do the homework said his teacher

Expand your vocabulary, improve your grammar skills, and develop your own unique writing style.

'Do Your Homework' or 'Do The Homework'. Which Is Correct?

The expression “do homework” refers to the work that a teacher gives a student to do at home.

The expression “ do homework ” refers to the work that a teacher gives a student to do at home.

Doing homework is a boring activity for some students.

Use the article “the” or a possessive pronoun (my, your, his, etc.) to be more specific.

Have you done your math homework ?

Since homework is an uncountable noun, it is not possible to use the indefinite article a/an.

The history teacher gave us some homework to do by Monday.

The history teacher gave us a homework to do by Monday.

1. Homework Is Uncountable

2. using other determiners with ‘homework’.

“ Homework ” is an uncountable noun; therefore, it does not have a plural form.

I have some homework to do.

I have three homeworks to do.

Being uncountable, " homework " is always followed by a singular verb.

The science homework was extremely difficult.

And you cannot put the article a/an in front of it.

You should do some homework today.

You should do a homework today.

But you can use the word “ assignment ” to mention separate pieces of homework.

Complete the three homework assignments .

Rebecca, you did an impressive job on the homework assignments .

Or just say “ a/one piece of homework ” or " a bit of homework ".

You still have one piece of homework left to do.

Note that we always say “ do homework ”. Avoid the verbs make or write with this word.

It’s worth doing a bit of homework before playing video games.

It’s worth making/writing a bit of homework before playing video games.

But you can use the verbs give or help (somebody).

The teacher gave us some homework to do by Friday.

My mother used to help me with my homework .

Instead of referring to the work that a student is asked to do at home, you can use “ homework ” as a synonym of preparation.

Since we have done our homework , we are well prepared for the meeting with the investor.

Using "a" or "the" with common activities

We commonly add a possessive pronoun (my, your, his, her, our, their) before “ homework ”.

Do your homework before dinner.

Have the kids done their homework ?

Jennifer is very good at doing her homework .

But you can also use other determiners, such as:

• some (affirmative sentences)
• any (interrogative and negative sentences)

The teacher gives too much homework .

I don’t have any homework .

We can also omit the determiner to speak about homework in a general way.

Homework is boring.

Is it bad to do homework in bed?

For homework , finish the exercise on page 8.

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‘Make homework’ vs. ‘do homework’ in English

First, let me note that “homework” is an uncountable (mass) noun in English. It is a common mistake, even among some non-native teachers of English as a foreign language, to say things like, “Hand in your homeworks, please.” The word “homework”, being uncountable, does not have a plural form. If you really must refer to several separate “pieces” of homework, the word you are looking for is “assignment”:

It is also not possible to use “homework” with “a”:

Let’s move on to the main topic of this article. Without further ado, the correct verb to use with “homework” is “do”, not “make”:

“Homework” is not in any way special in this respect. We always use “do” with activities and “make” with objects that are being made. Just like we “do work”, not “make work”, we also “do homework”, meaning the activity.

The confusion arises from the fact that the most direct translation of “homework” into other languages often refers to the sheets of paper on which the assignments are written, hence it would make sense to “make it”. For the very same reason, we wouldn’t usually speak about “writing homework”:

By the way, have you already seen my brand new web app for non-native speakers of English ? It's based on reading texts and learning by having all meanings, pronunciations, grammar forms etc. easily accessible. It looks like this:

Use the image

Does Homework Really Help Students Learn?

A conversation with a Wheelock researcher, a BU student, and a fourth-grade teacher

“Quality homework is engaging and relevant to kids’ lives,” says Wheelock’s Janine Bempechat. “It gives them autonomy and engages them in the community and with their families. In some subjects, like math, worksheets can be very helpful. It has to do with the value of practicing over and over.” Photo by iStock/Glenn Cook Photography

Do your homework.

If only it were that simple.

Educators have debated the merits of homework since the late 19th century. In recent years, amid concerns of some parents and teachers that children are being stressed out by too much homework, things have only gotten more fraught.

“Homework is complicated,” says developmental psychologist Janine Bempechat, a Wheelock College of Education & Human Development clinical professor. The author of the essay “ The Case for (Quality) Homework—Why It Improves Learning and How Parents Can Help ” in the winter 2019 issue of Education Next , Bempechat has studied how the debate about homework is influencing teacher preparation, parent and student beliefs about learning, and school policies.

She worries especially about socioeconomically disadvantaged students from low-performing schools who, according to research by Bempechat and others, get little or no homework.

BU Today  sat down with Bempechat and Erin Bruce (Wheelock’17,’18), a new fourth-grade teacher at a suburban Boston school, and future teacher freshman Emma Ardizzone (Wheelock) to talk about what quality homework looks like, how it can help children learn, and how schools can equip teachers to design it, evaluate it, and facilitate parents’ role in it.

BU Today: Parents and educators who are against homework in elementary school say there is no research definitively linking it to academic performance for kids in the early grades. You’ve said that they’re missing the point.

Bempechat : I think teachers assign homework in elementary school as a way to help kids develop skills they’ll need when they’re older—to begin to instill a sense of responsibility and to learn planning and organizational skills. That’s what I think is the greatest value of homework—in cultivating beliefs about learning and skills associated with academic success. If we greatly reduce or eliminate homework in elementary school, we deprive kids and parents of opportunities to instill these important learning habits and skills.

We do know that beginning in late middle school, and continuing through high school, there is a strong and positive correlation between homework completion and academic success.

That’s what I think is the greatest value of homework—in cultivating beliefs about learning and skills associated with academic success.

You talk about the importance of quality homework. What is that?

Quality homework is engaging and relevant to kids’ lives. It gives them autonomy and engages them in the community and with their families. In some subjects, like math, worksheets can be very helpful. It has to do with the value of practicing over and over.

What are your concerns about homework and low-income children?

The argument that some people make—that homework “punishes the poor” because lower-income parents may not be as well-equipped as affluent parents to help their children with homework—is very troubling to me. There are no parents who don’t care about their children’s learning. Parents don’t actually have to help with homework completion in order for kids to do well. They can help in other ways—by helping children organize a study space, providing snacks, being there as a support, helping children work in groups with siblings or friends.

Isn’t the discussion about getting rid of homework happening mostly in affluent communities?

Yes, and the stories we hear of kids being stressed out from too much homework—four or five hours of homework a night—are real. That’s problematic for physical and mental health and overall well-being. But the research shows that higher-income students get a lot more homework than lower-income kids.

Teachers may not have as high expectations for lower-income children. Schools should bear responsibility for providing supports for kids to be able to get their homework done—after-school clubs, community support, peer group support. It does kids a disservice when our expectations are lower for them.

The conversation around homework is to some extent a social class and social justice issue. If we eliminate homework for all children because affluent children have too much, we’re really doing a disservice to low-income children. They need the challenge, and every student can rise to the challenge with enough supports in place.

What did you learn by studying how education schools are preparing future teachers to handle homework?

My colleague, Margarita Jimenez-Silva, at the University of California, Davis, School of Education, and I interviewed faculty members at education schools, as well as supervising teachers, to find out how students are being prepared. And it seemed that they weren’t. There didn’t seem to be any readings on the research, or conversations on what high-quality homework is and how to design it.

Erin, what kind of training did you get in handling homework?

Bruce : I had phenomenal professors at Wheelock, but homework just didn’t come up. I did lots of student teaching. I’ve been in classrooms where the teachers didn’t assign any homework, and I’ve been in rooms where they assigned hours of homework a night. But I never even considered homework as something that was my decision. I just thought it was something I’d pull out of a book and it’d be done.

I started giving homework on the first night of school this year. My first assignment was to go home and draw a picture of the room where you do your homework. I want to know if it’s at a table and if there are chairs around it and if mom’s cooking dinner while you’re doing homework.

The second night I asked them to talk to a grown-up about how are you going to be able to get your homework done during the week. The kids really enjoyed it. There’s a running joke that I’m teaching life skills.

Friday nights, I read all my kids’ responses to me on their homework from the week and it’s wonderful. They pour their hearts out. It’s like we’re having a conversation on my couch Friday night.

It matters to know that the teacher cares about you and that what you think matters to the teacher. Homework is a vehicle to connect home and school…for parents to know teachers are welcoming to them and their families.

Bempechat : I can’t imagine that most new teachers would have the intuition Erin had in designing homework the way she did.

Ardizzone : Conversations with kids about homework, feeling you’re being listened to—that’s such a big part of wanting to do homework….I grew up in Westchester County. It was a pretty demanding school district. My junior year English teacher—I loved her—she would give us feedback, have meetings with all of us. She’d say, “If you have any questions, if you have anything you want to talk about, you can talk to me, here are my office hours.” It felt like she actually cared.

Bempechat : It matters to know that the teacher cares about you and that what you think matters to the teacher. Homework is a vehicle to connect home and school…for parents to know teachers are welcoming to them and their families.

Ardizzone : But can’t it lead to parents being overbearing and too involved in their children’s lives as students?

Bempechat : There’s good help and there’s bad help. The bad help is what you’re describing—when parents hover inappropriately, when they micromanage, when they see their children confused and struggling and tell them what to do.

Good help is when parents recognize there’s a struggle going on and instead ask informative questions: “Where do you think you went wrong?” They give hints, or pointers, rather than saying, “You missed this,” or “You didn’t read that.”

Bruce : I hope something comes of this. I hope BU or Wheelock can think of some way to make this a more pressing issue. As a first-year teacher, it was not something I even thought about on the first day of school—until a kid raised his hand and said, “Do we have homework?” It would have been wonderful if I’d had a plan from day one.

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Senior Contributing Editor

Sara Rimer A journalist for more than three decades, Sara Rimer worked at the Miami Herald , Washington Post and, for 26 years, the New York Times , where she was the New England bureau chief, and a national reporter covering education, aging, immigration, and other social justice issues. Her stories on the death penalty’s inequities were nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and cited in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision outlawing the execution of people with intellectual disabilities. Her journalism honors include Columbia University’s Meyer Berger award for in-depth human interest reporting. She holds a BA degree in American Studies from the University of Michigan. Profile

She can be reached at [email protected] .

Comments & Discussion

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There are 81 comments on Does Homework Really Help Students Learn?

Insightful! The values about homework in elementary schools are well aligned with my intuition as a parent.

when i finish my work i do my homework and i sometimes forget what to do because i did not get enough sleep

same omg it does not help me it is stressful and if I have it in more than one class I hate it.

Same I think my parent wants to help me but, she doesn’t care if I get bad grades so I just try my best and my grades are great.

I think that last question about Good help from parents is not know to all parents, we do as our parents did or how we best think it can be done, so maybe coaching parents or giving them resources on how to help with homework would be very beneficial for the parent on how to help and for the teacher to have consistency and improve homework results, and of course for the child. I do see how homework helps reaffirm the knowledge obtained in the classroom, I also have the ability to see progress and it is a time I share with my kids

The answer to the headline question is a no-brainer – a more pressing problem is why there is a difference in how students from different cultures succeed. Perfect example is the student population at BU – why is there a majority population of Asian students and only about 3% black students at BU? In fact at some universities there are law suits by Asians to stop discrimination and quotas against admitting Asian students because the real truth is that as a group they are demonstrating better qualifications for admittance, while at the same time there are quotas and reduced requirements for black students to boost their portion of the student population because as a group they do more poorly in meeting admissions standards – and it is not about the Benjamins. The real problem is that in our PC society no one has the gazuntas to explore this issue as it may reveal that all people are not created equal after all. Or is it just environmental cultural differences??????

I get you have a concern about the issue but that is not even what the point of this article is about. If you have an issue please take this to the site we have and only post your opinion about the actual topic

This is not at all what the article is talking about.

This literally has nothing to do with the article brought up. You should really take your opinions somewhere else before you speak about something that doesn’t make sense.

we have the same name

so they have the same name what of it?

lol you tell her

totally agree

What does that have to do with homework, that is not what the article talks about AT ALL.

Yes, I think homework plays an important role in the development of student life. Through homework, students have to face challenges on a daily basis and they try to solve them quickly.I am an intense online tutor at 24x7homeworkhelp and I give homework to my students at that level in which they handle it easily.

More than two-thirds of students said they used alcohol and drugs, primarily marijuana, to cope with stress.

You know what’s funny? I got this assignment to write an argument for homework about homework and this article was really helpful and understandable, and I also agree with this article’s point of view.

I also got the same task as you! I was looking for some good resources and I found this! I really found this article useful and easy to understand, just like you! ^^

i think that homework is the best thing that a child can have on the school because it help them with their thinking and memory.

I am a child myself and i think homework is a terrific pass time because i can’t play video games during the week. It also helps me set goals.

Homework is not harmful ,but it will if there is too much

I feel like, from a minors point of view that we shouldn’t get homework. Not only is the homework stressful, but it takes us away from relaxing and being social. For example, me and my friends was supposed to hang at the mall last week but we had to postpone it since we all had some sort of work to do. Our minds shouldn’t be focused on finishing an assignment that in realty, doesn’t matter. I completely understand that we should have homework. I have to write a paper on the unimportance of homework so thanks.

homework isn’t that bad

Are you a student? if not then i don’t really think you know how much and how severe todays homework really is

i am a student and i do not enjoy homework because i practice my sport 4 out of the five days we have school for 4 hours and that’s not even counting the commute time or the fact i still have to shower and eat dinner when i get home. its draining!

i totally agree with you. these people are such boomers

why just why

they do make a really good point, i think that there should be a limit though. hours and hours of homework can be really stressful, and the extra work isn’t making a difference to our learning, but i do believe homework should be optional and extra credit. that would make it for students to not have the leaning stress of a assignment and if you have a low grade you you can catch up.

Studies show that homework improves student achievement in terms of improved grades, test results, and the likelihood to attend college. Research published in the High School Journal indicates that students who spent between 31 and 90 minutes each day on homework “scored about 40 points higher on the SAT-Mathematics subtest than their peers, who reported spending no time on homework each day, on average.” On both standardized tests and grades, students in classes that were assigned homework outperformed 69% of students who didn’t have homework. A majority of studies on homework’s impact – 64% in one meta-study and 72% in another – showed that take home assignments were effective at improving academic achievement. Research by the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) concluded that increased homework led to better GPAs and higher probability of college attendance for high school boys. In fact, boys who attended college did more than three hours of additional homework per week in high school.

So how are your measuring student achievement? That’s the real question. The argument that doing homework is simply a tool for teaching responsibility isn’t enough for me. We can teach responsibility in a number of ways. Also the poor argument that parents don’t need to help with homework, and that students can do it on their own, is wishful thinking at best. It completely ignores neurodiverse students. Students in poverty aren’t magically going to find a space to do homework, a friend’s or siblings to help them do it, and snacks to eat. I feel like the author of this piece has never set foot in a classroom of students.

THIS. This article is pathetic coming from a university. So intellectually dishonest, refusing to address the havoc of capitalism and poverty plays on academic success in life. How can they in one sentence use poor kids in an argument and never once address that poor children have access to damn near 0 of the resources affluent kids have? Draw me a picture and let’s talk about feelings lmao what a joke is that gonna put food in their belly so they can have the calories to burn in order to use their brain to study? What about quiet their 7 other siblings that they share a single bedroom with for hours? Is it gonna force the single mom to magically be at home and at work at the same time to cook food while you study and be there to throw an encouraging word?

Also the “parents don’t need to be a parent and be able to guide their kid at all academically they just need to exist in the next room” is wild. Its one thing if a parent straight up is not equipped but to say kids can just figured it out is…. wow coming from an educator What’s next the teacher doesn’t need to teach cause the kid can just follow the packet and figure it out?

Well then get a tutor right? Oh wait you are poor only affluent kids can afford a tutor for their hours of homework a day were they on average have none of the worries a poor child does. Does this address that poor children are more likely to also suffer abuse and mental illness? Like mentioned what about kids that can’t learn or comprehend the forced standardized way? Just let em fail? These children regularly are not in “special education”(some of those are a joke in their own and full of neglect and abuse) programs cause most aren’t even acknowledged as having disabilities or disorders.

But yes all and all those pesky poor kids just aren’t being worked hard enough lol pretty sure poor children’s existence just in childhood is more work, stress, and responsibility alone than an affluent child’s entire life cycle. Love they never once talked about the quality of education in the classroom being so bad between the poor and affluent it can qualify as segregation, just basically blamed poor people for being lazy, good job capitalism for failing us once again!

why the hell?

you should feel bad for saying this, this article can be helpful for people who has to write a essay about it

This is more of a political rant than it is about homework

I know a teacher who has told his students their homework is to find something they are interested in, pursue it and then come share what they learn. The student responses are quite compelling. One girl taught herself German so she could talk to her grandfather. One boy did a research project on Nelson Mandela because the teacher had mentioned him in class. Another boy, a both on the autism spectrum, fixed his family’s computer. The list goes on. This is fourth grade. I think students are highly motivated to learn, when we step aside and encourage them.

