Homework should be meaningful for the teacher and the student. It should serve to re-enforce work done in class and that it should act as a bridge between the work of one day and the next. It should be linked with and integrated into a programme of teaching and learning thereby forming part of the process of assessment for learning. It should be designed in such a way as to offer the students opportunities for self-assessment. It offers an opportunity for a more meaningful dialogue between school and home.
Homework helps students to construct knowledge, develop deeper understandings and connections amongst the concepts to which they have been introduced, and provides an opportunity for them to apply the skills they have acquired. A properly co-ordinated homework policy in school will help students to develop and sustain good study habits. It fosters positive values such as self-discipline, responsibility, and an interest in learning, which will benefit them throughout their lives.
Types of homework assignments
Here are four types of daily homework assignments - preparation, practice, extension, and creative/enrichment assignments.
Preparation
This type of assignment is intended to help students get ready for the next day's classroom lesson. For instance, a reading assignment may be given prior to a lesson. Students might be asked to write their own discussion questions based on the reading assignment. Or, the student may be asked to complete answers to reading review questions from the text.
Practice
By successfully completing practice assignments, students have the opportunity to review and reinforce skills, knowledge, and information presented in a previous lesson. A simple example might be that after a grammar lesson students are asked to write their own sentences and label the specific grammatical elements presented in the most recent classroom lesson.
Extension
Extension assignments ask students to expand on skills and/or concepts taught during a previous class. For example, after studying a period in history students might be asked to read an article or book pertaining to that period and report their findings to the class.
Creative/Enrichment
This assignment includes analysing, synthesising and evaluating concepts or skills already taught. Students have an opportunity to develop and apply their own ideas about a topic and prepare a presentation for the teachers or class. One example would be to assign students the task of creating an invention that would solve a problem. Another might be to write a play or short story.
What is stressed here is that not all homework is alike in nature and purpose. In considering different types of homework to set teachers might usefully refer to the different kinds of questioning employed in class.
Assessing homework and offering feedback
Assessment of a piece of homework should be based upon the criteria for success in the particular task set. For example, there is little to be gained by drawing attention to lapses in the surface presentation (spelling, punctuation, etc.) of a piece of student work, if this had not been specifically articulated as one of the criteria against which success was to be measured. Neither is it helpful to set out too many criteria against which the work will be judged.
Teachers might usefully consider whether always giving marks or grades helps students to learn more effectively. In particular, the giving of marks can be counter-productive even when they are accompanied by the teacher's comments as to how students might improve. Students all too often ignore the helpful comments and pay attention solely to the marks. Those who have received low marks, then, merely see themselves failing to achieve while those whose marks are high can neglect to look for the specific direction as to the strengths in their work and the areas where they might need to improve.
Comment-only Marking
It is important to bear in mind that giving a mark in itself does not help students to understand how they might improve their work. The assessment is not formative in intention and it will do little or nothing for learning. In fact, giving marks or grades cancels out the impact of formative comments. In adopting the approach of comment-only marking the teacher gives feedback in three key areas in the student's learning cycle:
· what the student has done right
· what weaknesses there are in the student's work
· what the next step/s should be to improve performance or understanding
This kind of feedback will be most helpful when the learning intentions and criteria for success are clearly understood by the students. The teacher's comments should relate to the task in hand, the learning intention and the criteria for success.
Where a school (or a subject department within a school) adopts a policy of comment-only marking, this should be explained to parents so that they understand what is happening and can be supportive to students in responding to feedback. In this way comment-only marking can become an important part of the school's practice of reporting to parents.
Comment-only marking does not preclude the giving of marks or grades to an assignment. The teacher can record the marks he/she awards to each assignment and use them to build up a picture of summative achievement for the student.
Key principles of AfL
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