A new look at homework

Homework.

It’s debatable about who gets more frustrated with homework- the students, the parents or the teacher.

It is the nature of today’s classrooms that some students are finished their work before some have even started. Each day, some students have diligently completed and handed in all their work while others did not finish or cannot find theirs.

As a parent, I can relate to questioning, “Are you sure there’s no homework?” I’m torn between wanting to make sure my son is prepared for highschool, and yet also having the freedom to participate in sports… and just be a kid. We’ve spent the hours and hours at the kitchen table in tears. I admit to just giving my son the vocabulary answers, or grabbing the pencil crayons and colouring the title page just to get it over with!

This is one of the most debatable and inconsistent areas amongst intermediate teachers. Homework is widely disputed and research supports both sides of the argument. What is clear, however, is that meaningful and purposeful homework can help students learn important skills to promote academic success.

My philosophy about homework is that it should be to practice and strengthen the skills and lessons we are learning in class. The school day goes by so quickly and we don’t always get the time we need to practice and reinforce those skills. Homework should be meaningful and definitely not frustrating.

·      You can expect that we will assign homework for work that is not completed in a reasonable time during class.

·      We will also occasionally assign long-term projects that will need work out of class time to complete.

·      Students that are organized and productive in class will find they have very little assigned homework.

I’d like to propose a new way of thinking about daily homework. Education is no longer a one size fits all system. All of our students have different strengths and needs. This includes what they need outside of school as well!

What if homework was individualized? What if it was chosen with meaning and purpose- and connected to a goal?

What if parents, teachers and students worked together to create a home plan that meets the child’s personal needs?

You know your child’s strengths, stamina and schedule. If your child is an avid reader, it’s probably not necessary assign home reading for 20 mins/ night. If your child has difficulty staying organized, this is one of the most important areas to focus on to help them be successful. If your child is very busy with sports and is strong academically, perhaps he/she would prefer to work on a community service project and develop his/her leadership skills.

Let’s turn homework on its head and let you and your child decide what it might look like. We can support, guide and provide resources to help. I firmly believe that student ownership in their learning goes a long way!

Parents, when you read the following areas below, take note of what stands out as an area you would like to see your child improve in.

Choose 1. (Or 2 at the most.) In Grade 6, these are the skills we feel are important:

·      Quick recall of addition and subtraction facts to 20, multiplication and division facts to 12 x 12

·      Two hand typing with relative efficiency

·      Reading for enjoyment and understanding

·      Developing organization and planning skills

·      Developing writing skills

·      Improving spelling and vocabulary

·      Physical activity for enjoyment and exercise

·      Developing coding skills

·      Learning life skills such as cooking and building/ construction

·      Develop leadership skills and compassion for others.

We have many resources we can suggest to help foster these skills.

I sat down with my son and created a plan for first term. (Practice what you preach, right?) He is reluctant to work on these things- but I knew I was on the right track when I had buy-in from him. He was able to answer honestly about an area he needed to work on. When I showed him some of the writing prompts I was thinking about, he got a little twinkle in his eye and admitted that it actually could be fun. 

The prompt, by the way, was "Imagine you are 80 years old. Write a rant about kids these days."

Here is our plan:

 

A New Hope

Kudos to those of you  who caught the Star Wars reference in my title.  My husband would be proud.

I was very encouraged the other day while working with a student teacher. I am mentoring her through the incredibly difficult year of learning basically everything there is to know about teaching. Of course we learn and grow so much over our careers, but besides your first year, student teaching is one of the most intense times of growth. At least it was for me. And the worst part is, not only are you learning how to do it, you are being constantly monitored and judged at the same time.

This brings me to a thought someone planted in my head a long time ago, and I've never forgotten:
It is very difficult to be a mentor and an evaluator at the same time.

Think about it.

This is the flaw of the student teaching program, being highly dependent on the teacher you are placed with. Some are mentors, some are evaluators, and very few are both.

The first thing I told Emily (aforementioned student teacher) is that your student teaching year is one where you are supposed to LEARN. You don't have to be perfect at everything at the start (or ever after that!)  She compared herself to her classmates, many of whom taught overseas or as an EA in a classroom for many years. So many of us hold the expectation that we have to enter our student teaching year already knowing everything. You don't. But you do have to be able to take chances, reflect on your practice and be constantly learning and evolving.

So this brings me to my blog post title- and why I was encouraged with the new generation of teachers coming up through the system.
Emily and I were looking at differentiated instruction in math. We talked about how it is important to assess your students before you teach them, to see where the students are. For a lot of (ahem) older teachers like myself, even this is a novel concept. It is not just giving them a pre-test worksheet and then doing things the same- it is a whole paradigm shift of how we teach.
For Emily, it seemed this was common practice in her university studies. (1 point for UBC!)

After assessing students, there are many different ways to address their needs. We talked about guided math, small group instruction, games for fluency practice, and more. Then after lessons and, of course, units, there is more assessment of their learning.

Ok, now I'm getting to the exciting part.

She asked a very simple, but profound question. It separates the older generation from the newer generation of teachers (which has nothing to do with age or years teaching, but philosophy).

She asked, "So what do you do with the students who still didn't get the concept?"

For so many years, we have been evaluators. Teachers, yes, but in the end, we are judgers, putting kids into Good, Satisfactory or Needs Improvement. Gets it or doesn't get it.
What if we didn't stop until they did?

I know, we all immediately go to the logistical frustration/ impossibility of this concept. That is, if you are looking at it with the same lens you have always had, and teaching the way we always have.

NO WONDER kids get so behind by the later grades- we've moved on and stamped a "didn't get it" on their report card. I am the teacher who works with the struggling students. The ones who think they are not smart, and yes, the ones who have been left behind. I applaud Surrey District for taking away some of the pressure to label kids through letter grades. What if we were more cheerleader and less of a judge? What about leading them through their learning where they are at?

I believe this is where education is headed- what all those buzz words like differentiation and student-directed learning are trying to say.

Even if you don't agree with how it can work, it's an interesting conversation.