The whole point of homework is to give the students a chance to use the material that they have been presented with in class. If they never have the opportunity to use that information, and discover that it is actually useful, it will be in one ear and out the other. As a science teacher, it is critical that the students are challenged to use the material they have been presented with, which gives them the opportunity to actually think about it rather than regurgitate “facts”. Well designed homework forces the student to think conceptually, as opposed to regurgitation, which is never a pretty sight

Wonderful discussion. and yes, homework helps in learning and building skills in students.

not true it just causes kids to stress

Homework can be both beneficial and unuseful, if you will. There are students who are gifted in all subjects in school and ones with disabilities. Why should the students who are gifted get the lucky break, whereas the people who have disabilities suffer? The people who were born with this “gift” go through school with ease whereas people with disabilities struggle with the work given to them. I speak from experience because I am one of those students: the ones with disabilities. Homework doesn’t benefit “us”, it only tears us down and put us in an abyss of confusion and stress and hopelessness because we can’t learn as fast as others. Or we can’t handle the amount of work given whereas the gifted students go through it with ease. It just brings us down and makes us feel lost; because no mater what, it feels like we are destined to fail. It feels like we weren’t “cut out” for success.

homework does help

here is the thing though, if a child is shoved in the face with a whole ton of homework that isn’t really even considered homework it is assignments, it’s not helpful. the teacher should make homework more of a fun learning experience rather than something that is dreaded

This article was wonderful, I am going to ask my teachers about extra, or at all giving homework.

I agree. Especially when you have homework before an exam. Which is distasteful as you’ll need that time to study. It doesn’t make any sense, nor does us doing homework really matters as It’s just facts thrown at us.

Homework is too severe and is just too much for students, schools need to decrease the amount of homework. When teachers assign homework they forget that the students have other classes that give them the same amount of homework each day. Students need to work on social skills and life skills.

I disagree.

Beyond achievement, proponents of homework argue that it can have many other beneficial effects. They claim it can help students develop good study habits so they are ready to grow as their cognitive capacities mature. It can help students recognize that learning can occur at home as well as at school. Homework can foster independent learning and responsible character traits. And it can give parents an opportunity to see what’s going on at school and let them express positive attitudes toward achievement.

Homework is helpful because homework helps us by teaching us how to learn a specific topic.

As a student myself, I can say that I have almost never gotten the full 9 hours of recommended sleep time, because of homework. (Now I’m writing an essay on it in the middle of the night D=)

I am a 10 year old kid doing a report about “Is homework good or bad” for homework before i was going to do homework is bad but the sources from this site changed my mind!

Homeowkr is god for stusenrs

I agree with hunter because homework can be so stressful especially with this whole covid thing no one has time for homework and every one just wants to get back to there normal lives it is especially stressful when you go on a 2 week vaca 3 weeks into the new school year and and then less then a week after you come back from the vaca you are out for over a month because of covid and you have no way to get the assignment done and turned in

As great as homework is said to be in the is article, I feel like the viewpoint of the students was left out. Every where I go on the internet researching about this topic it almost always has interviews from teachers, professors, and the like. However isn’t that a little biased? Of course teachers are going to be for homework, they’re not the ones that have to stay up past midnight completing the homework from not just one class, but all of them. I just feel like this site is one-sided and you should include what the students of today think of spending four hours every night completing 6-8 classes worth of work.

Are we talking about homework or practice? Those are two very different things and can result in different outcomes.

Homework is a graded assignment. I do not know of research showing the benefits of graded assignments going home.

Practice; however, can be extremely beneficial, especially if there is some sort of feedback (not a grade but feedback). That feedback can come from the teacher, another student or even an automated grading program.

As a former band director, I assigned daily practice. I never once thought it would be appropriate for me to require the students to turn in a recording of their practice for me to grade. Instead, I had in-class assignments/assessments that were graded and directly related to the practice assigned.

I would really like to read articles on “homework” that truly distinguish between the two.

oof i feel bad good luck!

thank you guys for the artical because I have to finish an assingment. yes i did cite it but just thanks

thx for the article guys.

Homework is good

I think homework is helpful AND harmful. Sometimes u can’t get sleep bc of homework but it helps u practice for school too so idk.

I agree with this Article. And does anyone know when this was published. I would like to know.

It was published FEb 19, 2019.

Studies have shown that homework improved student achievement in terms of improved grades, test results, and the likelihood to attend college.

i think homework can help kids but at the same time not help kids

This article is so out of touch with majority of homes it would be laughable if it wasn’t so incredibly sad.

There is no value to homework all it does is add stress to already stressed homes. Parents or adults magically having the time or energy to shepherd kids through homework is dome sort of 1950’s fantasy.

What lala land do these teachers live in?

Homework gives noting to the kid

Homework is Bad

homework is bad.

why do kids even have homework?

Comments are closed.

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• Professional development
• Managing resources

The role of homework

Homework seems to be an accepted part of teachers’ and students’ routines, but there is little mention of it in ELT literature.

The role of homework is hardly mentioned in the majority of general ELT texts or training courses, suggesting that there is little question as to its value even if the resulting workload is time-consuming. However, there is clearly room for discussion of homework policies and practices particularly now that technology has made so many more resources available to learners outside the classroom.

Reasons for homework

• Attitudes to homework
• Effective homework
• Types of homework
• Homework is expected by students, teachers, parents and institutions.
• Homework reinforces and helps learners to retain information taught in the classroom as well as increasing their general understanding of the language.
• Homework develops study habits and independent learning. It also encourages learners to acquire resources such as dictionaries and grammar reference books. Research shows that homework also benefits factual knowledge, self-discipline, attitudes to learning and problem-solving skills.
• Homework offers opportunities for extensive activities in the receptive skills which there may not be time for in the classroom. It may also be an integral part of ongoing learning such as project work and the use of a graded reader.
• Homework provides continuity between lessons. It may be used to consolidate classwork, but also for preparation for the next lesson.
• Homework may be used to shift repetitive, mechanical, time-consuming tasks out of the classroom.
• Homework bridges the gap between school and home. Students, teachers and parents can monitor progress. The institution can involve parents in the learning process.
• Homework can be a useful assessment tool, as part of continual or portfolio assessment.

Attitudes to homework Teachers tend to have mixed feelings about homework. While recognising the advantages, they observe negative attitudes and poor performance from students. Marking and giving useful feedback on homework can take up a large proportion of a teacher’s time, often after school hours.

• Students themselves complain that the homework they are given is boring or pointless, referring to homework tasks that consist of studying for tests, doing workbook exercises, finishing incomplete classwork, memorising lists of vocabulary and writing compositions. Where this is actually the case, the negative effects of homework can be observed, typified by loss of interest and a view of homework as a form of punishment.
• Other negative effects of poorly managed homework include lack of necessary leisure time and an increased differential between high and low achievers. These problems are often the cause of avoidance techniques such as completing homework tasks in class, collaborating and copying or simply not doing the required tasks. In turn, conflict may arise between learners, teachers, parents and the institution.

Effective homework In order for homework to be effective, certain principles should be observed.

• Students should see the usefulness of homework. Teachers should explain the purpose both of homework in general and of individual tasks.
• Tasks should be relevant, interesting and varied.
• Good classroom practice also applies to homework. Tasks should be manageable but achievable.
• Different tasks may be assigned to different ability groups. Individual learning styles should be taken into account.
• Homework should be manageable in terms of time as well as level of difficulty. Teachers should remember that students are often given homework in other subjects and that there is a need for coordination to avoid overload. A homework diary, kept by the learner but checked by teachers and parents is a useful tool in this respect.
• Homework is rarely co-ordinated within the curriculum as a whole, but should at least be incorporated into an overall scheme of work and be considered in lesson planning.
• Homework tends to focus on a written product. There is no reason why this should be the case, other than that there is visible evidence that the task has been done.
• Learner involvement and motivation may be increased by encouraging students to contribute ideas for homework and possibly design their own tasks. The teacher also needs to know how much time the students have, what facilities they have at home, and what their preferences are. A simple questionnaire will provide this data.
• While homework should consolidate classwork, it should not replicate it. Home is the outside world and tasks which are nearer to real-life use of language are appropriate.
• If homework is set, it must be assessed in some way, and feedback given. While marking by the teacher is sometimes necessary, peer and self-assessment can encourage learner independence as well as reducing the teacher’s workload. Motivating students to do homework is an ongoing process, and encouragement may be given by commenting and asking questions either verbally or in written form in order to demonstrate interest on the teacher’s part, particularly in the case of self-study and project work.

Types of homework There are a number of categories of useful and practicable homework tasks.

• Workbook-based tasks Most published course materials include a workbook or practice book, mainly including consolidation exercises, short reading texts and an answer key. Most workbooks claim to be suitable for both class and self-study use, but are better used at home in order to achieve a separation of what is done in class and at home. Mechanical practice is thus shifted out of class hours, while this kind of exercise is particularly suited to peer- or self-checking and correction.
• Preparation tasks Rarely do teachers ask learners to read through the next unit of a coursebook, though there are advantages in involving students in the lesson plan and having them know what is coming. More motivating, however, is asking students to find and bring materials such as photographs and pictures, magazine articles and realia which are relevant to the next topic, particularly where personalisation or relevance to the local context requires adaptation of course materials.
• Extensive tasks Much can be gained from the use of graded readers, which now often have accompanying audio material, radio and TV broadcasts, podcasts and songs. Sometimes tasks need to be set as guidance, but learners also need to be encouraged to read, listen and watch for pleasure. What is important is that learners share their experiences in class. Extensive reading and listening may be accompanied by dictionary work and a thematic or personalised vocabulary notebook, whereby learners can collect language which they feel is useful.
• Guided discovery tasks Whereas classroom teaching often involves eliciting language patterns and rules from learners, there is also the option of asking learners to notice language and make deductions for themselves at home. This leads to the sharing of knowledge and even peer teaching in the classroom.
• Real-world tasks These involve seeing, hearing and putting language to use in realistic contexts. Reading magazines, watching TV, going to the cinema and listening to songs are obvious examples, offering the option of writing summaries and reviews as follow-up activities. Technology facilitates chat and friendship networks, while even in monolingual environments, walking down a shopping street noticing shop and brand names will reveal a lot of language. As with extensive tasks, it is important for learners to share their experiences, and perhaps to collect them in a formal or informal portfolio.
• Project work It is a good idea to have a class or individual projects running over a period of time. Projects may be based on topics from a coursebook, the locality, interests and hobbies or selected individually. Project work needs to be guided in terms of where to find resources and monitored regularly, the outcome being a substantial piece of work at the end of a course or term of which the learner can claim ownership.

Conclusion Finally, a word about the Internet. The Web appears to offer a wealth of opportunity for self-study. Certainly reference resources make project work easier and more enjoyable, but cutting and pasting can also be seen as an easy option, requiring little originality or understanding. Conferring over homework tasks by email can be positive or negative, though chatting with an English-speaking friend is to be encouraged, as is searching for visual materials. Both teachers and learners are guilty of trawling the Net for practice exercises, some of which are untried, untested and dubious in terms of quality. Learners need guidance, and a starting point is to provide a short list of reliable sites such as the British Council's  LearnEnglish  and the BBC's Learning English  which provide a huge variety of exercises and activities as well as links to other reliable sources. Further reading Cooper, H. Synthesis of Research on Homework . Educational Leadership 47/3, 1989 North, S. and Pillay, H. Homework: re-examining the routin e. ELT Journal 56/2, April 2002 Painter, L. Homework . English Teaching Professional, Issue 10, 1999 Painter, L. Homework . OUP Resource Books for Teachers, 2003

First published in October 2007

Mr. Steve Darn I liked your…

Mr. Steve Darn I liked your method of the role of the homework . Well, I am one of those laggard people. Unfortunately, when it comes to homework, I definitely do it. Because, a student or pupil who understands new topics, of course, does his homework to know how much he understands the new topic. I also completely agree with all of Steve Darn's points above. However, sometimes teachers give a lot of riff-raff homework, just like homework is a human obligation. This is a plus. But in my opinion, first of all, it is necessary to divide the time properly, and then to do many tasks at home. Only then will you become an "excellent student" in the eyes of the teacher. Although we live in the age of technology, there are still some people who do not know how to send homework via email. Some foreign teachers ask to send tasks by email. Constant email updates require time and, in rare cases, a fee. My above points have been the cause of constant discussions.

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An Age-By-Age Guide to Helping Kids Manage Homework

Do you ever wonder whether homework is gauging the child’s ability to complete assignments or the parent’s? On one end of the spectrum, a parent might never mention homework and assume it gets done independently; on the other end are the parents who micromanage to be sure every worksheet is absolutely perfect.

Being too laissez faire about homework might deny a child the support they need to develop executive functioning skills, but being too involved could stifle their independence. So how much parent participation in homework is actually appropriate throughout a child’s education?

Basic homework tips

According to Scholastic , you should follow these rules of thumb to support your child during homework (without going overboard):

Stay nearby and available for questions without getting right in the middle of homework.

Avoid the urge to correct mistakes unless your child asks for help.

Instead of nagging, set up a homework routine with a dedicated time and place.

Teach time management for a larger project by helping them break it into chunks.

Child psychologist Dr. Emily W. King recently wrote about rethinking homework in her newsletter. King explains at what ages kids are typically able to do homework independently, but she writes that each child’s ability to concentrate at the end of the day and use executive functioning skills for completing tasks is very individual. I talked to her for more information on how much parental involvement in homework completion is needed, according to a child’s age and grade level.

Kindergarten to second grade

Whether children even need homework this early is a hot debate. Little ones are still developing fine motor skills and their ability to sit still and pay attention at this age.

“If a child is given homework before their brain and body are able to sit and focus independently, then we are relying on the parent or other caregivers to sit with the child to help them focus,” King said. “ Think about when the child is able to sit and focus on non-academic tasks like dinner, art, or music lessons. This will help you tease out executive functioning skills from academic understanding.”

Elementary-age children need time for unstructured play and structured play like music, arts, and sports. They need outside time, free time, and quiet time, King said. For children who are not ready for independent work, nightly reading with another family member is enough “homework,” she said.

Third to fifth grades

Many children will be able to do homework independently in grades 3-5. Even then, their ability to focus and follow through may vary from day to day.

“Most children are ready for practicing independent work between third and fifth grade, but maybe not yet in the after-school hours when they are tired and want to rest or play. We need to begin exposing children to organization and structure independently in late elementary school to prepare them for more independence in middle school,” King said.

Neurodivergent kids may need more parental support for several years before they work independently.

“Neurodivergent children, many of whom have executive functioning weaknesses, are not ready to work independently in elementary school. Children without executive functioning weaknesses (e.g., the ability to remain seated and attend to a task independently) are able to do this somewhere between third and fifth grade, but it’s very possible they can work independently at school but be too tired to do it later in the afternoon,” King said. “We need to follow the child’s skills and give them practice to work independently when they seem ready. Of course, if a child wants to do extra work after school due to an interest, go for it.”

For students who are not ready to work independently in middle school, it is better to reduce the amount of homework they are expected to complete so they can practice independence and feel successful.

Middle school

In sixth grade and later, kids are really developing executive functioning skills like planning, organizing, paying attention, initiating, shifting focus, and execution. They will still need your encouragement to keep track of assignments, plan their time, and stick to a homework routine.

“Middle school students need lots of organization support and putting systems in place to help them keep track of assignments, due dates, and materials,” King said.

High school

By this point, congratulations: You can probably be pretty hands-off with homework. Remain open and available if your teen needs help negotiating a problem, but executing plans should be up to them now.

“In high school, parents are working to put themselves out of a job and begin stepping back as children take the lead on homework. Parents of high schoolers are ‘homework consultants,’” King said. “We are there to help solve problems, talk through what to say in an email to a teacher, but we are not writing the emails or talking to the teachers for our kids.”

What if homework is not working for them (or you)

There are a number of reasons a child might not be managing homework at the same level as their peers, including academic anxiety and learning disabilities.

If your child is showing emotional distress at homework time, it might be a sign that they have run out of gas from the structure, socialization, and stimulation they have already been through at school that day. One way to support kids is to teach them how to have a healthy balance of work and play time.

“When we ask students to keep working after school when their tank is on empty, we likely damage their love of learning and fill them with dread for tomorrow,” King wrote in her newsletter.

King said in her experience as a child psychologist, the amount of homework support a child needs is determined by their individual abilities and skills more than their age or grade level.

“All of these steps vary for a neurodivergent child and we are not following these guidelines by age or grade but rather by their level of skills development to become more independent,” she said. “In order to independently complete homework, a child must be able to have attended to the directions in class, brought the materials home, remember to get the materials out at home, remember to begin the task, understand the task, remain seated and attention long enough to complete the task, be able to complete the task, return the work to their backpack, and return the work to the teacher. If any of these skills are weak or the child is not able to do these independently, there will be a breakdown in the system of homework. You can see why young students and neurodivergent students would struggle with this process.”

If you and your child have trouble meeting homework expectations, talk to their teacher about what could be contributing to the problem and how to modify expectations for them.

“Get curious about your child’s skill level at that time of day,” King said. “Are they able to work independently at school but not at home? Are they not able to work independently any time of day? Are they struggling with this concept at school, too? When are they successful?”

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5 Ways to Make Homework More Meaningful

Use these insights from educators—and research—to create homework practices that work for everyone.

Homework tends to be a polarizing topic. While many teachers advocate for its complete elimination, others argue that it provides students with the extra practice they need to solidify their learning and teach them work habits—like managing time and meeting deadlines—that have lifelong benefits. 

We recently reached out to teachers in our audience to identify practices that can help educators plot a middle path. 

