"Grading Smarter, Not Harder" review/summary: Week 4: Homework

Homework

Day in and day out students, and teachers, appear to be bogged down with homework.  Staying up late just to complete it can tire out a student for the next day. Much of our class time, and prep time, can be taken up just checking it over, logging it in, and looking at student responses.  Are we doing this right?  Are we providing our student the proper type of "homework"?  What is homework suppose to be?  For what reason?  What is it suppose to look like?  Myron Dueck dedicates an entire chapter on homework and discusses how we are doing it wrong, and what he did to alter his practice of homework to help his students, and himself.

Removing homework from the grade book (usually reflected as completion and compliance) that the aggregate data usually began to more accurately reflect student understanding.

Problems with Grading Homework

• Grading Homework Confuses Completion with Understanding
• attaching a grade to homework enviably leads to grading completion rather than understanding.
• nothing wrong with instilling good work ethic in students, but what is the purpose of assigning homework?  Practice!
• Grading Homework Promotes Busy Work at the Expense of Intrinsic Motivation and Authentic Learing
• evidence shows that intrinsic motivation decreases once people are paid to do what they love to do for fun (Pink, 2009) [No, not the singer.]
• embrace practices that promote investigation and inquiry and jettison those that deter exploration.
• Grading Homework Results in Inflated Grades (and Cheating)
• Grades awarded for group efforts are usually recorded for individual students, thereby misrepresenting their level of actual learning (O'Connor, 2010)
• homework completion assistance (they all acquire answers to "get the homework done" and not really learning anything.
• group work (one person does most of the work; or work is divided among the individuals and they share what answers they got with the rest).
• cheating off another's homework
• parental help--too much or handsoff
• tutor extra help
• online (checking for answers)
• Grading Homework Results in Deflated Grades (and Disillusion)
• Research:
• struggling learners can expect to see the greatest academic gains when their teachers adopt nontraditional grading methods (Black & Wiliam, 1998)
• especially for homework
• home might be the worst environment imaginable to do academic material.
• Grading Homework Perpetuates Extrinsic Dependency
• "How can I get students to complete homework if we don't give them a reward or punishment?"   (Dueck)    How many times have we said this?
• It is all about the buy-in.
• if it seems worthwhile, students will put the time in to complete it.
• if it seems trivial, they won't do it.
• work under a flipped classroom model
• watch a video, video notes, come to class ready to develop understanding of the concept in discussion groups, activities, and labs
• possible solution (more on this later)
• if not complete, they would have to do it first (in class), then join the rest of the class.
• Grading Homework Perpetuates the Disadvantages Faced by Lower-Income Students
• According to Eric Jensen (Teaching with Poverty in Mind, 2009), students living with poverty:
• are more likely to live in a crowded home
• inherit low self-esteem
• own fewer books and watch more TV than their peers
• inherit negative views of school
• have a 50% change of dealing with evictions, utility disconnections, overcrowding or lack of a refrigerator.
• have mentally adapted to sub optimal conditions
• hare tardy and absent more often than their peers
• have more physical altercations and more often than their peers
• are more likely than their peers to experience physical punishment
• Grading penalties for incomplete homework are yet one more negative consequence of poverty.

Making Homework Meaningful

Let's link homework more to student achievement.

Strategy #1: In-Class Quizzes

Develop a set of quizzes based on homework assignments.

• give students a very short in-class quiz to assess a sampling of the type of understanding their homework would otherwise enforce:
• summative or formative
• summative:  provide a make-up for those who want to demonstrate their improved understanding.
• When compared to uniform homework, an in-class quiz is a much more accurate representation of each student's ability and understanding
• a shift to a measure of individual responsibility rather than just a task to complete.
• Because the in-class quiz is completed in a controlled, quiet, and safe environment, it is fairer and more equitable than conventional homework.
• measuring the extent to which each student understands the learning objective more fair
• Because there are fewer questions to grade in in-class quizzes than in traditional homework, teachers face less work and students receive feedback faster.
• quicker feedback (a.s.a.p.) increase student's interest in the learning process (Rice and Bunz, 2006)
• save time and devote more energy to diversifying learning in the classroom.
• create compact quizzes around specific learning outcomes
• results are immediate.
• Frequent quizzes lead to increased learning.
• Kent State University --- frequent testing involves recall of information from memory improves learning. [Katherine Rawson, 2010] (2012 paper here)
• Homework can be used as a formative assessment tool.

Strategy #2: Creating Homework Profilies

Effectiveness:

1. Learning measures are separated from behavioral ones
1. homework completion is behavioral rather than an academic issue
2. A personalized learning atmosphere is created.
1. some students need to do a lot of homework practice to do well, others do not.
2. many can personally gauge how much homework they need to do to succeed.
1. for those who can't, teachers, parents, or administrators can step in to assist and even mandate better rates of homework completion.
1. additional intervention maybe required.
3. The teacher becomes an advocate rather than an adversary.
1. each of the nine profile categories (above image) centers on how to help students improve academically given a specific set of variables.

Strategy #3: Provide In-School Support

• Lunchtime homework room:
• teacher referral to office; w/ copy of homework if necessary attached
• all referrals are organized by an educationally assistant and tracks them down, verifying their plans to attend the support session.
• if homework is complete, they help the student to hand it in.
• appropriate consequences are handed out if student fails to show up, along with support mechanisms.
• After-School Administrative Support:
• administrator manages the referrals and selected leadership students to provide some homework support
• in library after school
• especially helpful at end of marking periods
• Cross-Age Mentoring:
• collaborative support sessions in library
• mentors circle the room and help students with homework, study for tests, or organize binders.
• mentors--often older students
• increases school connectedness, academic achievement, and positive behaviors (Goodwin and Miller, 2012)
• In-School Suspension (IS)
• rather than loose more instructional time out of school, ISS provides students to complete work meant for that day, as well as an opportunity to catch up on homework and other assignments.  This consequence can be a benefit, rather than a punitive action.

Strategy #4: Flip Your Classroom

• students use online resources to experience lessons at home, they practice what they've learned in the classroom
• teachers create 6-8 minute videos and upload them to the web.
• increase student-teacher contact time
• energizing activity in the classroom
• extension activities, small-group learning exercises, homework support for those who need it most.

Nota Bene:

Why penalize for practice?  Let's not confuse compliance with understanding when it comes to homework.  Students grades should be reflective of their understanding of the learning going on, not keeping them busy.  

Homework is practice, designed to build skills and habits.  

"Practice doesn't make perfect; practice makes permanent."  It builds habits we are looking for when it comes to performing skills and understanding content.  Students should be practicing what they understand and when mistakes happen, teachers need to teach them again.  

Many students do whatever it takes to complete a homework assignment, and we loose any true indication of understanding.  There is no risk being taken when homework is part of an overall grade.

Grading Students should be based entirely on students' demonstration of understanding as measured by the performance assessments.

It comes down to failure versus competency being not complete.  It's never too late to learn.  Zeros are a thing of the past.  If students have not met that stated and set competencies for each subject, it isn't a zero.  They just haven't learned it yet.  Let's help them learn it.  Isn't that our job as a teacher?