1. Strategies To Improve Homework

2. Think About Your Homework
Does it serve a purpose?
Is it relevant to student learning?
Is it used when appropriate rather than routinely.
Myths
Hard work is good for you regardless of the pointlessness of the task.
Some of my examples
If a teaching/learning experience is too enjoyable it is somehow academically suspect.
My examples—word finds, mazes (Jared’s battleship), division of 3 digit into 5 digit, connect the dots,

3. Students (and parents) should have no trouble connecting homework to classroom learning.
Identify the purpose for students
Have them state what the goal of the homework is for them.

4. Quality Homework task promote ownership when they:
Allow for choices.
Offer students an opportunity to personalize their work.
Allow students to share information about themselves or their lives.
Tap emotions, feeling, or opinions about a subject.
Allow students to create products or presentations.
Cathy Vatterott, page 104 Rethinking Homework

5. Massed vs. Distributed Practice
24 focused practices to achieve 80% competency (Marzano et.al., p. 67)
Distributed Practice
Massed Practice

6. Massed & Distributed Practice
Week 1 Week Week Week Week 5
Important Assumption:
“Learning” implies that students can recall, understand, and use information for the long term.

7. Definitions
Same-day content homework is problems similar to what was covered that day.
Distributed Content can include material from previous lessons (practice content) or content for future reference (preparation content)
Interspersal is embedding brief problems in longer sets of more challenging problems.

8. Research Says
Distributed content homework is more effective than same-day content.
Distributed content homework was even greater when more time was allowed to pass before the material was tested.
Students prefer interspersed assignments
Homework accuracy and completion improve with interspersed assignments

9. Completion Contract From Ken O’Connor page 52
Missed Work—The following work has not been handed in…
Original Due Date…
Reason—please indicate why the work is late.
Next steps—What will you now do to get this work completed?
New Due Date…
Student, parent and teacher signature

10. Homework Suggestions
Do as many of these problems as you can in 15 minutes. Bring those you were able to complete.
Find out why students’ work is late or incomplete and assist them.
Is there something that I should know that I don’t know?
Establish consequences (not penalties) for late work such as
After school follow up
Documentation

11. Due Date Considerations
Work is sometimes part of a sequence and must be submitted before marked work is returned - if this is formative it should not be included in the grade
Teachers have to have a reasonable workload - the best approach is to record an incomplete
Due dates are often arbitrary - keep any penalty to a minimum - provide information separately about when work is submitted. “He scored a 95%, but turns in work late”. This provides good information

12. Choice Board
Create a Tic-Tack-Toe board with assignments in each box. Students are able to choose which assignments they want to complete to make Tic-Tack-Toe or other variations allowed by the teacher.
This allows student choice which increases student motivation.

13. Choice Boards
Enables students to choose tasks, practice a skill and demonstrate and depth of knowledge.
Allows for differentiation of instruction related to interest or readiness level.
Teachers need to carefully design the boards to ensure a good experience regardless of which “path” is chosen.

14. Collect
Teach
Draw
Judge
Photograph
Demonstrate
Graph
Create
Dramatize
Survey
Forecast
Build
Memorize
Write
Compare

15. Interdisciplinary Assignment
Provides students an opportunity to create an assignment to meet requirement in 2 or more classes.
Form includes
Proposed new assignment
Assignments that are being combined
Signatures of cooperating teachers
New dew date

16. Choice Ask kids, “What can I do to help you complete more homework?”
Get input and ideas from your students.
Have students create the homework assignment. “Your mission is to design a homework activity, task, or assignment that will improve your understanding of the concept.”

17. Other Homework Help Older students tutoring younger students
more advanced students tutoring less advanced students
Internet resources
Worked Out Examples--Research shows that providing worked examples for actual assigned homework problems is beneficial.
Decrease in “wrong learning”
Instead of “How do I start?” students ask “Why did they take that step?”

18. Math Strategies Instead of Sudoku do a Ken-Ken.
Instead of 10 problems do a couple and write an explanation of what was done.

19. Lotus Chart Fill in the squares around Feedback and Homework
Choice boards