On Facebook , elementary school teacher John Thomas responded that the best homework is often no-strings-attached encouragement to read or play academically adjacent games with family members. “I encourage reading every night,” Thomas said, but he doesn’t use logs or other means of getting students to track their completion. “Just encouragement and book bags with self selected books students take home for enjoyment.” 

Thomas said he also suggests to parents and students that they can play around with “math and science tools” such as “calculators, tape measures, protractors, rulers, money, tangrams, and building blocks.” Math-based games like Yahtzee or dominoes can also serve as enriching—and fun—practice of skills they’re learning.

At the middle and high school level, homework generally increases, and that can be demotivating for teachers, who feel obliged to review or even grade halfhearted submissions. Student morale is at stake, too: “Most [students] don’t complete it anyway,” said high school teacher Krystn Stretzinger Charlie on Facebook . “It ends up hurting them more than it helps.”    

So how do teachers decide when to—and when not to—assign homework, and how do they ensure that the homework they assign feels meaningful, productive, and even motivating to students? 

1. Less is More

A 2017 study analyzed the homework assignments of more than 20,000 middle and high school students and found that teachers are often a bad judge of how long homework will take. 

According to researchers, students spend as much as 85 minutes or as little as 30 minutes on homework that teachers imagined would take students one hour to complete. The researchers concluded that by assigning too much homework , teachers actually increased inequalities between students in exchange for “minimal gains in achievement.” Too much homework can overwhelm students who “have more gaps in their knowledge,” the researchers said, and creates situations where homework becomes so time-consuming and frustrating that it turns students off to classwork more broadly.

To counteract this, middle school math teacher Crystal Frommert said she focuses on quality over quantity. Frommert cited the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics , which recommends only assigning “what’s necessary to augment instruction” and adds that if teachers can “get sufficient information by assigning only five problems, then don’t assign fifty.” 

Instead of sending students home with worksheets and long problem sets from textbooks that often repeat the same concepts, Frommert recommended assigning part of a page, or even a few specific problems—and explaining to students why these handpicked problems will be helpful practice. When students know there’s thought behind the problems they’re asked to solve at home, “they pay more attention to the condensed assignment because it was tailored for them,” Frommert said. 

On Instagram , high school teacher Jacob Palmer said that every now and then he condenses homework down to just one problem that is particularly engaging and challenging: “The depth and exploration that can come from one single problem can be richer than 20 routine problems.” 

2. Add Choice to the Equation 

Former educator and coach Mike Anderson said teachers can differentiate homework assignments without placing unrealistic demands on their workload by offering students some discretion in the work they complete and explicitly teaching them “how to choose appropriately challenging work for themselves.” 

Instead of assigning the same 20 problems or response questions on a given textbook page to all students, for example, Anderson suggested asking students to refer to the list of questions and choose and complete a designated number of them (three to five, for example) that give students “a little bit of a challenge but that [they] can still solve independently.” 

To teach students how to choose well, Anderson has students practice choosing homework questions in class before the end of the day, brainstorming in groups and sharing their thoughts about what a good homework question should accomplish. The other part, of course, involves offering students good choices: “Make sure that options for homework focus on the skills being practiced and are open-ended enough for all students to be successful,” he said. 

Once students have developed a better understanding of the purpose of challenging themselves to practice and grow as learners, Anderson also periodically asks them to come up with their own ideas for problems or other activities they can use to reinforce learning at home. A simple question, such as “What are some ideas for how you might practice this skill at home?” can be enough to get students sharing ideas, he said. 

Jill Kibler, a former high school science teacher, told Edutopia on Facebook that she implemented homework choice in her classroom by allowing students to decide how much of the work they’ve recently turned in that they’d like to redo as homework: “Students had one grading cycle (about seven school days) to redo the work they wanted to improve,” she said. 

3. Break the Mold 

According to high school English teacher Kate Dusto, the work that students produce at home doesn’t have to come in the traditional formats of written responses to a problem. On Instagram , Dusto told Edutopia that homework can often be made more interesting—and engaging—by allowing students to show evidence of their learning in creative ways. 

“Offer choices for how they show their learning,” Dusto said. “Record audio or video? Type or use speech to text? Draw or handwrite and then upload a picture?” The possibilities are endless. 

Former educator and author Jay McTighe noted that visual representations such as graphic organizers and concept maps are particularly useful for students attempting to organize new information and solidify their understanding of abstract concepts. For example, students might be asked to “draw a visual web of factors affecting plant growth” in biology class or map out the plot, characters, themes, and settings of a novel or play they’re reading to visualize relationships between different elements of the story and deepen their comprehension of it. 

Simple written responses to summarize new learning can also be made more interesting by varying the format, McTighe said. For example, ask students to compose a tweet in 280 characters or less to answer a question like “What is the big idea that you have learned about _____?” or even record a short audio podcast or video podcast explaining “key concepts from one or more lessons.”

4. Make Homework Voluntary 

When elementary school teacher Jacqueline Worthley Fiorentino stopped assigning mandatory homework to her second-grade students and suggested voluntary activities instead, she found that something surprising happened: “They started doing more work at home.” 

Some of the simple, voluntary activities she presented students with included encouraging at-home reading (without mandating how much time they should spend reading); sending home weekly spelling words and math facts that will be covered in class but that should also be mastered by the end of the week: “It will be up to each child to figure out the best way to learn to spell the words correctly or to master the math facts,” she said; and creating voluntary lesson extensions such as pointing students to outside resources—texts, videos or films, webpages, or even online or in-person exhibits—to “expand their knowledge on a topic covered in class.”

Anderson said that for older students, teachers can sometimes make whatever homework they assign a voluntary choice. “Do all students need to practice a skill? If not, you might keep homework invitational,” he said, adding that teachers can tell students, “If you think a little more practice tonight would help you solidify your learning, here are some examples you might try.”

On Facebook , Natisha Wilson, a K–12 gifted students coordinator for an Ohio school district, said that when students are working on a challenging question in class, she’ll give them the option to “take it home and figure it out” if they’re unable to complete it before the end of the period. Often students take her up on this, she said, because many of them “can’t stand not knowing the answer.” 

5. Grade for Completion—or Don’t Grade at All  

Former teacher Rick Wormeli argued that work on homework assignments isn’t “evidence of final level of proficiency”; rather, it’s practice that provides teachers with “feedback and informs where we go next in instruction.” 

Grading homework for completion—or not grading at all, Wormeli said—can help students focus on the real task at hand of consolidating understanding and self-monitoring their learning. “When early attempts at mastery are not used against them, and accountability comes in the form of actually learning content, adolescents flourish.” 

High school science teacher John Scali agreed , confirming that grading for “completion and timeliness” rather than for “correctness” makes students “more likely to do the work, especially if it ties directly into what we are doing in class the next day” without worrying about being “100% correct.” On Instagram , middle school math teacher Traci Hawks noted that any assignments that are completed and show work—even if the answer is wrong—gets a 100 from her.

But Frommert said that even grading for completion can be time-consuming for teachers and fraught for students if they don’t have home environments that are supportive of homework or if they have jobs or other after-school activities. 

Instead of traditional grading, she suggested alternatives to holding students accountable for homework, such as student presentations or even group discussions and debates as a way to check for understanding. For example, students can debate which method is best to solve a problem or discuss their prospective solutions in small groups. “Communicating their mathematical thinking deepens their understanding,” Frommert said. 

Is Homework a Waste of Time? Teachers Weigh In

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The debate over homework rages on.

In response to an Opinion essay by a teacher titled “ What Do You Mean My Kid Doesn’t Have Homework? ”, many Facebook users took to the comments section to voice their perspectives on whether assigning homework is outdated and unnecessary—especially during a pandemic—or whether it’s a critical step to cultivating learning.

The benefits of homework have long been disputed, especially at the elementary school level. In 2018, Marva Hinton wrote about how homework was assigned at early grades and the potential effects on these young students. Some schools embraced homework, like Arlington Traditional School, a countywide elementary school in Arlington, Va., where kindergartners were expected to complete a minimum of 30 minutes of homework a night, Monday through Thursday. But some teachers such as Cathy Vatterott, a professor of education at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and the author of Rethinking Homework worried that adjusting to school routines combined with homework could sour young students on school.

But what about the benefits for older students? In a 2019 article , Education Week Assistant Editor Stephen Sawchuk unpacked the results of a Center for American Progress analysis, which found that while much of the homework assigned to the students in the study aligned with the Common Core State Standards, it did not contribute to building more difficult skills called for in the standards, like analyzing or extending their knowledge to new problems.

Beyond considering the efficacy of homework, the debate over how much time students should spend daily on take-home assignments dates back to the early 1900s. The public furor even led some state lawmakers to ban homework entirely at one point. Multiple studies over the years have examined different angles of the homework debate, including just how much homework students were assigned. In 2003, a pair of national studies found that most American students spent less than an hour daily on homework, and the workload was no bigger than it was 50 years prior.

“There is this view in the popular media that there has been this terrible burden of homework on children, and that the homework is increasing,” said Tom Loveless, the director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution to Education Week’s Debra Viadero in a 2003 article . “That is not the case.”

Fast-forward to the present, teachers and students alike might find themselves at another crossroads in the homework debate. The pandemic brought with it the advent of strategies like “flipped learning” , which relies heavily on homework as an integral component of the lesson. While this might work for some, many students grew weary of the reliance on homework during remote and hybrid learning. This is on top of the potential equity issues arising from lack of internet access affecting students’ ability to complete the steady stream of homework being assigned, and the uptick in mental health issues in students .

So what do teachers really think about homework? Here’s what they had to say in response to the recently resurfaced essay by Samantha Hulsman.

A Disconnect Between Parents and Educators

“i teach 1st grade. i had parents ask for homework. i explained that i don’t give homework. home time is family time. time to play, cook, explore and spend time together. i do send books home, but there is no requirement or checklist for reading them. read them, enjoy them, and return them when your child is ready for more. i explained that as a parent myself, i know they are busy—and what a waste of energy it is to sit and force their kids to do work at home—when they could use that time to form relationships and build a loving home. something kids need more than a few math problems a week.”.

- Colleen S.

“I tried the ‘no homework’ policy one year and received so much pushback from my parents that I began sending home a weekly packet. I pass it out on Monday and it is due on Friday. Parents [are] happy, I’m happy, and life goes on. I say pick your battles. Now, I refuse to give packets over school breaks (winter/spring). If a parent asks, I simply tell them to have them work on any app that we use in class.”

“i literally only assign homework because some parents always make a huge deal of it if i don’t.”, “parents are the driving force behind homework ... they demand it and will complain about not receiving it even after explaining your philosophy of education and providing them with pedagogy that refutes the ‘benefits’ of it.”, homework can be useful for certain subjects or grades, “as a teacher of nearly 40 years, i believe homework has its place. especially in math math needs to be practiced to learn it. i don’t believe in giving homework just because. i think it should be purposeful.”.

- Sandra S.

“For those leading the charge against homework, please think about the expectation for students beyond your classroom. If you teach elementary school, will they be asked to do homework in middle school, high school, and beyond? If so, organization, time management, and study skills are not so easily learned at a later age, when the expectation has never been present. I can’t imagine being a student, who enters college, having never had the expectation of nightly HW.”

- Bobbie M.

Is Homework Actually Helpful for Learning?

Some agree that at its core, homework is practice, which is a needed element to achieving learning.

“Homework is practice. Practice the skills we learned about in class so we can review and add to them. My instrumental students are required to practice every day. When they don’t it’s evident.”

Others aren’t as convinced it’s actually a good tool for assessing comprehension.

“As a teacher, if the kids were assigned homework, guess when the papers were graded ... After discovering a Mom had been doing the homework and was making failing grades ... I gave it up ... taught 25 years without it and my students did much better ...”

- Martha H.

Heightens Equity Issues

“no homework ever it is unnecessary it is so elitist and ableist and teaches kids that it is expected to take work home after hours of a job. nope never”, “homework just further separates the students. those who have parents home who understand the work, or can afford a tutor will do so. families already struggling financially tend not to have parents home to help and cannot afford tutors.”.

- Rebecca J.

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Ex-Seahawks coach Carroll pumped for 'exciting opportunities'

Check out Pete Carroll going off a high dive into a pool and celebrating USC's win over Oklahoma in the 2004 national title game. (0:24)

Pete Carroll isn't sure whether he'll return to coaching. For now, he's returning to USC.

The former Seattle Seahawks and Trojans coach told Sports Radio 93.3 KJR-FM on Tuesday that he'll start teaching a class at USC in the spring, though he didn't offer any specifics beyond that.

"I'm looking forward to that," Carroll said. "It's going to be a really exciting endeavor when it's finalized and all that."

USC issued a statement to the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday, saying, "We are excited to welcome Pete Carroll home to USC in a new capacity in which he can, as a legendary coach and leader, share his knowledge and experience with our students."

Carroll's radio appearance marked his first comments to local media since his farewell news conference at Seahawks headquarters in January, after team owner Jody Allen announced that he was transitioning into an advisory role with the organization. A source told ESPN that Carroll has only nominally been an adviser to the Seahawks, and he told the radio station that he has been keeping his distance from the team.

Carroll, though, said he will be doing some advising for "some other clubs." He wouldn't specify which ones but did clarify that they aren't football teams. Another recent project involved a trip to an American military base in Kuwait for a basketball tournament with U.S. troops. He said that experience reminded him that he has to continue to give back.

"I'm excited about it because there's more stuff to teach," he said. "There's more stuff to share. Everybody wants to know what I'm doing and all that, am I coaching or what am I doing, I'm working with some really fun people and some exciting opportunities to do some really cool stuff and putting things together ... for others, so I'm going to keep working that way and see what happens."

Carroll said he hasn't had much interaction with the Seahawks' new staff other than an impromptu meeting with his successor, Mike Macdonald.

"I haven't talked to those guys at all," he said. "I ran into Mike in the parking lot one day, and it was a great chance to just, the two of us alone, to meet, say hey and kind of get greeted, and on we go. I have not had much to do with them in any way, and really I'm just watching the games a little bit when I see them on TV. I'm not paying that much attention to it because it just feels like it's the right thing to do to let them go. I don't really have any opinion other than they're really hardworking and it's a really smart group of guys, and I know that they have a good group around them to build on and it sounds like they've done some really good things. ... With purpose I'm staying away from it and I'm not visiting with them at all."

Carroll coached USC from 2001 to 2009, before joining the Seahawks for a 14-year run in Seattle. He's one of only three coaches to win a Super Bowl and a college national championship.

Carroll, 72, didn't close the door on coaching again, saying he hasn't lost his competitive edge, but he noted he doesn't feel the desire to do so right now.

"I get asked it a lot and I'm pretty familiar with the answer now," he said. "I could coach tomorrow. I'm physically in the best shape I've been in in a long time. I'm ready to do all the activities that I'm doing and feeling really good about it. I could, but I don't really -- I'm not desiring it at this point. This isn't the coaching season. We'll see what happens. I'm not waiting on it at all. I'm going ahead. I've got other things that I want to do that I'm excited about, and I'm going to see how all that goes. I'm not thinking that I'm holding my breath and that kind of thing. If it's been 40-something years, 48 years or whatever coaching, and that's it, I'll feel OK about that."

Joshua Barajas Joshua Barajas

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• Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-live-kamala-harris-speaks-at-2024-democratic-national-convention

WATCH: Kamala Harris’ full speech at the 2024 Democratic National Convention

Once Kamala Harris took the stage on the final night of the Democratic National Convention, she made history.

Watch Harris’ speech in the player above.

The vice president formally accepted the party’s nomination for president, becoming the first Black woman or first person of South Asian descent to do so. If she wins November’s election, she would be the first woman president in U.S. history.

After a weeklong convention that touted her personal story and her career as a prosecutor and in politics, a cavalcade of speakers described Harris to voters as a “joyful warrior” and defender of personal freedoms and democracy — a stark contrast to the agent for division they’d find in her opponent, former President Donald Trump.

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In her speech, she laid out a choice for voters on Election Day.

“With this election, our nation has a precious, fleeting opportunity to move past the bitterness, cynicism, and divisive battles of the past,” she said. “A chance to chart a new way forward. Not as members of any one party or faction, but as Americans.”

Harris’ ascension this election season was swift. She stepped in after President Joe Biden faced mounting pressure to exit the race. In a matter of weeks, Democratic leaders and voters coalesced around Harris as their best chance to win the Oval Office.

With fewer than 75 days before the election, that urgency carried to her message to voters in the biggest speech of her political career: The nation can move forward and leave Trump behind.

“America, we are not going back,” she said.

Find more of our DNC 2024 coverage

• Live updates: Kamala Harris will accept her party’s nomination on Day 4 of the DNC
• WATCH: Tim Walz delivers pep talk in full speech at 2024 Democratic National Convention
• WATCH: Official explains why DNC denied a speaking spot to Palestinian American
• WATCH: Poet Amanda Gorman recites ‘This Sacred Scene’ at 2024 Democratic National Convention
• 7 takeaways from Day 3 of the DNC
• WATCH: Bill Clinton speaks at 2024 Democratic National Convention | 2024 DNC Night 3
• WATCH: Oprah Winfrey urges voters to choose joy by choosing Harris at Democratic National Convention

Cooper reported from Phoenix. Associated Press writer Chris Megerian contributed from Washington.

