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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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5 comments:
C. It is hard to find time to grade and comment on homework, but it is something I would like to take a little more time with. Currently, we do weekly homework packets, and I find grading them so cumbersome. I often put it off, then have a couple weeks of grading to do at once. Next year, I would like to switch back to daily homework assignments, then I will grade them right away and be able to comment on them. Also, I can follow through the same day if a child does not finish homework, or doesn't understand the assignment. It is too late in the year to change the process we are using now.
D. I find this chapter interesting for a couple different reasons. Teaching 2nd grade, you need parent involvement at home for students to be able to read directions and so forth. However, you do have some parents, as the chapter mentioned, who do not support homework. Also, the language differences become an issue as well.
On the other hand, the teachers I have worked with, don't put a lot of emphasis on homework. I know teachers who would rather not assign homework, but feel the pressure from parents to have homework is there. So I feel like there is at least two sides to the issue.
As I mentioned above, I find homework a challenge sometimes, but at this young of age, I feel it is more about responsibility of doing the homework and returning it (except reading should be done every night, no matter what). It is training for the older grades, when there is more homework and it is graded more strictly. I would like to go back to a homework system I can manage better and give the children more feedback. I guess I have to work on that for next school year!
Chapter 5 - Kristi Richards
C. I am currently in a position where I do not have to assign homework. Before, I’ve always taught primary grades. As Katy mentioned in her post, homework in the younger grades is impacted greatly by parent involvement. It is difficult to build the responsibility of accomplishing a small portion of homework, when the parent is not willing/able to support the child.
In my previous school, I worked with a majority of students who were ELL and/or lived in poverty. Many of the students had single parents who often worked in the evenings or parents who could not read English. These are all obstacles to homework. I chose to make the majority of my homework reading based. I had a reading log in different languages, and I was able to talk with parents at conferences about making reading at home a priority. For my first graders, if parents had any extra time to work with their child, I wanted it to be in reading. For math homework, I would send home a sheet of work on a specific night that built on the skill we had practiced that day. This allowed students to be more independent in completing the work. When I worked with second graders, I sent home a communication journal, where the students and I wrote back and forth to each other. This way, the students could be independent, and I was forced to provide feedback.
D. I find homework to be a tricky topic. As a classroom teacher, I constantly had to step back and reflect on my objective for sending work home. I appreciated the emphasis in the chapter on homework having an identified purpose. It shouldn’t just be busy work. The authors also stress the need for homework to be an opportunity for students to prepare for an upcoming topic or to practice a skill that has already been taught. As you think about the gradual release model, students should have opportunities to practice a taught skill independently. Homework allows teachers to provide some of this time, since much of the classroom time is spent on instruction and guided support. If I went back into the classroom, I would need to work on clearly stating the purpose of the homework to my students and providing feedback.
Thanks Katy and Kristi. Homework is a tricky topic…I think especially in the primary grades when as you both stated, so much supported is needed from home. It becomes easier in the intermediate and upper grades when students are more independent (let’s hope!). My bottom line for homework is: “if you are asking your children to spend time on it at home (or in school)…it sure better have purpose!” and if it is important enough to ask them to complete a task, it warrants a response of sorts from you. As a classroom teacher, I eventually became VERY picky about what I’d send home because I was no longer willing to spend hours of my valuable time correcting “workshits”…excuse my language….when my time was better spent planning quality instruction for my kids. Should kids read every night? YES! (I’m definitely biased as a reading coach..) Will there be some math practice or work on a project of sorts, sure. Just make sure it has purpose and that you will follow through in some way.
Sarah Barnett
C. I used the "charting accuracy and speed" approach in helping my first graders become fluent in solving addition and subtraction facts. Starting with lower levels and proceeding to harder equations as they mastered each level, the students solved as many equations as they could in one minute. (This was done in class.) Everyone started at the same level, but as the process continued, students were working across the levels, depending on each students mastery. I found it to be very effective, and it had great student buy-in. The children loved the whole nature of mastering each level, in the same way they talk about video games. Another practice I am using from this chapter is "designing practice assignments that focus on specific elements of a complex skill or purpose." Every week we have a new "fluency poem." The purpose of the poem or song is to develop fluency, so we read (or sing) the poem over and over again. The children take the poem home as well, where they are to practice it every evening. At the end of the week, each child has a chance to read (or sing) the poem to his/her reading group teacher. Most children really work hard on this and take great pride in the accomplishment.
D. Homework in first grade is an interesting topic. Even the research cited in this chapter only went as low as 2nd grade. My homework policy focuses on reading. Every week each student gets a reading log with that week's fluency poem/song on the back. Parents are to read to their child daily, and with the child, fill out and initial the reading log daily. As the year progresses, some students begin reading independently, reducing the parent's role to merely initialing the reading log and poem practice record. Many of our families are in poverty, and many of our families are not native English speakers, so that does present challenges. Parent and child reading in early childhood is so important to developing reading readiness, but we cannot assume that children arrive in first grade having had that experience. It is for that reason that our first grade team focuses our homework policy on giving children that experience. I am a big believer in guided practice in the classroom. Pages 70 and 71 in this chapter reinforce my approach to time spent on practice, and focusing practice based on studen needs.
C. One technique I employed was to "design practice assignments that focus on specific elements of a complex skill or process." When my math students were struggling with solving percentage story problems, I assigned them to write their own story problems and translate them into mathematical equations. We didn't worry about solving them on the homework, but practicing the skill of translating ideas into mathematical concepts was benefical for many students.
D. Something I understand better about homework and practice is the number of repetitions it takes to achieve 80% competency. I recognize now that I've been far too guilty of rushing this part of it, without allowing the time for "shaping."
As a result, I will attempt to replicate the Japanese model of slowly walking through a few examples. I will also do better on commenting on homework. The sheer volume of it makes this infeasible a lot of times, especially when I weigh commenting on problems vs. planning new content, but the research clearly shows that commenting is an important step.
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