Homework – Size Matters
November 23, 2007 pm30 10:09 pm
I have a homework policy. I give daily homework assignments. And they are all, more or less, the same size.
- Tuesday’s assignment and Friday’s (weekend) assignments? Same size.
- Monday’s assignment and pre-Xmas break assignment? Same size.
- Every day, just the normal 20 – 45 minute piece of work.
But this long weekend, I gave no homework, just time to catch up (if need be). I’m grading, but they have time off. I won’t do it every break or long weekend, but once in a while, it’s nice.
Do you give homework over long weekends and breaks? Are your break assignments bigger than your regular assignments?
And for students, parents, administrators, college instructors, anyone else, what do you think?
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JD2718 
I didn’t give any homework this weekend. I told my kids to spend time with their families, relax, …. and come back ready to work on Monday!
Teaching college, I tend to have end-of-the week due dates, so I can be nice and give the panicked extensions over the weekend… The organized get the weekend off.
I gave my AP class an assignment. The other ones have the time off. The good ones in that class don’t need the extra practice and the ones that need the extra practice won’t due it anyways.
Sigh.
School policies override all else. Never ever any homework on weekends or holidays or vacations. This is their time to be children. And we have some staff who tell us that research says that poverty and parenting issues make homework irrelevant. We would be grading their home life, not their ability in the content area.
Reading homework is every night (read something for 20-30 minutes depending on grade level; no accountability)
Mathematics: Tuesday and Thursday nights only; 20-30 minutes of work depending on grade level. There is accountability. Sort of. Because if I don’t allow them to make up work they never did because of a soccer game or something, I get phone calls. But this year I am sticking to my guns. Make-ups allowed for little fifth graders and sixth. Not for seventh and eighth graders. I began extra-credit assignments attached to every single homework assignment and it is actually working. I can’t believe it, but it is. Homework is being done. Extra credit is done by about 50% of kids. And nobody can complain about no makeup work. They had tons of chances to earn points. I hate “earning points.” The type of homework, which research shows (at least the research I read) that says that problem solving tasks, higher level thinking and higher difficulty is better? Forget about it. In a 45 minute class you can’t effectively review that stuff. So it is basic skill practice (which they need anyhow): quickly and easily reviewed the next day.
Science: same as math, different nights.
Social Studies: I have no idea.
At the college at which I teach: tradition has it that homework is not collected in math classes. We meet only one night a week because we are so rural and distances are so great. But we review problems that gave anybody problem. If they don’t do it, it is *so* obvious: no questions, no confusion. Failure on the midterm and/or final. Good policy for me because I don’t have hours of grading, which I hate. But I test weekly so I am able to see how everybody is doing.
I have no control over the public middle school policy. So I can’t get upset or I’d be nuts.
Oh. I almost am.
Homework is not worth my time or fretting anymore.
It’s 2 AM. Why am I typing about homework policies?
;0)
As a student I don’t mind homework as long as it is interesting. The assignments that have you just doing 20 or so of whatever type of problem we did in class doesn’t teach me anything, if I don’t understand those types of problems there are practice ones in most books and most books have answers in the back. I would much rather get a more in depth explore on your own type of assignment that I can actually learn something while completing it.
Our K-8 private school has a pretty unusual homework policy which I like (as a parent). K-5 has virtually no homework, except studying spelling words, for the most part. Middle school has 1 hour per night, Monday – Thursday. They are supposed to do their independent reading to fill the time if their other work doesn’t fill the hour, which it usually doesn’t. They are also supposed to stop working if the work takes more than 1 hour. They don’t give any homework over the weekends, and likewise, none over holiday breaks.
My oldest is a freshman in the public high school. They normally have homework over the weekends. My son was pleasantly surprised to have this holiday weekend almost off, with just one test to study for in Science.
As a parent, I like it when teachers give the kids a break for the holidays. I think we should be able to have some family time once in a while.
Part of the culture of our school is a generally heavy homework load. I am guessing that 2-3 hours per night is typical. It is the expectation. Every parent and student knows this before arriving…
Within that though, there is some room for flexibility. We banned, as a school, but informally, project work/major assignments over breaks. I do not use the weekend to assign anything more than I would during the week. And occasionally I do not assign for a weekend or holiday (note, we also always feel great pressure from state exams pulling us in the opposite direction).
I need a fresh homework post. But one item MathMom raises: my assignments are designed for 20 – 45 minutes, usually 4 times, sometimes 3 times per week. But I instruct students to write down the time they start, and stop if they reach an hour. (doesn’t count if they are IM’ing while ‘working’)
More than an hour I can’t see them staying productive. I also ask them to tell me if it takes less than 10 minutes, because then I’ve cheated them out of adequate practice. They snicker, but I say it with a straight face, and mean it. And know what? Once or twice a term I’ll get comments about an assignment being too brief.
Rob, my students choose whether to do a fistful of routine practice problems, or a smaller number of your sort of challenging problems. That goes for every assignment, except pre-test review. Seems to work fairly well.
JD, my high school son does about 3 hours per night. I don’t know if that homework load is typical throughout the school, but it does seem typical of honors students. I expect it will be less next semester when PE and French replace Math and Science for him.
I love what you do with offering either routine practice or more challenging problems for homework. Kudos to you for coming up with the alternative assignments every day! I only ever had one math teacher do that, in my senior year.
I do all the homework assignments I assign first. If they take me more than 5 minutes, I shorten them. Five minutes for me should be 15-20 for them. Too much becomes useless.
When kids complain about hw on the weekend I tell them that in years past I gave 3 hw on Friday–one for Fri, one for Sat and one for Sun. We can vote on 3 or 1 if they wish. One assignment usually wins.
PoT,
it depends on the topic. Geometry, 2.5:1 or 3:1, depending on whether it is proofy. Algebra? Could be 5:1 or greater.
Instead of guessing, I ask them every once in a while, and tweek the length. I also find that class to class or year to year there are some differences.
Mathmom, I only differentiate the assignments this way in freshman algebra. We start after the first (of 6) marking periods. Homework is divided into sections A (routine practice) B (core – standard problems, but slightly more challenging) and C (challenge). Students can choose A+B or B+C.
My colleague has two classes. In one almost everyone does AB. In the other she has a group that consistently does BC. Me? My fun class has about a half who flip back and forth depending on the topic. I like that – that kids have the flexibility and the choice, and don’t get slotted.
So if every class gave 45 mins of homework a day, let’s say five classes a day, that’s almost four hours. After a long day it might be a little hard to concentrate on several hours of homework. It’s almost sure to promote a get-it-done attitude (as opposed to a let’s-learn-it attitude).
Say you cut that back to 20 mins per class. Now we’re back to a little over an hour and a half. Much more palatable.
Just pointing out that where you fall on the 20-45 range can have a pretty big impact.
Our classes meet only four days each week, so the total is a bit less. And as far as the range, I do aim for the middle of it. Today I polled my algebra class on last night’s assignment, 15 – 45, mostly 20-25. Maybe a tad short, but they were well-prepared for today’s key lesson on breaking the middle (which seems to have gone quite well).