Joshua Barajas is a senior editor for the PBS NewsHour's Communities Initiative. He also the senior editor and manager of newsletters.

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Teacher, coach and veteran, Tim Walz makes his primetime DNC debut to accept VP nomination

Politics Aug 21

How a Teacher Can Improve Students’ Homework Performance

One of the great struggles of modern education is getting students to finish their homework. Even worse, when homework does get completed, students often lack the understanding of the subject matter to perform well. So, teachers have two issues to face when it comes to homework.

On the one hand, teachers do want their students to turn in their homework. However, they also don’t want to send homework home that students don’t know ho to complete. There’s no point in assigning homework that students don’t understand and just guess their way through.

So, what can teachers do to improve the situation? Each of these issues can be tackled by adopting different strategies.

Increasing Homework Completion

Getting students to finish their homework may be a bit easier than getting people to complete their homework well, so it makes a good first topic to tackle. Here are a few strategies that teachers can adopt to make sure students want to get their homework done.

Integrate Students’ Interests into Your Methods

The first and easiest approach to improving students’ desire to complete their homework is to integrate what they’re interested in to your approach. When students’ interests are part of the curriculum, they’re more likely to get it done.

In one research study, conducted by Michelle Hinton and Lee Kern, homework completion went from only 60% to more than 95%. The trick, then, is to find out where your students’ interests lie and finding ways to mix them into homework assignments.

An easy way to do this is by looking to technology. Now, more than ever, kids are connected to the internet. When they’re not playing games online, they’re surfing the internet on their computers or using social media over their mobile phones. It’s not unusual for kids to use tablets these days. So, how can teachers take advantage of this? In this example, teachers could create an online portal where students have access to their work and can engage with each other.

An online social media site, like a Facebook page, gives students the chance to interact with one another. Homework could be assigned through the portal and online discussions used to connect students, who can help one another with the work. Technology is among the easiest ways for teachers to integrate student interests in a time of unparalleled connection.

Create Completion Tools

One way that teachers can help ensure that students get their homework done, particularly if they themselves have trouble sticking to schedules, is by creating tools that they can use to help their students keep track of what’s due. The easiest way to do this is by creating a homework calendar.

A physical version of this might be kept in the classroom on a large display, allowing students to regularly review what’s due and when. A blank copy of this calendar can be given to students so that they can fill in dates and remove them based on how the class is moving along.

However, an even better way of creating a calendar for students is by making an online one. As noted, social media sites are great ways of keeping students up to date on what is due and when. An online calendar can be maintained on a class website or social media sites where students can easily review changes to the calendar. The power of the internet has made it much easier for teachers to keep students up to date on changes happening in the course.

Establish a Routine

Very often, teachers fall into the trap of getting behind in their work and assigning homework on days they don’t intend to. Maybe they mean to assign it one a Monday but, because they fall behind in their lessons, they instead assign it on a Tuesday. This is actually a really easy way of hurting the chances that your students will turn in their work.

Kids, like adults, benefit from having a routine. They don’t like having to guess what days they’ll need to turn in homework. Because their lives are already so hectic, it’s not uncommon for them to get confused about what work is due on what days By having a regular routine, you’ll help improve the chances that the homework gets turned in. If homework is assigned every Monday and due every Wednesday, make sure that you stick to that routine.

Week to week, students are regularly having to balance their personal lives with their academic ones. They also have to integrate extracurricular activities. In all of the chaos, it’s not uncommon for students to mix up days when homework is due for certain classes. A regular routine will help ensure that this doesn’t happen.

Improving Homework Completion and Performance

Some strategies for improving homework completion are also well suited for improving performance. Here are just two approaches you can consider to help you not only ensure students not only turn in homework more regularly but perform better on the work they do.

Adjusting Difficulty

Sometimes, students don’t finish homework not because they lose track of what’s due, but because they simply struggle with the material. In class, teachers are taught to differentiate their instructions.

Each student learns at a different pace, and teachers are most effective when they understand how to assign work that’s of different levels of difficulty. However, this isn’t a lesson that should stay restricted to the classroom. Teachers should also take the time to develop differentiated homework. By adjusting the difficulty, teachers make it all the more likely that homework will get done.

This strategy may best be used by adopting testing that’s not so much designed to grade students as much as to simply gauge which students need the most support. Teachers need to have a firm grasp on what their students are capable of and what they know and do not know.

Unfortunately, students can sometimes feel pressured under test conditions. For struggling students, this can make it all the more likely that they’ll underperform. It may be useful to consider tests that are non-graded but still provide insight into how students are performing. This sort of low stakes assessment may help provide an accurate picture of what students need the greatest adjustment to the homework you give them.

Provide Additional Resources

Another way that teachers can help guarantee that teachers will complete their work is by providing additional resources that students can use when getting their work done. Sometimes, this might mean pointing to resources that students can find in the library. At other times, this might mean pointing to websites that can help get students through their lessons.

For instance, YouTube has become a wildly popular resource for teachers. Now, more than ever, YouTube is filled with instructional videos that can help guide students through particularly difficult problems. There are also countless videos that discuss the plots of books or take students through science and math problems.

However, with the modern internet, teachers can also provide their own additional resources. Websites and social media sites can be used to make posts and host files that students can access. These files might provide additional context about a historic event or guides through particularly hard math problems.

This can be a more time-consuming effort if teachers want to put together their own resources from scratch. However, it’s also not difficult for teachers to find resources that they can host online. Using this approach can reduce the associated with putting together a teacher’s own original materials.

Improving Homework Performance

Finally, there are also approaches that are tailored toward improving homework performance. These strategies make it more likely that your students will do better on the homework that you assign.

Get Parents Involved

This is time consuming, but it can have one of the best payoffs if you’re trying to improve outcomes in student homework. Parent involvement is linked to numerous benefits among students. When parents get involved in their child’s education, it leads to better performance and a higher level of engagement. Those benefits carry over to homework.

One study conducted among sixth and seventh graders revealed that when parents helped their children with their homework, it led to better outcomes. This study was interesting not only because it benefited students in general, but specifically because it helped at-risk students.

These students are often those who are most likely to underachieve. Due to various circumstances, ranging from a lower socioeconomic background to violence in the community, at-risk students often perform more poorly than students who are not at risk.

Despite the chance that these students will perform more poorly on homework, researchers discovered that their performance jumped when parents became involved. This intervention did require effort and time. Parents had to be trained in how to help their children. However, the results were clear.

Over the course of a 10w-eek homework program, students saw improved marks in mathematics. This showed that with help from appropriately trained parents, even students who were at the greatest risk of failing saw improvement in their performance.

Flip Your Classroom

Now this is another radical idea that some teachers may want to consider if they’re ready to really make significant changes to how they approach in-class versus homework.

The idea of the flipped classroom is fairly simple. Using this model, teachers take homework and, instead of having students do it at home, have their students do it in the classroom. This approach is beneficial because it lets teachers, who have all the knowledge and experience necessary to guide their students, assist their class with the completion of the work.

If the students are doing their ‘homework’ in the classroom though, then what are they doing at home? Well, the flipped classroom also means flipping instruction so that it happens at home instead of the class. In a flipped classroom, teachers do some teaching in the class and introduce lessons. However, they leave the majority of text reading to be done at home.

Teachers may put additional videos and resources online, but the majority of instruction occurs at the student’s house, not the classroom. When students arrive in class, they’re expected to have learned the basics of their lessons. Teachers review these lessons briefly and go through some introductory instruction. Then, teachers guide them through more difficult work.

The most active part of the lesson is left for the classroom, where students can engage with one another and their teacher. The most passive part of the lesson, on the other hand, is left at home. Learn more about the flipped classroom .

Homework Clubs

At some point, it’s up to educators and administrators to come together to find ways of improving academic performance together. Many students who struggle on homework at home may benefit from a more community-oriented approach. For this reason, schools should focus on putting together an environment where students can do homework together under the supervision of adults.

Study halls should serve this purpose, but they often do not. Instead, students tend to complete most of their homework independently when in a study hall. This is often because students from many different classes find themselves together with a single adult who specializes in a limited number of topics. Instead of depending on study halls to help students get their work done, schools can put together homework clubs that will help students perform better on their work.

Homework clubs bring together students to work together under the supervision of parents and teachers. Homework clubs are structured. They meet together at regular times and often involve groups of parents or teachers that oversee the club. Just like any other club, like chess or drama clubs, they require adult supervision. This supervision is particularly important for homework clubs though, where students need the help and support of adults to help them improve their scores.

The best part about homework clubs is that they take the negative feelings off of homework and help students enjoy their academics more. Students get to work outside the classroom alongside friends. These clubs don’t have to be held in a school. They can also be held in a library, for instance.

Homework clubs typically happen right after school though, so these clubs should be held somewhere near the school. Homework clubs provide a positive environment where friends can be together and work on their homework as a group. Overseeing them are trained individuals who can help them in a variety of topics, almost like a tutoring center.

There are countless ways that homework performance can be addressed. For some teachers, the emphasis may be on simply improving homework completion. The steps for doing this are often easier than the steps required of improving homework performance. Teachers can help students complete their work more frequently simply by being consistent, providing calendars, or making the homework more engaging.

Improving academic performance is a bit trickier, but there are many ways to get this done as well. There are steps teachers can take independently, like flipping their classroom or providing additional resources to students. However, larger changes require a commitment from teachers, administrators, and parents. Homework clubs can be a fun approach to getting homework done, but it requires having the proper venue, the appropriate number of supervisors, and the commitment to helping students day in and day out.

Regardless of what approach teachers take, this list of interventions includes many ways that homework completion and performance can be improved. Which approach is best depends on the teacher and their own assessment of the needs of their classroom.

Similar Posts:

• 35 of the BEST Educational Apps for Teachers (Updated 2024)
• 20 Huge Benefits of Using Technology in the Classroom
• The Flipped Classroom: The Definitive Guide

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Towson High School teacher, beloved for his humor and dedication, dies at 43

“Today is always a melancholy day,” Matthew Jochmans wrote to a group of Towson High School teachers on Snapchat last Sunday. The teachers were commiserating over the end of summer; school would start up again in a week.

The physics teacher was about to set out for his annual bike ride on the Northern Central Railroad Trail to close out the season. The message would be his last to the group chat.

While on the trail, Jochmans, 43, died after having a cardiac episode Aug. 18, according to his mom, Monica Jochmans.

Matthew Jochmans, who spent his entire 18-year teaching career at Towson High School, leaves behind his parents and stepparents, along with many friends and former students who remember him for his belly laughs, dynamic teaching style and love for people . A public celebration of his life is still being planned, his mother said.

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On the Sunday that Matthew Jochmans died, Monica Jochmans’ phone kept ringing. The caller ID read “Breast Health.”

“What the heck do my breasts want with me?” she said to her husband while ignoring the two calls.

Kihn of rock and roll: Baltimore native Greg Kihn of ’80s ‘Jeopardy’ song fame dies at 75

Laura schweigman, known for her work on ‘the wire’ and ‘treme,’ dies at 44.

She didn’t know it was a health care professional trying to deliver bad news. Her former husband, Steve Jochmans, got the call instead. Then he called his son’s mother.

“Sit down. You have to sit down,” she recalled Steve Jochmans telling her on the phone.

Matthew Jochmans was born Feb. 16, 1981, in Corpus Christi, Texas. He lived in several states growing up. After his parents divorced, he moved with his mother to Minnesota where he graduated from Roseville Area High School in 1999. He went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in physics and math at Michigan State University in 2004.

Six years ago, Monica Jochmans and her husband, Bernard Grisez, moved to Towson to be closer to their son. She kept her name from her prior marriage in hopes she could have the same last name as her future grandchildren. But her only child never had kids and never married. Three years ago, however, she met his chosen family: teachers at Towson High who he spent most of his time with inside and outside the school.

A bike accident on the same trail brought Matthew Jochmans’ parents and friends together.

His former boss was already at the scene when Monica Jochmans arrived back in 2021. Throughout his time in the hospital, his colleagues kept him company and brought him food.

After cleaning out his classroom on Wednesday, about half a dozen of Matthew Jochmans’ friends, as well as his parents and stepmother, Jody Jochmans, exchanged memories at Charles Village Pub and Patio in Towson.

There was the time Matthew Jochmans jumped in a bitter cold Deep Creek Lake when the tightknit group of teachers rented an Airbnb at the height of the pandemic.

“Matt attended a department meeting and taught a class from the hot tub,” said Lindsay Karsos, his friend and fellow science teacher at Towson High.

Derrick Jackson, a music teacher, talked about how both he and Jochmans applied for the National Board Certification. It’s a lengthy and challenging process that could up a teacher’s pay by as much as $17,000.

“We both were going to find out in December if we passed,” Jackson said.

Jochmans’ colleagues often teased him for being popular and an overachiever. He had a bunch of teacher awards and was already four weeks ahead on lesson plans for this school year.

“He had already set up his classroom,” Jackson said. “He had already written all of his students’ names on index cards. He had already printed out work for the next day.”

No one else put in more time with the students, the music teacher said.

Friends also marveled at how much information Matthew Jochmans knew. He was the person everyone would want on their trivia team, yet he kept his humility.

“You would never know how popular he was, how smart he was, what he’s done, his awards,” said Steve Jochmans. “He wouldn’t talk about that.”

His intelligence paired nicely with his sense of humor, and he’d go to great lengths to get a laugh.

Karsos recalled an April Fools’ prank her late friend pulled on Holly West, the former head of the science department who hired Matthew Jochmans in 2006.

The physics teacher went into West’s office very concerned, saying parents caught wind of a question he put on a test — something funny but slightly problematic.

“‘I don’t think I can support you on this, Matt. I don’t know if you’re going to have a job,’” Karsos remembered West saying. “Then he broke the silence and was like ‘No, it was April Fools.’”

He was known for his sense of humor among the students too, but also for his lessons.

“You were very much involved in every lesson that he taught,” said Elise Longanecker, who graduated in the spring. “It wasn’t a situation where you could shy away from the rest of the class.”

Jochmans would hang bowling balls from the ceiling to demonstrate tension and push kids on skateboards in his classroom while teaching about force. His dad and stepmother watched him drop eggs from the roof when they’d visited his class just before Thanksgiving break.

When Nate Dowdy was a junior at Towson High, Matthew Jochmans was his physics teacher. Dowdy wasn’t “the greatest student” but still had plans to go to college. He didn’t know Jochmans as well as other students but hoped he’d write his recommendation letter. So he asked.

“Ah, Nate, I already have like 50 of these,” Dowdy, a 2011 graduate, recalled his teacher saying.

“But I don’t really have a lot of teachers in mind,” Dowdy responded.

Jochmans agreed, and Dowdy later got into High Point University.

Physics classes were filled with juniors and seniors — in other words, a lot of stressed-out teenagers thinking about the future, said 2021 graduate Kayla Yup. She was one of them. What she liked about Jochmans was how he always took students seriously.

“It’s hard to find an adult like that,” she said.

The summer before senior year, she needed advice about her future. She didn’t know what type of science she should pursue in college. She emailed her teacher for help, and he told her it’s OK if she ever changed her mind.

“Go with the flow of the river, don’t make a choice of destination until you have seen what the river shows you,” he wrote Yup.

She’s now a rising senior studying biology at Yale University.

“It’s going to be really weird” starting the school year without Jochmans, said Dylan Dalsimer, a rising senior at Towson High.

Joch, as Dalsimer called him, knew Dalsimer and his sister, Maura, their entire lives. Their dad, Kevin Dalsimer, teaches AP Calculus at the school. Maura was planning to be Jochmans’ homeroom helper this school year, her first year in high school. She’d planned on going with him and her dad to the Renaissance Festival. The hardest part of all this for Kevin Dalsimer was telling his 14-year-old daughter the bad news.

Clara Bryant, a 2011 Towson High graduate who took Jochmans’ class as a junior, will be taking over the physics teacher’s classes. This is her first year as a teacher, and up until last Sunday, she was prepared to teach math. After Jochmans died, Kevin Dalsimer recommended she take over the physics classes. She feels OK about it since she took physics in college and remembers the labs from Jochmans’ classes.

“Everybody has told me there’s no pressure for you to be like Jochmans,” she said.

On her first day of new teacher orientation, Jochmans had stood outside New Town High School waiting for Bryant to arrive. He greeted her, still able to recognize her while she wore a mask, and walked her inside. She’d been stressed about the new job and was recovering from a cold. As she was signing in, he said to her, “Hey, it’s going to be OK.”

About the Education Hub

This reporting is part of The Banner’s Education Hub, community-funded journalism that provides parents with resources they need to make decisions about how their children learn. Read more .

Kristen Griffith

[email protected]

Kristen Griffith is a reporter covering Maryland’s education workforce for The Baltimore Banner.

