How Do We Teach?: Part 2

The chapter that I chose to read for this class was titled, "Assigning Homework and Providing Practice."The essential question that I asked myself before reading was: How do I assign useful and engaging homework? This chapter helped me to answer this question as well as the question of How do we teach?

Assigning homework and providing practice can provide students with multiple opportunities to learn a skill or to review and apply knowledge. However, there are a umber of factors that determine whether homework and practice are useful or not. Some of these include: parental involvement and support, homework quality, student learning preferences, and the structure and monitoring of assignments. Additionally, there is evidence that shows that homework is more effective for older students who are in middle and high school.

There are three important recommendations for assigning homework. These are: develop and communicate a school homework policy, design homework assignments to support academic learning and communicate their purpose, and in my opinion, most importantly, provide feedback on assignments. It is important that assignments do not rely on the parent to teach the child new material. Assignments should only be given to students after they can perform the tasks independently. Homework also should never be used as a punishment. The purpose of homework should be to provide students with opportunities to practice skills in order to increase speed, accuracy, and understanding. It is important to provide feedback on homework rather than grades for every assignment. If a grade is not attached to the assignment, students are more likely to take risks and show teachers aspects of their conceptual understanding that they may not have shown on a graded assignment. Teachers can provide feedback using student conferences, class discussions, and peer review. Providing review can also ensure that students are not performing tasks incorrectly. If students continually do homework assignments incorrectly, then he or she will learn to complete all problems this way and the homework will actually have been detrimental to the student's learning.

When designing practice sessions, it is important for teachers to make them short, focused, and distributed over time. It is easier for students to master a shorter activity. Immediately after introducing a new concept, students should have short and frequent practice sessions. As they become more proficient in the material, practice can be given in longer periods in less frequency. Again, it is important that teachers provide students with feedback on their practice assignments.

One other topic that this chapter discussed was the use of new educational devices to provide practice activities and feedback. Teachers can now use tablets and laptop computers to assign practice activities. And according to an article from Education Week, that demand for educational games will continue to increase. Revenues in 2012 were $1.5 billion and they are expected to increase to $2.3 billion by 2017. The demand for educational simulations is even greater. Currently, the top buying nations are the United States, Japan, South Korea, China, and India, in that order. But the games and simulations are spreading worldwide. These can be very useful for teachers in providing practice assignments and are a new tool that students are using to help them learn.