Spencer,
J. (2011, September 19). Education rethink. Retrieved from http://www.educationrethink.com/2011/09/ten-reasons-to-get-rid-of-homework-and.html
The article “Ten Reasons to Get Rid
of Homework” by John Spencer makes the argument that homework does more harm
than good for most students in the U.S. In the article he provides ten reasons
to get rid of homework as a way of supporting that argument. Some of the
reasons he provides are: “Kids need to play, homework creates adversarial
roles, homework de-motivates, children are busy, and homework teaches bad work
habits. I actually agree with most of his points. I feel that homework can be
detrimental to student learning. However I do feel that some homework is necessary at least in the higher grades because of
the more complex topics being taught. In the last section of the article
Spencer describes what homework related practices he does advocate, such as
treating homework as extracurricular activity.
Will you eliminate homework from your classroom?
-No, I
think eliminating homework from my classroom would be very difficult. I would
need to at the very least assign reading outside of class so that class time
can be devoted to analysis and discussion of the text.
John Spencer refers to bad homework in the article, give an
example of what you consider to be bad and good homework:
-An example
of bad homework would be a packet of work resembling what the student already
is asked to do in class. This is what I would call busy work and I think it is
unnecessary and does not greatly enhance student learning. An example of good
homework would be asking the students to write a one page open form response to
the reading that will be graded on a “done, or not done” basis instead of by
letter grade based on quality of work. This would encourage students to write freely
about how they felt about a section in a novel without the distraction of
worrying about structure and grammar. This type of exercise promotes creative
response and self-reflection and can give students something prepared to
discuss during class discussions.
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