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Homework Matters: Great teachers set great homework

However, despite what I regard as the critical importance of homework, I regularly hear or read these objections:

• ‘there is no point of setting homework for the sake of it’,
• ‘children need to have a childhood, why rob them of their evenings’
• ‘research shows that homework doesn’t make much difference’.
• ‘I couldn’t possibly cope with all the marking if I set homework every week’
• ‘half the class won’t do it anyway, so what’s the point’

Well, I would argue with all of these points:

a) there is always a ‘sake’ because homework can and should always be an integral part of the learning process

b) it is perfectly possible to do lots of homework and have time to engage in all kinds of other activities and

c) the research doesn’t really deal fully with the nature of homework being set; we are not just talking about any old task – we are talking about great homework that feeds into lessons and provides exciting opportunities for student-led learning and creativity. (See the post about Hattie’s research , which he comments on himself.)

d) As I have described in my post about marking , the assumption that all homework needs to be teacher-marked is ludicrous and

e) the point about homework is to offer learning opportunities and generate a culture of high expectations; half the class will do it and they should not be held back because of the others.

Here are some of the key reasons why I think homework matters so much:

1) Bridging between teacher-led and student-led learning:

Most homework that I set (as I do religiously, every week for every class) is given on the basis that students will bring it to a lesson in the following week where we will discuss what they have done. 5 or more questions, tackled at home after an initial exploration in class, then form the basis of the next lesson: which questions did we find hard? What different kinds of answers did we get? Then I can help some who are struggling and push others on. This is simply not possible without the homework element. Most homework is, therefore, peer or self assessed. It has to be designed to facilitate that – which is reasonably straightforward. Along with research, note-taking and other pre-learning activities, most homework is about getting ready for the next lesson; this makes lessons much less teacher-centric.

(See this post:  Flipped out by Flipping? You may have missed the point. )

2) Extending learning time.

There are so many learning processes that do not fit neatly into lesson-long segments. There all kinds of tasks that students prefer to do in their own time, on their own terms – outside the confines of the school day. All students work at their own pace and homework allows them to get to grips with ideas or finish something properly, when they were rushed in class. This applies to writing essays, writing up science investigations, practicing maths problems, constructing a paragraph in French, producing some ideas in a sketchbook for Art or DT…etc. It applies to any number of exam preparation activities. It also applies to some tasks that students would never be set within school time like making videos or designing websites.

3 ) Creating Opportunities for Creativity and Choice.

Homework to my mind is about setting students free to try out different ideas; it is not about drudgery. Giving options for how they present information is a great way to do this: make a video, write a dialogue, write a standard essay or a booklet explaining the idea to younger children. Each of these is challenging in its own way – and students can choose their preferred response. I’ve had some extraordinary work from students with this kind of open ended homework task. The diagram shows a template for a half-term’s worth of homework that would be submitted at different times.

4) Developing the skills required for independent learning

How likely is it that Jimmy will have his moment of greatest clarity during the History lesson, period 4 on Tuesday? Or that Sandi will feel at her most creative during Art on Friday after lunch? It is unlikely. I think I made most of my own personal break-throughs in my room at home; the penny won’t drop just because the teacher is there. The goal is to empower students to engage in learning so they can learn anything anytime they want to… and homework is the vehicle for that. Year 13 students don’t just suddenly develop sophisticated independent learning skills; they have to be built up over years – and routine challenging homework throughout Years 7-12 is a good preparation. A good, standard part of homework is to pre-learn material and make notes from books or videos – as with the ‘flipped classroom’ idea and the Khan Academy concept. These things transfer ownership for core learning to students leaving lesson-time free to deal with students’ questions, their difficulties, misconceptions, interesting variations and so on.

5) Reducing the diverging effect of home support: ie it’s about equal opportunities.

The research by Hattie et al shows that homes make more difference to learning than schools. So, take away homework and what do we have? Essentially, homes with the greatest cultural capital, typically more affluent and middle class, will just fill the gap with their own family-education as they always have. They’ll be fine. Meanwhile, children from families where home-learning is scarce or simply doesn’t happen are left without structure or resources to fall back on. The same inequalities that give children such different learning orientations from pre-school persist. I’d argue that homework for all is a basic element of an educational entitlement; it is a leveller – provided that schools offer support for ‘homework’ to be done anytime, any place.

6) Communicating the values of the school and the teacher

I think that the quality of homework that comes from a teacher or a school says a lot about the values in that school or classroom. There is a definite link between the teachers regarded as ‘great teachers’ – those who have strongly positive reputations in the school community and model very high expectations – and the extent to which they provide students with a rich diet of challenge in and in between lessons. It is part of the job to involve and engage parents in the learning process; homework is a crucial part of this. As part of the diet of homework, it is lovely to include tasks that explore family history or include parents in some way. Teachers do share the responsibility for promoting their school in the ‘parental choice’ market place and, like it or not, a reputation for being soft or inconsistent on homework can be the kiss of death. This isn’t some superficial ‘pushy parent’ nonsense. I feel the same; taking learning seriously includes taking homework seriously and all the best teachers do!

So, to finish, in the routine flow of school life, I would urge teachers to put time and energy into setting great homeworks, mixed in with some more routine consolidation tasks. A balanced diet! Don’t get overly bogged down in setting detentions and so on; reserve sanctions for those who are very very persistent in not doing any work in between lessons. The greatest sanction of all is that they miss out on learning…. that message can’t be stressed too much. As soon as homework is associated directly with punitive sanctions, the battle has been lost – and you get a canteen full of students copying out last minute bits of work just to have something to hand in!  My most well-worn teacher-cliche, as I refuse to accept the scrappy, half-hearted, last-ditched effort: “you are not doing it for me, you are doing it for yourself!”

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44 comments.

Thanks for writing this post. It has helped me in my efforts to inform the parents of my 10yr old students. Every article and post that supports my Home Learning trial helps. So again, thank you. Great post.

Unfortunately all the research point in the other direction. Though of course you knew that… no?

Why do teachers just go on hunches and opinions so often? You seem to actively resent facts, research and evidence and just trot out your prejudices.

Dear Judge, thanks for your comment. Actually, the research on homework is more subtle and it doesn’t ‘all point in the other direction’ as you suggest. I will post something soon to show this. Hunches and opinions are key in education – education is all about values in the end so we need to be careful not to assume there is some scientific truth about learning that can be pinpointed; that will never happen. I don’t resent facts at all – but after teaching secondary age students for 25 years, the idea that homework is somehow superfluous is laughable to me. Most of my students’ work is done between the lessons; lessons and homework are part of one process.. anyway.. more to follow!

[…] have written about my views on homework under the heading ‘Homework Matters: Great Teachers set Great Homework’ . I’ve said that all my instincts as a teacher (and a parent) tell me that homework is a […]

Your headings mirror what we are finding schools doing as seen in their submissions for the 3rd Millennium Learning Award ( http://www.naace.co.uk/thirdmillenniumlearningaward ) – they are developing attitudes to learning amongst the pupils that are considerably raising their energy in learning. And using techniques such as choice and creativity to drive this.

[…] a massive advocate for homework but it needs to be re-defined and re-configured.  Pre-learning that helps ‘flipped […]

[…] a massive advocate for homework but it needs to be re-defined and re-configured.  Pre-learning that helps ‘flipped learning’ […]

[…] almost every lesson with every class.. because the learning never stops.  I’ve written that ‘Great Teachers set Great Homework‘ (see also here for the Hattie research, effective size etc)… I’m a big fan.  […]

I am really loving the theme/design of your site. Do you ever run into any browser compatibility issues? A handful of my blog visitors have complained about my website not working correctly in Explorer but looks great in Safari. Do you have any advice to help fix this problem?

I’ve never had any comments or issues reported. It looks the same on most browsers. My theme was the first I tried and it works well. I like the featured image which gives a bit of life to the front page. I find a lot of blogs are dominated by the most recent posting but this theme allows you to feature others quite prominently.

[…] superb vehicle for communicating expectations and values to parents, as I describe in this post: Homework matters: Great teachers set great homework.  Being a teacher who religiously sets homework in a variety of engaging forms, providing practice, […]

If your research is telling you that something self evidently true is not so then you probably need to review your research methods! I could not have achieved the grades I got at A-Level without a huge amount of homework. Almost all of my degree study was homework. Almost all the French vocab I know is due to homework I did 25 years ago. Almost all the English vocab I use is due to books I have read and conversations I have had outside school. I could not have developed my skill in algebra without the practice I did in homework. Surely it must dawn on the people who argue homework has no effect on learning that whatever their precious research says, it’s clearly baloney?

[…] http://headguruteacher.com/2012/09/02/homework-matters-great-teachers-set-great-homework/ […]

[…] http://headguruteacher.com/2012/09/02/homework-matters-great-teachers-set-great-homework […]

[…] involves rote learning, practice, or rehearsal of the subject matter.’ I also find that this post by @headguruteacher makes a compelling case for homework. (He also has a detailed post on Hattie […]

[…] lessons and homework and also links into a post I was on another blog I follow: Headteacherguru ( http://headguruteacher.com/2012/09/02/homework-matters-great-teachers-set-great-homework/ ) which talks about the purpose of homework and ways to make it more creative. This also gets the […]

It’s a great article, and in many ways I agree with some of his arguments; however, there does seem to be a culture in schools of “this is good so we must do it”, rather than “this is the MOST effective thing to do with the RESOURCES we have available”. We could make the same argument for lesson planning, marking policies, after school clubs, intervention. As for his suggestion that homework doesn’t need to be teacher marked, I investigated this in a piece of action research and found the amount of homeworks completed in a class was proportional to the amount of homeworks marked; in other words, if you want students to complete homework, you need to check they’ve done it and they need to know you will check it. I teach 150 students. Checking homework once a week at 5 minutes a go is 750 minutes or 12 hours. As I asked our Head when he said he wanted to see more marked homeworks in books: what do I stop doing so I can start doing this?

Thanks for the comment. You’ve expressed clearly a classic barrier to homework setting. Mainly you seem to be separating homework from classwork too much. When you mark books, you can only give a level of feedback that students can absorb. When I mark, I’m looking across all the recent work including tasks completed at home. It’s all a question of keeping things manageable. There are lots of ways to keep tabs on completion and major learning issues without feeling you need to mark every inch of every homework yourself. Meanwhile, if you do not set routine homework to provide opportunities for extension and consolidation, your credibility suffers… Keep it simple, regular and in perspective. See it as a set of opportunities, and be playful with it; focus on those that do it, not those that don’t. Make hwk feed naturally into lessons, not stuck on the side and separate.

Cheers! I will do; however, I think your experience of homework in schools may be a little different from my own! As my action researched showed, if you stop providing meaningful rewards (lollies) or meaningful punishments (detentions), homework doesn’t get done! I’ll try your suggestion your suggestion of marking everything together, and having a bit of peer assessment in class.

I did like this phrase: “Homework to my mind is about setting students free to try out different ideas; it is not about drudgery.” Sounds like “Arbeit Macht Frei” to me…!

Well, obviously a serious connotation there that misconstrues the genuine spirit of what I’m saying. !

Interestingly, your introductory comment:

“students who are successful at A level and at GCSE are those who have highly developed independent learning skills, have the capacity to lead the learning process through their questions and ideas and, crucially, are resilient and resourceful enough to get over the many humps along the way”

…could be used to describe students in Higher Education as well. Perhaps if students were more adept at independent study during their school years (using the methods you’ve described), they’d see the value of continuing the same practice at university?

Perhaps if we renamed it home-learning or pre-learning we might all start to view it in a different way. Homework all too often produces a knee jerk reaction from both parents and teachers who may see it as a stream of worksheets to be completed and marked. As a primary school teacher, children pre-viewing what is going to be taught next, or engaging in an independent, creative home-learning topic has significant value – for the child, the teacher and the parents who can then become more involved with their children’s learning. We introduced this style of home-learning years ago and we have had some amazing projects presented back at school – but we still fight the worksheet battle with many parents who don’t see it as ‘proper’ homework.

[…] was crucial. I was delighted to read Tom Sherrington‘s post in September 2012: ‘Why homework matters: Great teachers, set great homework’, which resonated with my own personal belief as I embarked on this quest: “that homework makes […]

[…] Homework Matters, Tom Sherrington: http://headguruteacher.com/2012/09/02/homework-matters-great-teachers-set-great-homework/ […]

[…] Great teachers set great homework […]

[…] Headguruteacher blog […]

[…] Head Teacher at Highbury Grove School in Islington and I thoroughly recommend reading his article Homework Matters: Great teachers set great homework. Also, read his article Homework: What does the Hattie research actually say? where he distills […]

Reblogged this on Geographisethis .

[…]  Up front, he makes his pro-homework views clear and shares a link to another piece of his, ‘Homework Matters: Great Teachers set Great Homework’.  The analysis that follows is, as I’ve said, pretty solid.  Until the […]

[…] http://headguruteacher.com/2012/09/02/homework-matters-great-teachers-set-great-homework/  […]

[…] specific factors are linked to better learning outcomes. Tom Sherrington, a teacher who is a firm advocate of homework, analyzed Hattie’s research and concluded that there is little benefit to homework for kids […]

[…] on his blog “great teachers set great homework”.  In fact, he dedicates an entire blogpost to it.  I thought I would do the same but with an MFL slant.  I’m sure I have set some […]

[…] performanţele școlare. Iar profesorul Tom Sherrington a analizat aceste studii, concluzionând ca beneficiile temelor sunt atât de mici, încât nimeni nu le-ar simţi […]

[…] and equally as much skill, and I think it would be fair to say that, with some notable exceptions (Sherrington, Allison), it has not been an imperative on the agenda of most schools. That may be controversial, […]

[…] Homework matters: great teachers set great homework […]

[…] it kills learning and widens the attainment gap, ask others and they say, romantically, that “Great teachers set great homework” and homework makes a massive difference to the learning […]

[…] is a great post on setting ‘great homework’ by Tom Sherrington here. It was this original post and seeing maths use the corbett maths idea that encouraged me to try a […]

[…] a great education and fostering independent learning, as I expressed in one of my earliest posts Homework matters: Great teachers set great homework.   In this post, I want to suggest what might constitute a sensible, effective diet of great […]

Hi Tom! Thank you so much for this, it really resonated with me when I first read it. I am compiling a few blog posts for teachers at my school to read, would you mind if I printed this and distributed it? Thank you so much!

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Please do! 🙏🏼

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Should Teachers Still Give Homework?

Giving homework is a standard practice in most educational facilities across all grade levels and locations. Homework is intended to further solidify concepts and practices that a student learns in class in their minds later at home. But that could all be changing. 

Educators are now taking many different approaches to homework with more of an emphasis placed on the relevancy of the work to both the students’ age and learning level. Some educators are joining the anti-homework movement, and have seen positive results from giving little to no homework for students. However, with outside parties like parents and families getting more involved in the conversation around homework, it may be here to stay. The question is, should it be?

• What is the history of homework?

For contemporary parents or guardians and their students, it might seem like homework has always been around. However, homework has actually been a widely debated topic since its inception in the 19th century. Horace Mann, among others, is credited with championing the idea of homework in the United States after touring German “Volksschulen (‘People’s Schools’)” while visiting the country.

As the idea of homework came across the Atlantic to America, it was quickly met with opposition and eventually a ban was placed on homework for any children under the age of 15 until 1917. When the United States and Russia entered the Cold War era, homework became relevant again as the United States placed emphasis on improving students’ knowledge to compete with other countries for success.

Various studies arguing both sides of the homework question have been released since then. The relevance of homework is now once again in question as educators and homeschooling parents try to understand the true purpose behind it. 

Is homework still relevant? 

Somewhere around 50% of educators still assign homework . However, this number might be bolstered due to parent involvement. Often, educators don’t want to assign homework or want to assign less homework, saving the time their students have at home for family bonding and other activities. 

But many parents are uncomfortable with a lack of homework assignments for the following reasons:

• Parents feel like their children need homework to solidify concepts learned in the classroom.
• Some parents also advocate for the time management, organization, and structure that homework can teach children.

They will often complain to the teacher, forcing the teacher to provide homework of some kind. So while half of all educators are assigning homework, the number of educators who believe it’s necessary may actually be less since some teachers feel pressured to assign homework when they otherwise wouldn’t. 

The relevance of homework when it is assigned is frequently up for debate because there are many nuances that go into the process of a student completing homework. When a teacher assigns homework they need to be aware of many things including:

• Student access to a reliable internet source and computer or tablet
• Student/parent dynamics at home
• Parent/parent dynamics at home
• Student accessibility levels
• Necessity to student learning

All of these factors play a role in how well the student will respond to homework. Other factors like grade level also play a role in the quality and quantity of homework being assigned. But beyond these factors, homework also needs to be thought out before it's assigned. To some extent, the relevancy of homework is determined by how well it’s been formulated by the teacher assigning it.

How much homework is too much? 

The quantity of homework will vary greatly by grade level. Teachers will often operate by the “ 10-minute rule ” which recommends that a child should be assigned 10 minutes of homework for every grade they’ve passed. So a fifth grader would have 50 minutes of assigned work. 

However, homework can become overwhelming when a teacher hasn’t put the time into creating meaningful assignments that can be completed in a reasonable amount of time. Thus the feeling of “too much homework” is often conflated with poorly constructed homework. A positively constructed homework assignment will contain a few things:

• Work reviewing material that the student has already learned in class
• Work that involves professor feedback or has a clear purpose
• Work that can be finished in the time period appropriate for the age and grade level of the student

Why is homework important? 

While many educators do not see much value in homework at the K–6 level, studies have shown that students in middle school or grades 7–12 do benefit from homework. Often this is because a student is learning more rigorous material and has a more fully developed brain that benefits from the reinforcement that homework provides. 

