.
The following day, we have races on the white board where teams compete against each other to solve a problem as quickly (and accurately as possible).
The section on balancing equations ends with a worksheet with 19 equations to balance. These range from very easy (already balanced) to a handful of difficult problems. I assign 20 extra problems as EXTRA credit for students who are grasping the concept well to excel a bit.
In the future..next year...I would love to implement the charting for accuracy and speed concept discussed in this book. It would probably have to be something that we complete in class, as again, my homework completion rate, and support from home is SO LOW for many of my kids.
I have a countdown timer for my Smartboard, and the idea of racing to beat their past score would probably appeal greatly to my students.
I liked the idea of a homework policy to send home at the start of the year. I already go over, send home, and get back signed, a letter on classroom policies, and could easily add something on homework. I talk a little bit about it, but not specifically for having a space/time to do it set aside or comments on parent involvement.
One area I stuggle with in the homework department is feedback. While I keep fairly on top of my grading, we only get work passed back for students every 3 weeks or so. In the future, I would like to dedicate time every Friday (or at least one day a week) to get work back to students so they can get feedback in a more timely manner).
Jackie and Mary asked what I would do for the students who had already mastered the skill we are practicing, or assiging for homework.
I would probably have them complete the 30 min. homework as well, but divide it up into 15 min. on the division problems, and 15 min. on writing division math story problems. I would have them extend their knowledge of division into another area that requires a lot of practice,story problems.
Suzie Kabeiseman
C. My current teaching situation in the computer lab does not allow for homework. Because of this I am not really able to utilize any of the suggestions this year. In the past, I gave a solid amount of homework and tried to use it as an extension of what went on in the classroom. Unfortunately, I was not as directed as I now see that I could have been with my students or their families.
First I would pass out the "letter" on homework policy found on page 65. This is essential for students AND parents. So, often the parent is suffering as much with an assignment as the student. This should not be the case.
In the 6th grade classroom where I used to teach, there was not always time to grade everything. I did my best and tried to grade as much as possible. What I will focus on more is specific feedback on the assignment given as this seems to have the greatest effects size.
Additionally, assignments will need to be carefully given with the idea of "focused practice" (p. 70) present in my mind. I don't want to give out homework for the sake of homework. This doesn't do anything for anyone - especially me, if it's just adding more paperwork.
D. This was an interesting chapter for me as I had recently had a conversation with a fellow teacher about homework and its usefulness. She had said that recent research was showing that homework had no effect on learning in the elementary grades. In addition to that, my children attend a local Montessori school where the philosophy is that the work they do is supposed to be done and practiced in school and that home is for time with family, rest and play. Consequently, my children have no homework. So I came to this chapter with curiosity and skepticism as to where it was to lead.
What I realize after reading is that we are all generally on the same page in regards to homework. Homework that does not practice a known skill defeats the purpose of homework. Homework should be about practice allowing for information learned in school to be cemented in the brain.
I will continue to give homework. I may not give as much as I used to. I will grade what I see carefully, and make sure it's an extension of what is taught during the day.
D. Reflection
Sasha-I am not familiar with the Fred Jones Tools for Teaching book. Thank you for the recommendation. I do have a great visual way that I teach division (Woodlawn Math), but having more strategies is great. I love having another way to teach a topic so that I can try and reach all different styles of learners.
As Carrah did, one change I would make, would be to fine tune my homework letter that is sent home to parents. I would explain the different kinds of homework, the purpose, and what the best role for the parent is in regards to the homework.
After reading this chapter I have a huge reason to make sure homework is commented on in some format. I have always known, or felt, that it was important to review the homework, but it can be overwhelming. I start out gang busters early in the year, and fade as time passes. The homework piles up, and time constraints make it so something has to give, and unfortunately it is the homework pile that gets overlooked.
When I read the huge increase in the effect size graded and commented on homework, versus not graded, achieved I was surprised. It’s huge!
When grading homework became too much work for me I would frequently have the class review it together, on the overhead. They would be correcting their own homework. I am curious how this method would compare to teacher graded, as far as effect size increase. I am guessing there would be an increase, but not as large.
I think sometimes homework becomes a bother to teachers, speaking from my own experiences. Teachers then begin to assign “filler homework”, don’t comment on it, and are frustrated with homework that is not completed. Homework becomes a bother to parents too, when they are frustrated with the wrong amount of homework, and are struggling to get their child to complete it. Homework that is too easy, or too hard can make homework a bother to students as well. But I think all three parties involved would be much more willing to put the effort in when they are aware of the purpose, the benefits, and the how to. I hope that what I have learned from this chapter would help me to narrow down the homework I assign to purpose filled assignments, therefore the grading of them would be useful knowledge for myself, and the student, not just a pile of papers to get through.
I agree with Henry...I think most state standards seem like a "shot gun blast" at .....fill in the blank (curriculum area)......I'm not sure how any of these states (it's not just Oregon expect these standards to be accomplished...and without more clear guidelines on how to accomplish these goals...many teachers/districts pick and choose..determining their own priorities. I enjoyed reading how Henry accomplishes his "practice" in his labs...I've also used the timer on the Smart board and students enjoy the challenge.
Suzie...like you I struggle with the concept of homework and what the "research" says is best. Marzano is one of the top educational researchers, so I too was curious as to his team's response to homework. As you stated, I think the key is PURPOSE..there has to be a reason for the practice.
...and Kay...interesting thoughts about the what the effect size would be when students correct their own work...I'd have to look into that a little bit...I'm not sure why it wouldn't be a benefit for students to review their own work with the teachers' support...the problem is with the time constraints we all have...is the the most valuable use of our time??? I'm not sure...
C. I am a firm believer in homework practice in foreign language in order to practice grammar and make things like verb conjugation come more easily to their lips when speaking. This was very important to me when learning Spanish, so I know first hand of it’s effects. As a result, I feel that I’ve always put into practice the strategies and techniques mentioned in this chapter, so I will reflect on how I see that they have helped support my curriculum over the years. The results are easy to measure. Most of the time that students don’t do homework on a consistent basis, they fail tests. There are exceptions, of course. Some students just have a natural ability to pick things up the first time through without practice, but they are extremely rare! I find that when teaching a new grammar structure, providing guided practice in class, followed up with a homework assignment, students can produce the grammar structure with much higher accuracy the following day. Students who haven’t done the homework are often the same ones struggling in class. Lastly, while initially I provided feedback in only one way, students self-correct in class after receiving points, I have varied this routine in recent years to mix things up a bit. I usually have students compare with a classmate or read what they wrote to each other before we go over it together. This gives them the oral practice and helps them to feel less concerned with their mistakes. Many errors are eliminated before we review too, which makes the review process more quickly.
D. The only thing I can think of to change would be for me to clearly state the purpose of an assignment. While to me it may be obvious, it may just seem like “busy work” to many students.
Hi Karen - I think you picked the most important thing to change....making sure that your students understand that their is purpose behind their having to complete a homework assignment!
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