Weekly Digest #5: Assigning Quality Homework
We recently featured a guest blog post about homework. In this week's digest, we collected 5 resources addressing the quality of homework assignments. Some discuss the research behind providing homework, and what the research tells us about making homework assignments useful for students. Others are blog posts written by teachers discussing their own approach to homework. All five provide tips for how to assign homework that benefits students.
1) Is homework a necessary evil? by Kristen Weir of the American Psychological Association's (APA) Monitor on Psychology.
This piece discusses what the research says about homework, and provides a few recommendations such as keeping to the 10-minute-per-grade rule. Read, too, this press release from the APA covering one of the research articles. The researchers actually concluded that 70 minutes of homework is too long for adolescents.
2) Assigning Homework: How to Create Effective Homework by Holly Korby
Stressing the importance of making homework smarter, not longer or shorter. In this piece, the author discusses how to implement evidence-based practice into homework assignments while keeping students motivated enough to actually do their homework.
3) How to Assign Homework for Great Results by Julia Thompson, @TeacherAdvice
Image from http://juliagthompson.blogspot.com
This teacher of 30 years provides tips on how to assign homework that promotes student success. This piece was written as a guest post for Teaching Community. Julia also runs her own blog.
4) How I Use Weekly Homework Packets in my Classroom by Alexis of Laugh Eat Learn.
Alexis talks about changing the negatives regarding homework into positives, and her personal evolution of assigning homework in this guest blog post (on iTeachThird).
Image from linked post
5) I Hate Homework. I Assign it Anyway. By Jessica Lahey @jesslahey
Image from Twitter profile linked above
Quality homework is important. This English teacher and mother asked her students if they felt homework was useful. Many said, “If I didn’t have homework, I don’t think I’d do very well.” But, they all stressed that some homework helped them more than others. So, she keeps setting quality homework, but always asks herself whether she feels it would be worth her own son’s time.