Many teachers argue that homework for students is like practice for athletes: it reinforces concepts and the neural pathways a student has used during class. Beyond these benefits , homework can also teach students time management and organizational skills.

__________ Become who you are called to be Pursue your purpose at PLNU. __________

Should teachers still give homework? 

Studies on the relevance of homework to actual success in the classroom are varied. One of the most comprehensive studies reinforces the idea that homework can have a positive impact if the teacher assigning it is doing so in the correct manner. In this case, the 2006 study conducted by Duke University psychology professor Harris Cooper, showed a positive correlation for students who were doing appropriate homework in higher grade levels. He stated that “a good way to think about homework is the way you think about medications or dietary supplements. If you take too little, they’ll have no effect. If you take too much, they can [hurt] you. If you take the right amount, you’ll get better.” 

The study also revealed that the impact of homework went down if the student was in elementary school. Therefore, the decision for teachers to assign homework should be based on the grade level they are teaching and the general intensity level of their students. One PLNU alumna, Megan Wheeler (19), who is also a grade school teacher has found this to be a sound policy and practices it with her own students:

“As an elementary teacher, I do not assign any homework to my students because I find that many students may not have home lives that are conducive to the demands that homework requires…My eight-year-old students are already working hard on school work for six hours during the day with me, so I would much rather they spend that time together as a family or participating in extracurricular activities.”

• Take the next steps to becoming an educator

Learning the ins and outs of properly constructed homework assignments can be a daunting task for rising educators, especially when the many types of student learning styles are taken into account. One of the best places to receive more instruction on how to assign the right kind of homework is in an education-specific degree program. 

PLNU boasts many undergraduate and graduate-level options for all types of budding educators so you can continue your education while pursuing a worthwhile career. Find out more about these programs by visiting PLNU’s School of Education website .

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• Should teachers still give homework? 

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Transform the following from direct to reported speech: The teacher said to me, "Do your homework." The teacher said to me to do my homework. The teacher said to me do your homework. The teacher told me to do your homework. The teacher told me to do my homework.

Indirect speech is used to report something in our own words. in case of order, the pattern for converting direct speech to reported speech is verb + indirect object + to-clause. the indirect object is the person spoken to. verbs in case of order can be command, order, warn. hence, option b is the correct answer..

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How to Do Homework: 15 Expert Tips and Tricks

Coursework/GPA

Everyone struggles with homework sometimes, but if getting your homework done has become a chronic issue for you, then you may need a little extra help. That’s why we’ve written this article all about how to do homework. Once you’re finished reading it, you’ll know how to do homework (and have tons of new ways to motivate yourself to do homework)!

We’ve broken this article down into a few major sections. You’ll find:

• A diagnostic test to help you figure out why you’re struggling with homework
• A discussion of the four major homework problems students face, along with expert tips for addressing them
• A bonus section with tips for how to do homework fast

By the end of this article, you’ll be prepared to tackle whatever homework assignments your teachers throw at you .

So let’s get started!

How to Do Homework: Figure Out Your Struggles 

Sometimes it feels like everything is standing between you and getting your homework done. But the truth is, most people only have one or two major roadblocks that are keeping them from getting their homework done well and on time. 

The best way to figure out how to get motivated to do homework starts with pinpointing the issues that are affecting your ability to get your assignments done. That’s why we’ve developed a short quiz to help you identify the areas where you’re struggling. 

Take the quiz below and record your answers on your phone or on a scrap piece of paper. Keep in mind there are no wrong answers! 

1. You’ve just been assigned an essay in your English class that’s due at the end of the week. What’s the first thing you do?

A. Keep it in mind, even though you won’t start it until the day before it’s due  B. Open up your planner. You’ve got to figure out when you’ll write your paper since you have band practice, a speech tournament, and your little sister’s dance recital this week, too.  C. Groan out loud. Another essay? You could barely get yourself to write the last one!  D. Start thinking about your essay topic, which makes you think about your art project that’s due the same day, which reminds you that your favorite artist might have just posted to Instagram...so you better check your feed right now. 

2. Your mom asked you to pick up your room before she gets home from work. You’ve just gotten home from school. You decide you’ll tackle your chores: 

A. Five minutes before your mom walks through the front door. As long as it gets done, who cares when you start?  B. As soon as you get home from your shift at the local grocery store.  C. After you give yourself a 15-minute pep talk about how you need to get to work.  D. You won’t get it done. Between texts from your friends, trying to watch your favorite Netflix show, and playing with your dog, you just lost track of time! 

3. You’ve signed up to wash dogs at the Humane Society to help earn money for your senior class trip. You: 

A. Show up ten minutes late. You put off leaving your house until the last minute, then got stuck in unexpected traffic on the way to the shelter.  B. Have to call and cancel at the last minute. You forgot you’d already agreed to babysit your cousin and bake cupcakes for tomorrow’s bake sale.  C. Actually arrive fifteen minutes early with extra brushes and bandanas you picked up at the store. You’re passionate about animals, so you’re excited to help out! D. Show up on time, but only get three dogs washed. You couldn’t help it: you just kept getting distracted by how cute they were!

4. You have an hour of downtime, so you decide you’re going to watch an episode of The Great British Baking Show. You: 

A. Scroll through your social media feeds for twenty minutes before hitting play, which means you’re not able to finish the whole episode. Ugh! You really wanted to see who was sent home!  B. Watch fifteen minutes until you remember you’re supposed to pick up your sister from band practice before heading to your part-time job. No GBBO for you!  C. You finish one episode, then decide to watch another even though you’ve got SAT studying to do. It’s just more fun to watch people make scones.  D. Start the episode, but only catch bits and pieces of it because you’re reading Twitter, cleaning out your backpack, and eating a snack at the same time.

5. Your teacher asks you to stay after class because you’ve missed turning in two homework assignments in a row. When she asks you what’s wrong, you say: 

A. You planned to do your assignments during lunch, but you ran out of time. You decided it would be better to turn in nothing at all than submit unfinished work.  B. You really wanted to get the assignments done, but between your extracurriculars, family commitments, and your part-time job, your homework fell through the cracks.  C. You have a hard time psyching yourself to tackle the assignments. You just can’t seem to find the motivation to work on them once you get home.  D. You tried to do them, but you had a hard time focusing. By the time you realized you hadn’t gotten anything done, it was already time to turn them in. 

Like we said earlier, there are no right or wrong answers to this quiz (though your results will be better if you answered as honestly as possible). Here’s how your answers break down: 

• If your answers were mostly As, then your biggest struggle with doing homework is procrastination. 
• If your answers were mostly Bs, then your biggest struggle with doing homework is time management. 
• If your answers were mostly Cs, then your biggest struggle with doing homework is motivation. 
• If your answers were mostly Ds, then your biggest struggle with doing homework is getting distracted. 

Now that you’ve identified why you’re having a hard time getting your homework done, we can help you figure out how to fix it! Scroll down to find your core problem area to learn more about how you can start to address it. 

And one more thing: you’re really struggling with homework, it’s a good idea to read through every section below. You may find some additional tips that will help make homework less intimidating. 

How to Do Homework When You’re a Procrastinator  

Merriam Webster defines “procrastinate” as “to put off intentionally and habitually.” In other words, procrastination is when you choose to do something at the last minute on a regular basis. If you’ve ever found yourself pulling an all-nighter, trying to finish an assignment between periods, or sprinting to turn in a paper minutes before a deadline, you’ve experienced the effects of procrastination. 

If you’re a chronic procrastinator, you’re in good company. In fact, one study found that 70% to 95% of undergraduate students procrastinate when it comes to doing their homework. Unfortunately, procrastination can negatively impact your grades. Researchers have found that procrastination can lower your grade on an assignment by as much as five points ...which might not sound serious until you realize that can mean the difference between a B- and a C+. 

Procrastination can also negatively affect your health by increasing your stress levels , which can lead to other health conditions like insomnia, a weakened immune system, and even heart conditions. Getting a handle on procrastination can not only improve your grades, it can make you feel better, too! 

The big thing to understand about procrastination is that it’s not the result of laziness. Laziness is defined as being “disinclined to activity or exertion.” In other words, being lazy is all about doing nothing. But a s this Psychology Today article explains , procrastinators don’t put things off because they don’t want to work. Instead, procrastinators tend to postpone tasks they don’t want to do in favor of tasks that they perceive as either more important or more fun. Put another way, procrastinators want to do things...as long as it’s not their homework! 

3 Tips f or Conquering Procrastination 

Because putting off doing homework is a common problem, there are lots of good tactics for addressing procrastination. Keep reading for our three expert tips that will get your homework habits back on track in no time. 

#1: Create a Reward System

Like we mentioned earlier, procrastination happens when you prioritize other activities over getting your homework done. Many times, this happens because homework...well, just isn’t enjoyable. But you can add some fun back into the process by rewarding yourself for getting your work done. 

Here’s what we mean: let’s say you decide that every time you get your homework done before the day it’s due, you’ll give yourself a point. For every five points you earn, you’ll treat yourself to your favorite dessert: a chocolate cupcake! Now you have an extra (delicious!) incentive to motivate you to leave procrastination in the dust. 

If you’re not into cupcakes, don’t worry. Your reward can be anything that motivates you . Maybe it’s hanging out with your best friend or an extra ten minutes of video game time. As long as you’re choosing something that makes homework worth doing, you’ll be successful. 

#2: Have a Homework Accountability Partner 

If you’re having trouble getting yourself to start your homework ahead of time, it may be a good idea to call in reinforcements . Find a friend or classmate you can trust and explain to them that you’re trying to change your homework habits. Ask them if they’d be willing to text you to make sure you’re doing your homework and check in with you once a week to see if you’re meeting your anti-procrastination goals. 

Sharing your goals can make them feel more real, and an accountability partner can help hold you responsible for your decisions. For example, let’s say you’re tempted to put off your science lab write-up until the morning before it’s due. But you know that your accountability partner is going to text you about it tomorrow...and you don’t want to fess up that you haven’t started your assignment. A homework accountability partner can give you the extra support and incentive you need to keep your homework habits on track. 

#3: Create Your Own Due Dates 

If you’re a life-long procrastinator, you might find that changing the habit is harder than you expected. In that case, you might try using procrastination to your advantage! If you just can’t seem to stop doing your work at the last minute, try setting your own due dates for assignments that range from a day to a week before the assignment is actually due. 

Here’s what we mean. Let’s say you have a math worksheet that’s been assigned on Tuesday and is due on Friday. In your planner, you can write down the due date as Thursday instead. You may still put off your homework assignment until the last minute...but in this case, the “last minute” is a day before the assignment’s real due date . This little hack can trick your procrastination-addicted brain into planning ahead! 

If you feel like Kevin Hart in this meme, then our tips for doing homework when you're busy are for you. 

How to Do Homework When You’re too Busy

If you’re aiming to go to a top-tier college , you’re going to have a full plate. Because college admissions is getting more competitive, it’s important that you’re maintaining your grades , studying hard for your standardized tests , and participating in extracurriculars so your application stands out. A packed schedule can get even more hectic once you add family obligations or a part-time job to the mix. 

If you feel like you’re being pulled in a million directions at once, you’re not alone. Recent research has found that stress—and more severe stress-related conditions like anxiety and depression— are a major problem for high school students . In fact, one study from the American Psychological Association found that during the school year, students’ stress levels are higher than those of the adults around them. 

For students, homework is a major contributor to their overall stress levels . Many high schoolers have multiple hours of homework every night , and figuring out how to fit it into an already-packed schedule can seem impossible. 

3 Tips for Fitting Homework Into Your Busy Schedule

While it might feel like you have literally no time left in your schedule, there are still ways to make sure you’re able to get your homework done and meet your other commitments. Here are our expert homework tips for even the busiest of students. 

#1: Make a Prioritized To-Do List 

You probably already have a to-do list to keep yourself on track. The next step is to prioritize the items on your to-do list so you can see what items need your attention right away. 

Here’s how it works: at the beginning of each day, sit down and make a list of all the items you need to get done before you go to bed. This includes your homework, but it should also take into account any practices, chores, events, or job shifts you may have. Once you get everything listed out, it’s time to prioritize them using the labels A, B, and C. Here’s what those labels mean:

• A Tasks : tasks that have to get done—like showing up at work or turning in an assignment—get an A. 
• B Tasks : these are tasks that you would like to get done by the end of the day but aren’t as time sensitive. For example, studying for a test you have next week could be a B-level task. It’s still important, but it doesn’t have to be done right away.
• C Tasks: these are tasks that aren’t very important and/or have no real consequences if you don’t get them done immediately. For instance, if you’re hoping to clean out your closet but it’s not an assigned chore from your parents, you could label that to-do item with a C.

Prioritizing your to-do list helps you visualize which items need your immediate attention, and which items you can leave for later. A prioritized to-do list ensures that you’re spending your time efficiently and effectively, which helps you make room in your schedule for homework. So even though you might really want to start making decorations for Homecoming (a B task), you’ll know that finishing your reading log (an A task) is more important. 

#2: Use a Planner With Time Labels

Your planner is probably packed with notes, events, and assignments already. (And if you’re not using a planner, it’s time to start!) But planners can do more for you than just remind you when an assignment is due. If you’re using a planner with time labels, it can help you visualize how you need to spend your day.

A planner with time labels breaks your day down into chunks, and you assign tasks to each chunk of time. For example, you can make a note of your class schedule with assignments, block out time to study, and make sure you know when you need to be at practice. Once you know which tasks take priority, you can add them to any empty spaces in your day. 

Planning out how you spend your time not only helps you use it wisely, it can help you feel less overwhelmed, too . We’re big fans of planners that include a task list ( like this one ) or have room for notes ( like this one ). 

#3: Set Reminders on Your Phone 

If you need a little extra nudge to make sure you’re getting your homework done on time, it’s a good idea to set some reminders on your phone. You don’t need a fancy app, either. You can use your alarm app to have it go off at specific times throughout the day to remind you to do your homework. This works especially well if you have a set homework time scheduled. So if you’ve decided you’re doing homework at 6:00 pm, you can set an alarm to remind you to bust out your books and get to work. 

If you use your phone as your planner, you may have the option to add alerts, emails, or notifications to scheduled events . Many calendar apps, including the one that comes with your phone, have built-in reminders that you can customize to meet your needs. So if you block off time to do your homework from 4:30 to 6:00 pm, you can set a reminder that will pop up on your phone when it’s time to get started. 

This dog isn't judging your lack of motivation...but your teacher might. Keep reading for tips to help you motivate yourself to do your homework.

How to Do Homework When You’re Unmotivated 

At first glance, it may seem like procrastination and being unmotivated are the same thing. After all, both of these issues usually result in you putting off your homework until the very last minute. 

But there’s one key difference: many procrastinators are working, they’re just prioritizing work differently. They know they’re going to start their homework...they’re just going to do it later. 

Conversely, people who are unmotivated to do homework just can’t find the willpower to tackle their assignments. Procrastinators know they’ll at least attempt the homework at the last minute, whereas people who are unmotivated struggle with convincing themselves to do it at a ll. For procrastinators, the stress comes from the inevitable time crunch. For unmotivated people, the stress comes from trying to convince themselves to do something they don’t want to do in the first place. 

Here are some common reasons students are unmotivated in doing homework : 

• Assignments are too easy, too hard, or seemingly pointless 
• Students aren’t interested in (or passionate about) the subject matter
• Students are intimidated by the work and/or feels like they don’t understand the assignment 
• Homework isn’t fun, and students would rather spend their time on things that they enjoy 

To sum it up: people who lack motivation to do their homework are more likely to not do it at all, or to spend more time worrying about doing their homework than...well, actually doing it.

3 Tips for How to Get Motivated to Do Homework

The key to getting homework done when you’re unmotivated is to figure out what does motivate you, then apply those things to homework. It sounds tricky...but it’s pretty simple once you get the hang of it! Here are our three expert tips for motivating yourself to do your homework. 

#1: Use Incremental Incentives

When you’re not motivated, it’s important to give yourself small rewards to stay focused on finishing the task at hand. The trick is to keep the incentives small and to reward yourself often. For example, maybe you’re reading a good book in your free time. For every ten minutes you spend on your homework, you get to read five pages of your book. Like we mentioned earlier, make sure you’re choosing a reward that works for you! 

So why does this technique work? Using small rewards more often allows you to experience small wins for getting your work done. Every time you make it to one of your tiny reward points, you get to celebrate your success, which gives your brain a boost of dopamine . Dopamine helps you stay motivated and also creates a feeling of satisfaction when you complete your homework !  

#2: Form a Homework Group 

If you’re having trouble motivating yourself, it’s okay to turn to others for support. Creating a homework group can help with this. Bring together a group of your friends or classmates, and pick one time a week where you meet and work on homework together. You don’t have to be in the same class, or even taking the same subjects— the goal is to encourage one another to start (and finish!) your assignments. 

Another added benefit of a homework group is that you can help one another if you’re struggling to understand the material covered in your classes. This is especially helpful if your lack of motivation comes from being intimidated by your assignments. Asking your friends for help may feel less scary than talking to your teacher...and once you get a handle on the material, your homework may become less frightening, too. 

#3: Change Up Your Environment 

If you find that you’re totally unmotivated, it may help if you find a new place to do your homework. For example, if you’ve been struggling to get your homework done at home, try spending an extra hour in the library after school instead. The change of scenery can limit your distractions and give you the energy you need to get your work done. 

If you’re stuck doing homework at home, you can still use this tip. For instance, maybe you’ve always done your homework sitting on your bed. Try relocating somewhere else, like your kitchen table, for a few weeks. You may find that setting up a new “homework spot” in your house gives you a motivational lift and helps you get your work done. 

Social media can be a huge problem when it comes to doing homework. We have advice for helping you unplug and regain focus.

How to Do Homework When You’re Easily Distracted

We live in an always-on world, and there are tons of things clamoring for our attention. From friends and family to pop culture and social media, it seems like there’s always something (or someone!) distracting us from the things we need to do.

The 24/7 world we live in has affected our ability to focus on tasks for prolonged periods of time. Research has shown that over the past decade, an average person’s attention span has gone from 12 seconds to eight seconds . And when we do lose focus, i t takes people a long time to get back on task . One study found that it can take as long as 23 minutes to get back to work once we’ve been distracte d. No wonder it can take hours to get your homework done! 

3 Tips to Improve Your Focus

If you have a hard time focusing when you’re doing your homework, it’s a good idea to try and eliminate as many distractions as possible. Here are three expert tips for blocking out the noise so you can focus on getting your homework done. 

#1: Create a Distraction-Free Environment

Pick a place where you’ll do your homework every day, and make it as distraction-free as possible. Try to find a location where there won’t be tons of noise, and limit your access to screens while you’re doing your homework. Put together a focus-oriented playlist (or choose one on your favorite streaming service), and put your headphones on while you work. 

You may find that other people, like your friends and family, are your biggest distraction. If that’s the case, try setting up some homework boundaries. Let them know when you’ll be working on homework every day, and ask them if they’ll help you keep a quiet environment. They’ll be happy to lend a hand! 

#2: Limit Your Access to Technology 

We know, we know...this tip isn’t fun, but it does work. For homework that doesn’t require a computer, like handouts or worksheets, it’s best to put all your technology away . Turn off your television, put your phone and laptop in your backpack, and silence notifications on any wearable tech you may be sporting. If you listen to music while you work, that’s fine...but make sure you have a playlist set up so you’re not shuffling through songs once you get started on your homework. 

If your homework requires your laptop or tablet, it can be harder to limit your access to distractions. But it’s not impossible! T here are apps you can download that will block certain websites while you’re working so that you’re not tempted to scroll through Twitter or check your Facebook feed. Silence notifications and text messages on your computer, and don’t open your email account unless you absolutely have to. And if you don’t need access to the internet to complete your assignments, turn off your WiFi. Cutting out the online chatter is a great way to make sure you’re getting your homework done. 

#3: Set a Timer (the Pomodoro Technique)

Have you ever heard of the Pomodoro technique ? It’s a productivity hack that uses a timer to help you focus!

Here’s how it works: first, set a timer for 25 minutes. This is going to be your work time. During this 25 minutes, all you can do is work on whatever homework assignment you have in front of you. No email, no text messaging, no phone calls—just homework. When that timer goes off, you get to take a 5 minute break. Every time you go through one of these cycles, it’s called a “pomodoro.” For every four pomodoros you complete, you can take a longer break of 15 to 30 minutes.

The pomodoro technique works through a combination of boundary setting and rewards. First, it gives you a finite amount of time to focus, so you know that you only have to work really hard for 25 minutes. Once you’ve done that, you’re rewarded with a short break where you can do whatever you want. Additionally, tracking how many pomodoros you complete can help you see how long you’re really working on your homework. (Once you start using our focus tips, you may find it doesn’t take as long as you thought!)

Two Bonus Tips for How to Do Homework Fast

Even if you’re doing everything right, there will be times when you just need to get your homework done as fast as possible. (Why do teachers always have projects due in the same week? The world may never know.)

The problem with speeding through homework is that it’s easy to make mistakes. While turning in an assignment is always better than not submitting anything at all, you want to make sure that you’re not compromising quality for speed. Simply put, the goal is to get your homework done quickly and still make a good grade on the assignment! 

Here are our two bonus tips for getting a decent grade on your homework assignments , even when you’re in a time crunch. 

#1: Do the Easy Parts First 

This is especially true if you’re working on a handout with multiple questions. Before you start working on the assignment, read through all the questions and problems. As you do, make a mark beside the questions you think are “easy” to answer . 

Once you’ve finished going through the whole assignment, you can answer these questions first. Getting the easy questions out of the way as quickly as possible lets you spend more time on the trickier portions of your homework, which will maximize your assignment grade. 

(Quick note: this is also a good strategy to use on timed assignments and tests, like the SAT and the ACT !) 

#2: Pay Attention in Class 

Homework gets a lot easier when you’re actively learning the material. Teachers aren’t giving you homework because they’re mean or trying to ruin your weekend... it’s because they want you to really understand the course material. Homework is designed to reinforce what you’re already learning in class so you’ll be ready to tackle harder concepts later.

When you pay attention in class, ask questions, and take good notes, you’re absorbing the information you’ll need to succeed on your homework assignments. (You’re stuck in class anyway, so you might as well make the most of it!) Not only will paying attention in class make your homework less confusing, it will also help it go much faster, too.

What’s Next?

If you’re looking to improve your productivity beyond homework, a good place to begin is with time management. After all, we only have so much time in a day...so it’s important to get the most out of it! To get you started, check out this list of the 12 best time management techniques that you can start using today.

You may have read this article because homework struggles have been affecting your GPA. Now that you’re on the path to homework success, it’s time to start being proactive about raising your grades. This article teaches you everything you need to know about raising your GPA so you can

Now you know how to get motivated to do homework...but what about your study habits? Studying is just as critical to getting good grades, and ultimately getting into a good college . We can teach you how to study bette r in high school. (We’ve also got tons of resources to help you study for your ACT and SAT exams , too!)

These recommendations are based solely on our knowledge and experience. If you purchase an item through one of our links, PrepScholar may receive a commission.

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Ashley Sufflé Robinson has a Ph.D. in 19th Century English Literature. As a content writer for PrepScholar, Ashley is passionate about giving college-bound students the in-depth information they need to get into the school of their dreams.

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The Highlighter

Do Students and Teachers Think Homework is a Good Idea?

Eva Hatfield , Editor | April 7, 2022

Eva Hatfield

A Rocky Mountain High School students homework for their math class.

Homework was first given in 1905 as a way to punish students. Since then, it has become widely popular around the world and is used in almost every American school. While many teachers see homework as a way to help students improve their knowledge, students and other teachers believe that it is not necessary and only takes up time. 

The Highlighter staff asked Rocky students and teachers what they think about homework.

“It’s a bad idea; it causes more stress on students. There are very few times where it is actually useful,” sophomore Erin Boehmer said.

Maddison Jackson, a student with a 4.02 GPA, added, “This week I’ve had around two and a half hours to three and a half hours of homework each night.” She also has two hours of competitive swimming each night, and that barely leaves time for anything else. 

“I feel like there shouldn’t be homework over the weekends. The district should make Fridays a remote day,” sophomore Cooper Lilly said. He added that he finds homework helpful. 

Mr. Smith, a math teacher at Rocky who does not assign homework, said, “I feel like I can adequately assess students and provide practice for course content within the 90 minutes we have for class. High school students who are involved [in extracurricular activities] and want to be a good student are some of the busiest people in the world and I want them to be able to spend time at home.” 

“All of the work that I assign in my class has a purpose and a direct connection to students’ learning and thinking,” said Ms. Ottoman-Freeman, an English teacher at Rocky. She assigns what her students say is about one hour of homework a night for her class and her syllabus says to expect 5-7 per week. 

Journalism teacher Mrs. White said, “Kids are in school eight hours a day. I feel like they should be able to get their work done at school. We want kids to be prepared for the real world but the real world doesn’t have homework.”

A poll taken by The Highlighter staff showed that seven out of nine students believe that homework is not necessary, while two of those students believe that it could be helpful. 

Homework can cause lots of stress and it takes up a lot of time. The National Center for Education Statistics conducted a study that showed high school students have an average of 6.8 hours of homework per week. 

“…there isn’t a shred of evidence to support the widely accepted assumption that homework yields nonacademic benefits for students of any age,” said Alfie Kohn , an author who writes books, particularly on parenting and education. People just assume that homework is necessary and that it helps students, but the research does not bear this out.  

Homework persists despite evidence showing it is not beneficial. Students and teachers continue to perpetuate this without following up on new research. 

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Eva is a second year writer and editor for The Highlighter. She is a Junior this year at Rocky. Outside of school she enjoys hanging out with her friends...

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English Notes

English notes latest questions, the teacher said to me, “have you done your homework” change into indirect speech.

Indirect Speech : The teacher asked me if I had done my homework.

Explanation: When the reporting verb is in the past (said) and the direct speech is in the present perfect tense, then the indirect (reported) speech will change into the past perfect tense.

Present Perfect Tense > Past Perfect Tense.

And if the sentence is interrogative, we use the reporting verbs – asked, enquired, etc.

Note: While answering to “yes or no questions”, we use if or whether.

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Tim Walz's son Gus has a learning disorder. Can his visibility help disabled Americans?

CHICAGO – When Jessica Anacker was in junior high, a teacher pulled her out of English class one day after she was bullied by a student because of her learning disability.

Instead of disciplining the tormenter, “she blamed me for being bullied,” Anacker said.

An angry Anacker fired back, telling the teacher, “It’s your job to take care of it.”

Now president of the Texas Democrats With Disabilities caucus and a delegate at this week’s Democratic National Convention , Anacker is thrilled that there could soon be someone to "take care of" such issues at the highest level of government.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz , Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris ' running mate, has spoken openly and lovingly about his 17-year-old son, Gus, who has ADHD , along with a nonverbal learning disorder and an anxiety disorder. Walz and his wife, Gwen, both former teachers, said recently in a statement to People magazine that they never considered Gus’ conditions an obstacle.

"Like so many American families, it took us time to figure out how to make sure we did everything we could to make sure Gus would be set up for success as he was growing up," the couple said.

"It took time, but what became so immediately clear to us was that Gus’ condition is not a setback − it’s his secret power," they said.

When Walz delivered his acceptance speech inside the packed United Center arena Wednesday night, Gus watched from the audience with his mother and sister, Hope, and sobbed.

"That's my dad!" he exclaimed.

From the stage, Walz honored his family. “Hope, Gus and Gwen – you are my entire world, and I love you,” he said.

Gus Walz sprung from his seat, moved by his father's words.

He pointed his index finger, saying "I love you, Dad."

Advocates for Americans with learning disabilities believe the Walz family's openness about their son and their willingness to speak publicly about the experience will raise much-needed visibility that could help others who are going through similar experiences.

“It’s a good thing when people in politics, who are running for office, are comfortable discussing disability issues and don’t view it as a topic that is taboo or something that we shouldn’t discuss,” said Zoe Gross, director of advocacy for the Washington-based Autistic Self Advocacy Network.

When public figures are open about their experiences with disability or those of their family, that can lead more people to feel comfortable disclosing their own disabilities or talking about their family’s experiences, Gross said.

“That’s helpful,” she said, “because in order to talk about the needs of the disability community, we need to be comfortable discussing disability as a society, just like we talk about the needs of any marginalized population.”

'Now is the time': Democrats again dream of electing female president after Hillary Clinton's loss

In a sign of how important the Harris-Walz campaign views disability rights, Gwen Walz made a surprise appearance Tuesday at a meeting of disability advocates at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. She made no mention of her son during her brief remarks but said her husband believes strongly “that every student and every person deserves a chance to get ahead.”

Walz is not the first vice presidential nominee who has a child with a disability. Sarah Palin , the Republican nominee in 2008, has a son, Trig, who has Down syndrome. Trig was an infant when his mother was running for vice president. Palin cradled him in her arms on stage after delivering her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. Amy Coney Barrett, appointed to the Supreme Court in 2020, also has a son with Down syndrome.

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'Fighting spirit': LGBTQ voters see hope in Harris campaign amid attacks from right

In their statement to People magazine, Tim and Gwen Walz said they noticed Gus’ special abilities at an early age.

"When our youngest Gus was growing up, it became increasingly clear that he was different from his classmates," they said. "Gus preferred video games and spending more time by himself."

When he was becoming a teenager, they learned that in addition to an anxiety disorder, he has attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, a brain development condition that starts in childhood and is marked by trouble with maintaining attention, hyperactivity and impulse control difficulties.

ADHD in adults is relatively common and affects between 139 million and 360 million people worldwide, according to the Cleveland Clinic. With treatment, people usually have limited effects from it.

Can she keep this up? Kamala Harris energizes Democrats and shakes up presidential race

Anacker, the Texas delegate at the Democratic convention, said it’s important for people with ADHD and other learning disabilities to have people in positions of power advocate on their behalf.

Anacker is neurodivergent , a nonmedical term used to describe people whose brains develop or work differently from most people. She also has a speech impediment and dysgraphia, a neurological condition in which people have difficulty turning their thoughts into written language.

In high school, she remembers dissolving into tears because she couldn’t draw a picture of a frog during science class. As an adult, she has never been fully employed, she said, because employers have a difficult time making accommodations for her disability.

No matter who wins the election in November, advocates hope the needs of Americans with disabilities will become a priority for the next administration.

Gross’ group, for example, would like to see expanded home and community-based services through Medicaid, which she said is one of the most urgent issues facing Americans with autism. Many states have long waiting lists for such services, and people who provide those services are underpaid, which leads to huge staff turnover, Gross said.

In addition, advocates hope to see an expansion of employment services, a realignment of government research to focus more on quality-of-life issues, and a federal ban on use of seclusion or restraints in public schools except in cases when they are needed to prevent physical danger, like stopping someone from running into a busy street.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth , an Iraq War veteran who lost both of her legs and partial use of her right arm when her Black Hawk helicopter was hit by a grenade, said Walz’s openness about his son will benefit all Americans with disabilities.

“For so long, disability was a hidden thing – you took care of your loved ones, but you didn’t talk about it publicly,” Duckworth, D-Ill., said after speaking to disability advocates at the Democratic convention. “Many disabled people stayed in the home, are not out in the workplace, and we really need to normalize those people with disabilities in a normal society so that you can get the job, you can show people you can do the job.”

Regardless of the election outcome in November, Walz is already spotlighting ADHD and other learning disabilities just by talking about his son during the campaign , advocates said.

“We love our Gus,” Tim and Gwen Walz said in their statement. “We are proud of the man he’s growing into, and we are so excited to have him with us on this journey."

Michael Collins covers the White House. Follow him on X @mcollinsNEWS.

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My daughter can get good grades without doing her homework. should i make her do it anyway.

Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. In addition to our traditional advice, every Thursday we feature an assortment of teachers from across the country answering your education questions. Have a question for our teachers? Email [email protected] or post it in the  Slate Parenting Facebook group .

This week’s Ask a Teacher panel:

Amy Scott , eighth grade, North Carolina Katie Holbrook , high school, Texas Carrie Bauer , middle and high school, New York Matthew Dicks , fifth grade, Connecticut

My daughter is in middle school, and her school’s policy is that homework only counts for 5 percent of a student’s final grade. Since my daughter can maintain A’s and B’s without that 5 percent, she doesn’t ever do her homework. I feel that she is being disrespectful to her teachers by not doing it. I think teachers work hard to plan the lessons. My daughter says if it is important to the teacher, then they’ll assign it as classwork (worth 30 percent), and then she will do it.

Part of me wants to ground her, and part of me says she is in middle school and this is not my place. It would be nice if there were natural consequences, but there aren’t any. Her getting a final grade of 92 vs 97 doesn’t matter, since it’s still an A. I know I would be very frustrated if I was a teacher and my students refused to do any homework I assigned. Sometimes respect for people is more important than good grades. What do you think. Should I just back off?

—Don’t Want to Offend the Teacher

Dear DWtOtT,

A lot of schools are moving toward a policy of reducing the amount and grade weight of homework, and that’s for three reasons. First, teachers generally assign homework to reinforce concepts, raise achievement levels, and promote responsibility, among other things, but there’s conflicting research as to whether it achieves these goals. Second, homework often precludes extracurricular activities, sleep, socializing, and getting bored, all of which contribute to students becoming healthy, well-rounded people. Last, and most importantly, homework creates inequity in grading because students have different levels of support at home. In my second year of teaching, I was tsk-ing a student who usually had his homework done but that day didn’t. He explained that he couldn’t because his family’s power had been turned off, and they had no lights. That was a learning experience for me.

A week ago, I would’ve told you to sit your daughter down and have a conversation about responsibility and integrity. I would’ve said to include the following:

• Part of growing up is learning to do things we don’t want to do, either because it’s required or because not doing it will create a bigger problem in the long run.

• How does she want to know herself—as someone who cuts corners or someone who goes above and beyond?

But … then I read this op-ed in the New York Times about how girls tend to put much more effort into school than boys and worry a lot more about it, and how these traits don’t translate to success in the workplace. I’ve seen this scenario play out so many times in my classroom—boys doing the bare minimum, and girls fretting over every point. I’d never looked at “skating by” as a strength, but of course it is . There are times when “leaving it all on the field” is appropriate, but why exhaust ourselves for minimal marginal gains in situations when it’s not really that important?

