EDU 6150- The Great Homework Debate

Last year I watched a movie called Race to Nowhere. It was awesome. And it tackled this exact question. The movie was about more in that it talked about too much pressure in schools across America, not just in HW, but in classwork, getting into college etc. But HW is a prevalent question amongst educators across the country.

When I was a classroom teacher I constantly struggled with this concept. I did not like or do much HW when I was in elementary or middle school. When I got to high school I realized I needed to do HW and as I got to college I realized I needed even more discipline in getting HW done and done on time. So I realized that as much as I did not want to assign HW to my students, I had to assign some in order to give them the HW skills they would need to succeed in high school and college.

That being said I had to figure out how to give the HW so I was making it worth their while. I spent time talking with my Principal and other teachers in the school. I decided that each night they would be required to do reading. This was of utmost importance to me. There is reading in every subject all the time so developing and maintain their reading skills is imperative. It shouldn’t be just reading, but reading for meaning. So each night there was some form of a question or two that went along with either a specific reading, or whatever book the student’s had chosen to read. (This is also a form of differentiation, in that it is an open ended question so there is not one right answer, but students can answer it at their level). I also usually gave some math practice. The material would be something that was being reinforced from classroom learning and I would have different HW for students. Then a couple times a week there would be a social studies or science activity as well. The HW however would never exceed 40-50 minutes for a fifth grader. The importance of the HW was to learn not only the content but the discipline of HW as a skill. It is really hard to be motivated after an 8 hour school day plus after school activates to then sit down and do HW. Besides dinner this left little time for the students to play. The more efficient they could learn to be at HW, the more extra time they would have as well!

In the article we read at, http://www.netc.org/focus/strategies/home.php, it references the same issues that I had to think through, and more. I enjoyed getting some validation from that article and being left with more to think about.

EDU 6134-Differentiation-Can we meet the needs of all learners?

How can we meet the needs of all learners? This is a really good question since it brings up more than just the idea of differentiation, but of, what do our students really need? This will vary for each and every child. The needs will look vastly different sometimes, in that some may be physical, while others are academic, or they may be similar in that you have two students who are excelling at math, but in different areas.

Once the teacher determines what it is the student really needs they can then go about deciding the best way to reach his/her students through the curriculum. Once the teacher figures this out, then he/she will plan accordingly to make any adjustments to the curriculum and differentiate it for the students. If the students’ needs are physical or emotional, he/she may need to address those even before the students can make academic gains.

There is no one right answer to how to meet the needs of all learners. It is situational. The best way to approach the situation is to get to know your students academically and personally and to determine what they need and how you can serve them best. Today in class we watched a video by Carol Tomlinson about how students differ as learners, but Tomlinson went took even farther to say that there are three things you should be thinking about when you are differentiating instruction.  They are readiness, interest and learning profile.

Readiness is where the teacher determines the readiness of a student based on the teachers’ Learning Goal for the class.  The students will not all be starting in the same place. An example of this would be in math. In 6^th grade students are expected to know their times tables. However, there may be some that don’t. This does not mean that they are not ready to meet a standard about ordering fractions, but you need to be able to recall your multiplication facts pretty quickly in order to this task. So the teacher may provide a multiplication table for the students who need it. It brings everyone to the same level of readiness and is an accommodation.

Next is Interest, this is really about motivation, if a student is interested in a topic, they are more likely to be motivated, and then if they are motivated they are more likely to do well. A way to do this would be to get kids to connect to the material. An example of this might be making a classroom constitution for classroom expectations and then teach them about the U.S constitution; they can then connect to the topic in U.S History, which may make it more interesting to them.

Lastly, is the Learning profile. This is about how do my students learn best? Or what type of learner is each of my students? An example of this might be to give an assignment to do a book report on an approved book of choice, (one differentiation piece) and then to have options of how the report could be presented (a second differentiation piece).

There are so many resources out there to help once you have figured out what your student needs. For example, the article we read for class called, “School accommodations and modifications”, put out in 2001 by The Alliance (Technical Assistance Alliance for Parent Centers), has an extensive list of ideas including ideas about accommodating grading, handwriting, classroom environments, test, and directions.