Designing Homework That Leads to Learning, by Amber Gross, English Teacher at Mt. Juliet High School

We all know that homework is inevitable in our classrooms, but as educators, it is our job to make sure that every assignment we give is essential to learning.  There are many things that we can do to make sure that every assignment given leads to learning (not just padding the gradebook).  I have found that by asking myself, “What is really important about this unit?” and “What do I REALLY need to my students to know about when they finish?” helps me create some neat and essential assignments.

            

As an English I teacher, we have required units of study that include Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird and Shakespeare’s “Romeo & Juliet”.  Neither of these pieces, in particular, are short or easy for the kids.  In order to keep my students from becoming overwhelmed, I try to focus on a couple of elements that will help my students after they leave my class but will also assist their learning in the moment.  I try to create assignments that will help improve skill as well as keep their attention (and think outside of the box). 

For example, when we read “Romeo & Juliet”, I had my students complete a single major writing assignment at the end of their reading that was completed entirely outside of class.  I change it up year to year to see if I can come up with something bigger and better.  This year, instead of having students write a typical “Research Paper”, I had them analyze one major character and determine whether they thought their character was a Hero or a Villain (a twist on a colleague’s assignment that she used in World Studies in the past).  They had to cite textual evidence from the play to support their opinions and have valid claims – not just, “Romeo was a villain because he killed Tybalt.”  They had to explain why they thought Romeo’s killing of Tybalt was villainous and malicious (which can be perceived in many different ways – Did he act out of rage?  Did he go there only to kill Tybalt?  What previous actions led to Tybalt’s death?) in his killing of Tybalt.  They had to provide textual evidence in the form of quotes (with in-text citations) from the play to support what they said (which we all know will be HUGE for TN Ready) and complete a Works Cited page.  My students all said that they enjoyed this writing assignment because it really made them think about how they felt about a character and, for some, it made them realize that a reader’s feeling towards a character can change throughout the reading.  This single assignment hit multiple standards and was a quality assignment.  It took their thinking to a whole different level.

MiddleWeb.com put together a series of articles that were, “adapted from Rick Wormeli’s seminal book about teaching in the middle grades, Day One & Beyond: Practical Matters for New Middle Level Teachers (.”  The following suggestions, from Part 2 of MiddleWeb’s series “Smart Homework: Can We Get Real,” can help to make sure that your assignments are going to be assigned for quality, not quantity.  While this series was written to help (primariy) middle school teachers, these suggestions can definitely help all levels. 

1. Give students a clear picture of the final product. 

This doesn’t mean everything is structured for them, or that there aren’t multiple pathways to the same high quality result. There’s room for student personalities to be expressed. Students clearly know what is expected, however. A clear picture sets purpose for doing the assignment. Priming the brain to focus on particular aspects of the learning experience helps the brain process the information for long-term retention. Setting purpose for homework assignments has an impact on learning and the assignment’s completion rate, as research by Marzano and others confirms.

2. Incorporate a cause into the assignment.

Middle level students are motivated when they feel they are righting a wrong. They are very sensitive to justice and injustice. As a group, they are also very nurturing of those less fortunate than them. Find a community or personal cause for which students can fight fairly and incorporate your content and skills in that good fight— students will be all over the assignment.

  

3. Give students a real audience.

There’s an audience for the students’ work and it isn’t always us, the teachers. For example, when students work on something that uses a lot of technology – whether it’s a PowerPoint talk over the internet, a project blog, or Twitter and other social media, it’s not the technology that’s motivating—it’s the fact that there will be an audience other than the teacher. Somebody will see this, they realize. “What will they think of it?” they ask themselves. So how can you create real audiences for homework?

4. Incorporate people whom students admire in their assignments.

Students are motivated when asked to share what they know and feel about these folks. We are a society of heroes, and young adolescents are interested in talking about and becoming heroic figures.

5. Allow choices, as appropriate.

Allow students to do the even-numbered or odd-numbered problems, or allow them to choose from three prompts, not just one. Let them choose the word that best describes the political or scientific process. Let them identify their own diet and its effects on young adolescent bodies. Let them choose to work with partners or individually. How about allowing them to choose from several multiple-intelligence based tasks? If they are working in ways that are comfortable, they are more likely to do the work. By making the choice, they have upped their ownership of the task.

6. Incorporate cultural products into the assignment.

If students have to use magazines, television shows, foods, sports equipment, and other products they already use, they are likely to do the work. The brain loves to do tasks in contexts with which it is familiar.

7. Allow students to collaborate in determining how homework will be assessed.

If they help design the criteria for success, such as when they create the rubric for an assignment, they “own” the assignment. It comes off as something done by them, not to them. They also internalize the expectations—another way for them to have clear targets. With some assignments we can post well-done versions from previous years (or ones we’ve created for this purpose) and ask students to analyze the essential characteristics that make these assignments exemplary. Students who analyze such assignments will compare those works with their own and internalize the criteria for success, referencing the criteria while doing the assignment, not just when it’s finished.

8. Avoid “fluff” assignments.

For example, assigning students to create a life-sized “dummy” of a person found in a novel (or in history, in science, in math, etc.) doesn’t further understanding. It’s a lot of coloring, cutting, wadding paper, and stapling (or stuffing old clothing with newspaper) for very little return. Make sure there is a clear connection to curriculum, not just something that would look cool when displayed in the classroom. Students will figure out how empty these assignments are very quickly. They’ll see homework as serving little or no purpose other than to give them something to do, which sinks motivation like a big chunk of granite.

9. Spruce up your prompts.

Don’t ask students to repeatedly answer questions or summarize. Try some of these openers instead: Decide between, argue against, Why did ______ argue for, compare, contrast, plan, classify, retell ______ from the point of view of ______, Organize, build, interview, predict, categorize, simplify, deduce, formulate, blend, suppose, invent, imagine, devise, compose, combine, rank, recommend, defend, choose.

10. Have everyone turn in a paper.

In her classic, Homework: A New Direction (1992), Neila Connors reminded teachers to have all students turn in a paper, regardless of whether they did the assignment. If a student doesn’t have his homework, he writes on the paper the name of the assignment and why he didn’t do it. I’ve had students add their parents’ telephone number so I could call home and share what the student said about his homework. Calling parents usually results in a terrific homework completion record for students—at least for a few weeks. An added dividend is that classmates don’t get as many opportunities to see who didn’t do their homework—a reputation to avoid.

11. Do not give homework passes.

I used to do this; then I realized how much it minimized the importance of homework. It’s like saying, “Oh, well, the homework really wasn’t that important to your learning. You’ll learn just as well without it.” Homework should be so productive for students that missing it is like missing the lesson itself.

12. Integrate homework with other subjects.

One assignment can count in two classes. Such assignments are usually complex enough to warrant the dual grade and it’s a way to work smarter, not harder, for both students and teachers. Teachers can split the pile of papers to grade, then share the grades with each other, and students don’t have homework piling up in multiple classes. There are times when every teacher on the team assigns a half-hour assignment, and so do the elective or encore class teachers. This could mean three to four hours of homework for the student, which is inappropriate for young adolescents.

13. Occasionally, let students identify what homework would be most effective.

Sometimes the really creative assignments are the ones that students design themselves. After teaching a lesson, ask your students what it would take to practice the material so well it became clearly understood. Many of the choices will be rigorous and very appropriate.

Consider your true goal with homework:  learning that moves into long-term memory, right? Cramming is the stuff of partial memories to be parroted for a quiz that week, then dumped in the brain’s recycling bin, never to be seen again.

This is one reason I always recommend that, as a basic premise, we avoid Monday morning quizzes and weekend or holiday homework assignments. Sure, there will be exceptions when long-term projects come due. But if we are really about teaching so that students learn and not about appearing rigorous and assigning tasks to show that we have taught, then we’ll carefully consider all the effects of our homework expectations. Our students will be more productive at school for having healthier lives at home.

(http://www.middleweb.com/16815/smart-homework-13-ways-make-meaningful/)