Why Are you Assigning Homework?
Most teachers say that it is for independent practice. To help their students master the skills and concepts taught in math class. To provide students an opportunity to practice the problems, wrestle with the material, and learn from their mistakes.
All of that is great! But it’s not what’s happening. Instead, students are not doing the work, they’re cheating, going through the motions, and they definitely are not making mistakes and learning from them.
Four Reasons Why Your Homework isn’t Working
One – They’re Not doing it
A handful (or the majority) of your students don’t do their homework. So they did not benefit from the assignment. In fact, their grade was damaged, so the homework actually hurt them.
As teachers, we often forget how busy our students are, especially some of our disadvantaged students who are going home to tough environments, taking care of family members, or working. So many aren’t doing it due to time constraints.
Others aren’t completing the homework because they don’t know how to do the work (at least they’re not cheating!) Though, if they had cheated, at least they might get a good grade instead of a guaranteed zero.
Two – Many Cheated on It
Cheating has never been easier. Students can take pictures on their smart phones and send it to their friends in a matter of seconds. Or they can download an app onto their phone, point their camera at the problem, and it will not only solve the problem but give them all of the steps. These students also are not benefiting from the work.
Three – No Feedback
Those students who did the work, and did not cheat, got no feedback when they were doing the practice problems.
We know that immediate feedback is the most beneficial thing you can provide your students to help them master the concept being taught.
Immediate feedback is required for the practice to be meaningful – this way the learner gains confidence that they are doing the work correctly, or learns from her mistakes. But without immediate feedback, the student can doesn’t learn from their mistakes, nor gain confidence as they correctly do the work. Thus, it has little to no value.
Four – Wrong Motive
As evidenced in Peter Liljedahl’s book, Building Thinking Classrooms, students are doing their homework for the wrong reason. They do it for the teacher, not for themselves.
Teachers claim they give students homework so that they can practice the skill, but students in truth are doing it to fulfill a requirement and to get a good grade, not to practice, learn from their mistakes, and find out what they need more help on (teachers’ intended goals). This is why they cheat, take shortcuts, get tutors, or mimic procedures from their notes or online videos instead of thinking critically about the problems in an effort to gain real understanding.
Ditch That Homework
Alice Keeler and Matt Miller wrote a great book called, “Ditch that Homework.” In it they give 8 reasons why you should reconsider your homework policy. Some of the reasons included that it’s not equitable as students from less advantaged backgrounds are not getting equal support or accountability as those students with a more favorable setting. Other reasons include that homework is usually not differentiated, it creates home strife, and it has little academic benefits.
Visible Learning
In John Hattie’s book, Visible Learning, where he analyzed hundreds of educational research studies, he found homework to have very little academic impact.
If you’re assigning homework because you think it has value, the evidence does not merit this claim.
How to Make Homework Valuable
Besides cheating and not taking their time, another large reason that homework has little to no value is that students do not get immediate feedback when they do the practice problems. So they do not know if they are doing the work correctly so they can gain confidence as they progress, or learn from their mistakes as they make them.
When we learn a new skill, we need to practice it repeatedly to master it. But this only works if you repeatedly practice it correctly.
If I bang on the piano keys for twenty minutes a day, I will not be any closer to learning the instrument at the end of the month than I was when I started. The same is true when students practice math problems without immediate feedback. If they keep making the same mistake without knowing it, so they never learn from it, there is no academic value to their effort.
But We Go Over the Answers the Next Day!
Many teachers tell me that they do give their students immediate feedback, they go over the answers with their students at the beginning of class the next day. This is not immediate feedback.
The students are not getting feedback after each problem. So, they will repeat their mistakes instead of learning from them.
Furthermore, teachers who say that they’re giving immediate feedback by reviewing homework the next day, are seriously not considering everything that happens in the midst of a day for a student. They attend multiple classes where they are exposed to tons of new information and attempting to learn new skills. Often they participate in extracurricular activities which also require more brain activity. By the time they go over the work in your class, it is far removed from their mind from when they go over it in your class.
If you want to give your students immediate feedback then they need to know whether or not they did the problem correctly as soon as they complete it. This means when they’re doing their homework, after each problem. Immediately!
What about Independent Practice?
Teachers often tell me that they must give students homework so that the students have an opportunity for independent practice.
As we have already established in the sections above, homework is not functioning as independent practice (at least for the vast majority of your students). Many of your students are not completing the work in a way that would be consider true independent practice – instead they’re copying, mimicking, taking shortcuts, and they don’t know if they’re doing the work correctly or not.
The question needs to be asked, ‘Why aren’t you providing your students with sufficient time in class to do independent practice and get immediate feedback?’
I would recommend that you find ways to present your instruction quicker and give students more opportunities in class to practice the skill that you are trying to teach them and give them immediate feedback.
The Two Necessary Components Required to Learn a New Skill
No matter what new skill you are trying to learn; something athletic, artistic, or influential – to learn it you must have a sufficient amount of practice, and get immediate feedback.
Sufficient practice for the average person is 20-30 repetitions (remember that many of your struggling students need more practice than the average student).
But practice alone is not effective, it must be correct practice. Vince Lombardi famously said, “Practice does not make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.”
Me blowing wind through a trumpet over and over again while I wiggle my fingers will not help me learn to play it. I must correctly blow as I position my fingers correctly over the keys to make the correct notes to the correct rhythmic pattern.
For your students to master what you are teaching them, they must practice it repeatedly and correctly. But this is not happening in most classrooms. And to counter us missing the mark for the time we have our students each day, we are giving them homework without immediate feedback under the guise of it being independent practice. We are not putting our students in position to succed.
Why Aren’t We Giving Our Students What They Need?
You have your students every day for around an hour.
We agree that practice with immediate feedback is paramount to learning a new skill. Yet, in class, our students are often getting very little practice with immediate feedback.
And then, we are sending them home, where we are not there to help guide and provide immediate feedback, and where many of our students do not have the accountability or encouragement they need to do their work, and we expect them to do the most important thing in learning a new skill!
Why are we not providing our students with the two of the most important things that they need to learn a skill with the hour that we have them?
A Challenge for You, Math Teacher
I’ve sat in many classes, observing many teachers. The amount of time spent talking about work normally far outweighs the amount of time spent doing it.
So here’s my challenge: reduce the amount of time you spend talking in class. Try to shorten your instruction. Cut out the fluff, and focus on the important stuff. Teach your students how to do the task as quickly and efficiently as possible, without going on tangents or calling on students to try to help you explain things.
In your teaching, you must model how to do the skill.
Then spend as much of the class time as you can, having students practice the skill you taught them and provide immediate feedback as they do.
Some Innovative Ideas
Quality instruction is important, so don’t skip it. But let’s reduce it. Or at least let’s maximize our time to focus on giving our students sufficient practice with immediate feedback.
Salman Khan, of Khan Academy, gives a great Ted Talk where he pitches the idea of pre-recording your instruction and having students watch it at home. That way they can pause when they need to take notes, and rewatch if something didn’t make sense or they need to hear it again. Then, he recommends, have your students do the practice problems in the classroom, where you are there to help them when they need it, as well as provide feedback and support.
In Alice Keeler’s book, Teaching Math with Google Apps, she encourages teachers to post their instruction in Google Classroom so that students can come back and reference it. In case they misunderstood, were absent, or need a review.
What other innovative ways can you think of to shorten the time you spend not practicing in the classroom?
Avoid this Strategy
In my article, aptly titled ‘The Worst Teaching Strategy,’ I encourage teachers to avoid doing a whole group practice problem; where the teacher puts a practice problem on the board and then randomly calls on students to assist him with solving the problem by telling him the next step. More often than not, this strategy takes FOREVER! And results in a lot of confusion and undesirable responses from students that are not beneficial to those who need to learn the skill.
Instead of spending long amounts of time doing something like the above, where very few students are participating, and no one is actually practicing the skill, assign practice problems to everyone and give feedback.
What other teaching techniques can you weed out of your instructional delivery to be more effective?
Creative Ways to Increase independent practice with Immediate Feedback
The most valuable thing you can give your students is time to practice the skill and to get immediate feedback on each question.
I have many articles on this, but here are some quick tips
1. Give your students the answer sheets as they do the work, and encourage them to check each problem AFTER they have solved it. If they got it right, great job, be encouraged and move on. If they got it wrong, go back and check their work, find their mistake.
2. Use technology. If you can get your students on Khan Academy, IXL, or something similar – where they get immediate feedback after each problem, you should utilize these resources.
3. Have answers, with the problems worked out, on index cards. Students can come get them after they work each problem (or set of problems) to check their work.
Conclusion
Homework is not independent practice. It’s work masquerading as independent practice, but robbed of its impact because of how students are doing it, and that there’s no immediate feedback.
To promote mastery, students need lots of practice with immediate feedback.
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