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No More Mindless Homework
While schools around the nation reconsider homework policies, teachers, students, and parents continue to ride the wave of either too much, too little, too easy, or too hard homework assignments. In the expectation that children complete homework, sometimes they are assigned mindless "busy work." Kathy Collins and Janine Bempechat take on the stormy topic of homework by re-focusing the conversation from "to assign or not to assign" to how we can design engaging homework that harnesses children's interests and fosters their learning. "Janine and I give you a research-based rationale and a more expansive view of homework that enables you to envision meaningful alternatives to worksheets, packets, and tasks that simply occupy children's afterschool time," Kathy writes. As Janine notes, "More than just 'getting it done,' homework can be an opportunity to foster positive beliefs about learning, establish meaningful habits of mind, and forge an academic identity."
With strategies for adding choice, differentiation, relevance, and authentic feedback into homework assignments, you'll discover how to reimagine homework in ways that promote lifelong learning habits in your students.
With strategies for adding choice, differentiation, relevance, and authentic feedback into homework assignments, you'll discover how to reimagine homework in ways that promote lifelong learning habits in your students.
96 pages, Paperback
Published March 29, 2017
18 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 29, 2017
You can't go wrong with a professional text when you spot Kathy Collins and Ellin Oliver Keene's names on the cover. This skinny book has given me a lot to mull over this summer.
Things that made me go hmmmmm...(found in various parts of the book and not in chronological order)-----------------------------------------------------------------------
"Homework is associated with blind compliance in meaningless tasks. That is not what we're arguing for here, but rather a reimagining of what homework can be."
"...Indeed all manner of adult work demands persistence in the face of boredom, difficulty and frustration...Sustained effort and persistence are learning virtues, as important to achievement across domains as innate talent" (Duckworth et al. 2007).
"No teacher would wish for children's well-being to suffer as a result of inappropriately demanding homework assignments."
"When the assignment is completed, family members indicate whether or not the child needs more help with this task, reflect on the assignment, and sign the homework sheet" (Epstein and Van Voothis 2001).
"...teachers also appreciate hearing directly from parents when homework is experienced as overly demanding and welcome opportunities to work in concert with parents to develop homework strategies that are sensitive to individual students' learning needs" (Gilliland 2007).
"...reports in the media of overwhelmed students and understandably distraught parents. An unreasonably demanding homework load is likely to affect students' mental health, undermine learning, and interfere with family time."
"Time is always an issue for classroom teachers, and it's hard to cover everything within a school day and across the year."
"...teachers' reputations are often based on the community's perceptions about their homework. When parents share their opinions about good teachers versus mediocre teachers, the quantity and quality of homework can be important criteria used to inform their viewpoints."
"It's not always possible to account for how much time individual children spend on their homework, which is often determined by their caregiver. An assignment might take one child fifteen minutes to finish but another child might end up spending an hour on it, even though the teacher's instructions said to spend no more than twenty minutes on the task."
"Malcom Gladwell's book, Outliers, The Story of Success, especially the part about the 10,000 Hour Rule, which suggests that it takes a lot of deliberate practice to master a task or activity." <-such as...reading...<--my words inserted by the arrow marks
"The elementary school day schedule, with its time constraints, curricular demands, increased testing and test preparation, as well as special classes and events, may not always offer children enough minutes or blocks of uninterrupted time for extended reading in school, so most teachers assign daily reading homework in efforts to increase the time children spend reading each day."
"Although assignments from a teacher may get a reluctant reader to read at home, research suggests that completing tasks due to extrinsic motivation may be a shallow and short-term victory. (Pink 2009) It's important that teachers work with reluctant readers and their families to figure out how to spark children's intrinsic motivation to read outside of school, by tapping into the child's passions and interests, vulnerabilities, and strengths and to find ways to make reading at home pleasurable."
"If you assign too much homework, you risk complaints, if not outright misery, from parents, students, and-because you feel the need to give feedback on all that homework-yourself. If you assign too little homework, you risk being seen as 'soft' and lacking in rigor and-because homework can feel like it helps 'cover' the curriculum, feeling further behind."
Things that made me go hmmmmm...(found in various parts of the book and not in chronological order)-----------------------------------------------------------------------
"Homework is associated with blind compliance in meaningless tasks. That is not what we're arguing for here, but rather a reimagining of what homework can be."
"...Indeed all manner of adult work demands persistence in the face of boredom, difficulty and frustration...Sustained effort and persistence are learning virtues, as important to achievement across domains as innate talent" (Duckworth et al. 2007).
"No teacher would wish for children's well-being to suffer as a result of inappropriately demanding homework assignments."
"When the assignment is completed, family members indicate whether or not the child needs more help with this task, reflect on the assignment, and sign the homework sheet" (Epstein and Van Voothis 2001).
"...teachers also appreciate hearing directly from parents when homework is experienced as overly demanding and welcome opportunities to work in concert with parents to develop homework strategies that are sensitive to individual students' learning needs" (Gilliland 2007).
"...reports in the media of overwhelmed students and understandably distraught parents. An unreasonably demanding homework load is likely to affect students' mental health, undermine learning, and interfere with family time."
"Time is always an issue for classroom teachers, and it's hard to cover everything within a school day and across the year."
"...teachers' reputations are often based on the community's perceptions about their homework. When parents share their opinions about good teachers versus mediocre teachers, the quantity and quality of homework can be important criteria used to inform their viewpoints."
"It's not always possible to account for how much time individual children spend on their homework, which is often determined by their caregiver. An assignment might take one child fifteen minutes to finish but another child might end up spending an hour on it, even though the teacher's instructions said to spend no more than twenty minutes on the task."
"Malcom Gladwell's book, Outliers, The Story of Success, especially the part about the 10,000 Hour Rule, which suggests that it takes a lot of deliberate practice to master a task or activity." <-such as...reading...<--my words inserted by the arrow marks
"The elementary school day schedule, with its time constraints, curricular demands, increased testing and test preparation, as well as special classes and events, may not always offer children enough minutes or blocks of uninterrupted time for extended reading in school, so most teachers assign daily reading homework in efforts to increase the time children spend reading each day."
"Although assignments from a teacher may get a reluctant reader to read at home, research suggests that completing tasks due to extrinsic motivation may be a shallow and short-term victory. (Pink 2009) It's important that teachers work with reluctant readers and their families to figure out how to spark children's intrinsic motivation to read outside of school, by tapping into the child's passions and interests, vulnerabilities, and strengths and to find ways to make reading at home pleasurable."
"If you assign too much homework, you risk complaints, if not outright misery, from parents, students, and-because you feel the need to give feedback on all that homework-yourself. If you assign too little homework, you risk being seen as 'soft' and lacking in rigor and-because homework can feel like it helps 'cover' the curriculum, feeling further behind."
March 6, 2023
I really enjoyed this book, however, I was expecting more practical examples, specifically for middle and high school students. Regardless, this book helped me get a more nuanced look into homework.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews