Blog #10 Homework

Based on my previous experience as a Kindergarten teacher, I know students come from a wide variety of backgrounds and family situations. Some parents work late and students stay with other family members, baby sitters, or after school programs before going home. These students spend very little time with their parents or guardians and when they do there is not much time for homework. There are parents who request additional homework for their students believing that busy work will make them more successful. There are students with parents or guardians that want to help, but do not feel like they have enough of an education to assist their children. There are students with older siblings who take on the role of parent to answer questions and listen to their reading. There are parents with patience and encouragement just bubbling from them and there are parents whose frustration and attitude toward learning influences how their children view school.

One of the professional development meetings I attended in my second year of teaching, forced me to think about any worksheets or assignments I sent home in folders overnight. I was sending occasional practice for handwriting, addition, and occasional projects. But there was a trend in who completed these items. Students, who had a support system at home, finished and brought the homework back completed and correct. Students without that structured system came back with unfinished or unfilled in homework. The students with the support system did not need the extra practice because they were getting what they needed regardless of what I sent home with them. Students without that modeling at home could use the practice but were not benefiting from the take home assignments. I decided to make independent reading practice the only homework because theoretically, students could do this without assistance and their recorded reading growth would reflect whether this practice was being accomplished or not.

This meant parents and students would not have the added pressure or disappointment of getting homework finished and returned. There was no worry about not understanding assignments or concepts because they knew there would be one book every night in their folder to read. One long term consistent assignment to help build a habit of reading.  A parent came to me saying that she was able to enjoy her children in the evening without fights about doing a worksheet. It seemed that the relationship between the children and their parents was more relaxed as they had more time to spend together for fun before supper and sleeping.

Meaningful homework to me is something that will encourage and build a skill set. Worksheets and projects outside the classroom can become unnecessary and without purpose. Some students may accomplish their homework by themselves, but some will be completed by their parents as I have had admissions about in my first year of teaching. If students ignore homework because of disinterest in the subject or assignment, then the project is not meaningful. If students complete it only to get the points and move on, then they did not connect personally with it. This is why independent reading books that are sent home need to be just right books. They are on the student’s reading level and are a subject area of interest to them. The student needs to have some say in what they are reading to be invested and it is our job as the teacher to build their excitement about topics that they may overlook at first sight.  The You Tube video below summarizes the discussion about finding just right books while at the library.

My objective for any student practicing their reading at home is for them to become independent at this skill. An English Language Learner will need to be interested, feel a desire to progress, and have proper scaffolding to prepare them for the book. At the beginning of the year, there might be mostly picture books with very simple and concise sentences to assist with vocabulary development. The books might be in their home language for a certain period of time to help parents know what the home procedure for independent reading will look like and so they can discuss the content. This might mean using the classroom budget to buy literature or checking out books from the library. The teacher could model what appropriate homework behavior would look like at the beginning of the school year for parents to see their role in action. The teacher could also video tape a skit with help from the school to be shown and translated at the bottom of the video.

The teacher would be providing feedback for parents who do not speak English through a chart with different colors and pictures to convey what level students are at in different categories in their reading. In their take home folder, a calendar of events is placed on the left and a reading chart is placed on the right with the independent reading book in a Ziploc. The teacher will initial the chart with the color that coordinates to the student’s level or progress. Then students will be sent home with monthly notes that will summarize progress and goals specifically. These notes could be translated with help from the district. The calendar and chart would be updated online through the school grading website. There is a system called TeacherEase that allowed me to do something similar. Or these could be emailed to parents when the month begins and ends as a PDF. The following link is for the website I have used to help communicate with parents in the past.

https://www.teacherease.com/common/Login.aspx?toolbarlink=true