So now, instead, I’ll say this: It’s pretty clever of your daughter to figure out that she doesn’t actually need the homework in order to maintain her average, and if she feels OK about it, let her manage that herself.

The only thing she may want to consider is that students often need teacher recommendations to participate in activities and opportunities. Mention that her teachers may say, “She’s smart, but she doesn’t work that hard.” If she doesn’t like the sound of that, she should ask herself what she wants them to say about her, and act accordingly.

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My husband and I live across the country from his 5-year old daughter from a previous marriage. He and his ex-wife have joint legal custody, and my husband has physical custody for all major breaks. Even though we don’t live nearby, we are as involved as possible in her life. This is made more difficult, however, by the fact that my husband has a very high-conflict ex-wife who tries to shut him out as much as possible from major events in his daughter’s life. His ex-wife and I have zero relationship as she actively shows her disdain for me.

My stepdaughter enters kindergarten in the fall, and we’re hoping you can offer us some advice on how to navigate schools and teachers from so far away. Next year, we would like to be involved in parent-teacher conferences and general updates from her teacher, but we don’t want to overstep or make it awkward. When my stepdaughter attended day care, my husband tried to have a biweekly or monthly chat with her teacher, and he remarked that the teacher seemed “cool” to him. He didn’t know if his ex-wife had said something to her about him or if that was the teacher’s nature. He’d like to do what he can to ensure that next year he has open communication with her teacher, and that he receives updates on her progress and is kept in the loop about any concerns in her first year at school.

How does he broach this awkward topic with the teacher? Should he be upfront that he and his ex-wife do not have a good relationship and that while he doesn’t want to put the teacher in the middle, he would like separate communication from them regarding his daughter? How do teachers deal with parents who aren’t together? We are all for any do’s and don’ts as to how to make sure the focus stays on my stepdaughter, and that the custody/divorce situation doesn’t become a burden or distraction for her teachers.

—Concerned Stepmom

Dear Concerned Stepmom,

Divorced parents are very common, so your stepdaughter’s teacher is bound to have experience with your situation. Although you and your husband live in another state, he should still receive all school-issued communication—especially since much of this is online anyway. Not all school districts work the same, but typically when parents register a child for school, they provide both parents’ contact information. He can indicate that he needs newsletters or other communications to be mailed (or emailed) to both addresses. Most schools have websites where families can stay abreast of school news and events, and some are even active on social media. Your husband can probably even join the PTA and get the newsletter.

I’m emphasizing that your husband do these things, since one of your goals is to avoid drama with his ex. I’m sure that you are an important person in your stepdaughter’s life, but if the mother is in fact a “high-conflict” woman who “actively disdains” you, reaching out to the school yourself may only sow the seeds for more conflict.

A biweekly chat might be a bit much for a busy teacher to handle, honestly, but of course your husband should be included in updates on his daughter’s progress. I recommend he email the teacher to explain his geographical location and desire to be involved, but I would not mention anything about conflict with the mother. He should ask the teacher how she communicates with families and request to be included. Some teachers send out newsletters or use classroom apps, for example. For parent-teacher conferences, if he is unable to attend in person, perhaps they can schedule a phone conference, or maybe he could Skype in. These are reasonable requests of the teacher and avoid the ex-wife’s gatekeeping.

I have taught students who are caught in the middle of a contentious divorce. It’s no fun for anyone, especially the children. Your husband can’t control his ex-wife’s behavior, but he can control his own. Keeping all communication professional in tone and centered on his daughter should help your husband build a positive rapport with the teacher and hopefully relieve some residual stress that is bound to impact his daughter.

It might be difficult for you to take a step back on this, but that’s what I recommend you do. You can support your husband behind the scenes and hear all about school from your stepdaughter during her breaks.

Best of luck!

—Ms. Holbrook

My son is a bright third-grader who generally enjoys school. He was very apprehensive about entering third grade and fretted about it for most of the summer because he had been told by other children that he was in the “mean teacher’s class.” We talked about it several times and discussed that some teachers are stricter than others, but that it doesn’t make them mean, and he should really assess for himself how he gets along with “Mr. Jones.”

We have noticed during the year that Mr. Jones is, in fact, stricter than other teachers and quick to temper, but I have no reason to believe that he is intentionally mean or cruel to the students. My son and I have had some conversations about dealing with different personalities, and I consider this a life lesson—you won’t love every teacher.

My concern is that in conversations with the teacher, and on progress reports, Mr. Jones consistently asks that my son participate more in class because he is bright and would help others with his interactions. I’ve talked about this with my son, and while he will raise his hand occasionally, he has taken on a “keep my head down and don’t get in trouble” kind of mentality. He doesn’t like to be reprimanded, and because he is intimidated by this teacher, he doesn’t want to participate and risk drawing more attention to himself.

I feel a little stuck. I want my son to learn how to deal with difficult situations on his own, and while I have encouraged him to participate more, part of me also wants to say something to Mr. Jones. I don’t like that my son is reluctant to participate because he is concerned that it will end in a reprimand. We’re many months into the year, so this can’t just be what kids have told him from last summer… he’s experiencing something in the classroom that makes him feel it would be better to stay silent.

Do I let it go? Do I have a conversation with Mr. Jones and explain my concern? Do teachers care or even want to know that students believe they are the mean ones?

—Not Sure I Should Tattle

Dear NSIST,

It’s hard to get a grasp on Mr. Jones and his approach to classroom management, filtered as he is through your third-grader to you to me. You describe him as stricter than others and “quick to temper,” but at the same time, you don’t believe he’s intentionally mean. You consider your son’s experience in his class a life lesson, yet you don’t like the way this experience is affecting him. Mr. Jones says he’s eager for your son to participate, yet your son is afraid that complying with the teacher’s explicit request will ultimately earn him a reprimand. From what you’ve said, I’m envisioning the type of teacher that others tend to call “old-school” or “gruff,” the type who “runs a tight ship” and “doesn’t tolerate nonsense.” Not abusive, not a tyrant; a competent teacher, but no nurturing teddy bear, either.

To answer one of your questions: Yes, teachers generally do care about how they’re perceived by students, but you’d be hard-pressed to land on a universal agreement of what exactly constitutes a “mean teacher” even among teachers, let alone between teachers and kids. This teacher, if I’m imagining him correctly, probably would not put much stock in that feedback, anyway.

From what you’ve said, it sounds as if your son has already landed on a reasonable coping strategy for this issue. You’re right that it’s not possible for a student to love or even be compatible with every teacher they’ll be paired with in an educational career, and while Mr. Jones is encouraging your son to participate more, your son isn’t actually obligated to do so. Frequently volunteering answers aloud in class is a nice-to-have in student behavior; it’s not a base requirement. If the end result is that your son isn’t a vocal contributor in this classroom because he prefers to minimize his interactions with a teacher he doesn’t much like, and he’s learning and mastering material and continues to generally enjoy school, keeping his head down and flying under the radar sounds like a perfectly workable option for his tenure in Mr. Jones’ classroom.

If this continues to bother you, however, or if Mr. Jones asks again for your son to increase his participation, I think you certainly could reach out and explain that your son has had a hard time adjusting to Mr. Jones’ style of classroom management and that you’re eager to encourage him to volunteer more, but that you’d like to discuss how to make him feel more comfortable and confident in doing so. I also think you could let it go without guilt. From what you’ve said, it sounds like this isn’t a great fit, but that there’s nothing really wrong , and your son has found a strategy that works. Good luck!

What is your opinion of an arts education? My son has attended a private school for the past year that we selected for its small class size. He generally seems to like the school.

The school advertises itself as focusing on “traditional education.” What I’ve come to realize is that they mean an education in the arts. All students do music and a foreign language—serious instrument instruction starts around the third grade. My son comes home with a lot of drawings and first-grade attempts at creative writing. The school puts on two large-scale performances per year, one of which has several public performances.

However, they seem to be slightly light on the sciences. His classroom has two computers, and I don’t get the impression they’re used very often. The math education seems fine, though, and follows a well-known homeschool curriculum.

At a time when it seems like a lot of the country is focusing on STEM, should I be concerned that my son is attending what seems to be an arts academy? We do regular science projects at home, so maybe it will even out, but I’d appreciate an outside opinion.

Arts Education?

Dear Arts Education,

As a teacher who has built a stage in his classroom—complete with lights, curtains, and a sound system—and teaches Shakespeare to his fifth-graders all year long, I might be a little biased when it comes to assessing arts education.

What I can say is this: A strong background in arts education will produce students who are outstanding readers, writers, and thinkers. The arts promote empathy, cooperation, and understanding, and the skills he learns in the arts are transferrable across all subjects. There are enormous benefits to an education steeped in the arts.

That said, math is also critical to a student’s success and should be a priority in every classroom, but it sounds as if there is good curriculum in place for your son to learn. It doesn’t sound like a concern.

When it comes to science and technology, yes, your child’s schoolday may be lacking these components to a certain degree, but your child is in first grade. It’s early. It’s more important for your child to become interested and enthusiastic about science and technology than it is for him to learn about these subjects with any specificity. Ideally some science is taking place in the classroom, but if it’s playing second fiddle to the arts, that’s fine right now. The greatest challenge that a teacher faces is the crunch of time. Every year new material is added to the curriculum, and rarely is anything taken away.

When I was a child, for example, personal computers did not exist, internet safety and evaluating the reliability of sources wasn’t something that needed to be constantly addressed. There were 40 fewer years to study in history class. About 25 fewer countries.

As a result, teachers prioritize, and if your child’s school prioritizes the arts over science, I think it’s fine. By the time your son is in middle school, he’ll be receiving science instruction every day. So continue the projects at home. Take him to museums. Fill your home with nonfiction. Foster a love of science.

The actual learning can come later.

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Year of Global Elections

Tim walz made an impression in china, students and teachers say.

John Ruwitch

Democratic VP nominee Walz gets flak from the right for his relationship with China

Democratic vice presidential candidate and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz speaks at the 46th International Convention of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees on Aug. 13 in Los Angeles. Mario Tama/Getty Images hide caption

BEIJING — When Vice President Harris picked Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate on the Democratic ticket earlier this month, a Chinese woman in Western Australia, thousands of miles away, couldn't contain her excitement, shouting with joy at the news.

“When I realized that he was the Tim that [was] in my memory, I was amazed, and felt so proud of him,” Christy Dai told NPR by phone from Perth.

In 1989, a 15-year-old Dai met Walz, who became her first foreign English teacher at Foshan No. 1 Middle School in southern China. During that school year, Walz taught English and U.S. history to around 300 students, she says.

For Walz, it was an introduction to a country that he would return to about 30 times in the ensuing years, by his own reckoning — a cumulative experience that has come under a spotlight since his addition to the Democratic ticket.

But Walz’s record on China, based on the accounts of people who interacted with him on some of those trips, as well as his own words, is hard to put in a box.

In China, Trump has cachet but few see U.S. ties improving under him or Harris

At the age of 25, fresh out of college, Walz signed up for Harvard University's WorldTeach program and traveled to China, where, according to his online biography , he became part of one of the “first government sanctioned groups of American educators” to arrive after the country opened its doors to the world in the 1980s. The ’89-’90 school year started shortly after the Chinese army crushed pro-democracy protests centered on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in June 1989.

“It was my belief at that time that diplomacy was going to happen on many levels, certainly people to people,” Walz recalled during a 2014 congressional hearing commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown. “The opportunity to be in a Chinese high school at that critical time seemed to me to be really important.”

People-to-people communication

At the high school in Foshan, Walz made a good impression, according to Dai and a former colleague.

“He was quite lively and very approachable. Whether people understand English or not, he always greets them with hand gestures, appearing friendly and cheerful,” says Lee Nai-Tim, a retired teacher of Chinese language and literature, who was in charge of a class when Walz was teaching there.

Walz was given the nickname “Ah-Tim” by his students and colleagues. In Cantonese, the word “Tim” can be represented by a Chinese character that also appeared in Lee's name. Lee recalled Walz, with a big smile, saying in Cantonese: "Both you and I are named Tim."

Lee says Walz was thoughtful and cared for others. Walz was the only teacher at the school who was provided with an air conditioner, but he often left it off.

Here's why Taiwan is watching the U.S. election closely

“At that time, our electricity supply was sometimes unreliable,” Lee says. “Mr. Walz would turn off his air conditioner because when he used it, the lights nearby would dim. It was very hot in the summer, but he chose to go without air conditioning.”

For Dai, Walz represented one of the first opportunities for a close encounter with a person from the West.

“It was really a fantastic experience for us. And I would say that his time in China, you know, gave us a first glimpse of the outside world. And he was very humble and diligent. He gave us the impression of a Western person that is reliable, that [you] can be friends with,” Dai says.

She says Walz noticed she had a talent in English, and gave her the confidence that inspired her to pursue the language further. She eventually immigrated to Australia, where she has worked as a translator and interpreter for the past 20 years.

“This world needs people like him — people with integrity — to lead,” Dai says.

In the ’90s and early 2000s, Walz deepened his connection with China by leading Minnesota high school students there on summer trips.

Inside the Chinese-funded and staffed marijuana farms springing up across the U.S.

Emily Scott, who participated in one of those trips, says Walz encouraged the students to be open-minded, curious and eager to embrace new experiences. He set the tone for the entire journey.

“I really think he just wanted us to see how far away the horizon actually is,” she says. “He didn't necessarily want us to love it or hate it. He didn't necessarily want us to judge it in any way — the world, other people. He just wanted us to know it was there.”

During the trip, Walz encouraged Scott to learn Chinese, a suggestion that later led her to pursue a career that involved repeated trips to China.

Laura Matson, another former student, also traveled to China with Walz. The trip took place during the summer between her junior and senior years of high school.

She described the trip as an "eye-opening, incredible experience." Matson remembers meeting a group of Chinese girls on an overnight train ride. Matson spoke no Chinese, and the girls didn’t speak English, but they spent a fun evening painting each other's nails and exchanging magazines.

Putin and Xi further their embrace to defy U.S.-led pressure

“We couldn't connect on a verbal level, but we had a great time together and it was a really important moment for, you know, just recognizing that we can connect with anybody on any level if we put some effort into it,” she says.

Walz was "delighted to see his students making the kinds of connections and building the kinds of bridges that he had dedicated his career to fostering," she says.

Republicans are investigating

Altogether, Walz has said he’s made about 30 trips to China.

“I think a lot of people in China feel kind of excited,” says Zhiqun Zhu, a professor at Pennsylvania’s Bucknell University who has studied China-U.S. relations. “Walz had this experience in China, so they assume that he might be kind of pro-China.”

On social media, Republican critics have raised concerns about Walz’s connection with China, with one even labeling him a pro-China Marxist. On Friday, House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., said he was launching an investigation into Walz "following reports detailing the Governor’s longstanding connections to Chinese Communist Party (CCP) entities and officials."

Walz’s team has defended the governor’s record, saying he has stood up to the CCP and fought for human rights throughout his career. “Republicans are twisting basic facts and desperately lying,” Walz spokesperson Teddy Tschann said in a statement. “Vice President Harris and Governor Walz will ensure we win the competition with China, and will always stand up for our values and interests in the face of China’s threats.”

In a 2016 interview with Agri-Pulse , an agriculture information service, Walz said he did not believe the U.S.-China relationship needed to be adversarial.

“I totally disagree [with the idea] and I think we need to stand firm on what they're doing in the South China Sea,” he said, referring to China’s expansion of islands and assertive posture in disputed waters. “But there's many areas of cooperation that we can work on.”

Upon returning to Nebraska in 1990, Walz told a local newspaper that he believed the Chinese people had been mistreated by their government for years.

"If they had the proper leadership, there are no limits on what they could accomplish. They are such kind, generous, capable people," he said in an interview with the Star-Herald .

As a congressman, Walz co-sponsored legislation that took a firm stance on China. He met with the Dalai Lama and Hong Kong democracy activist Joshua Wong, both of whom are viewed with hostility by Beijing.

5 years ago they protested for freedom in Hong Kong. They want us to remember them

Walz also served on the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, which monitors human rights and the rule of law in the country.

During the hearing on the 25th Tiananmen crackdown anniversary, he said: “If we do not commemorate and we do not remember those who were willing to risk all, it puts all of us at risk of history forgetting the lessons that were there.”

The Picture Show

Rare photos and accounts from china's tiananmen square protests.

Zhu, the professor at Bucknell University, suggests that Walz's firsthand experience with China could be an asset if he were elected.

“I think if we have somebody at the top who had this experience, who really knows China's system, culture, society and who still has some friends over there, this will be very helpful, you know, to smooth the relationship,” Zhu says.

But he notes that Walz might not hesitate to take a firmer stance as the geopolitical competition intensifies.

The Chinese government, however, remained notably silent after Tim Walz was selected as Harris’ running mate. When questioned at a daily press briefing the following day, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson simply remarked that it was a “domestic affair of the U.S.”

For Qiang Fang, a professor of history at the University of Minnesota Duluth, this shows that China wants to “wait and see” who will win the U.S. election in November.

“If Harris and Walz win the election, the Chinese government would not be relieved,” says Fang, “because Tim Walz knows China, he was in China before.”

“I don’t think that the Chinese government has the impression that Tim Walz will definitely implement a pro-China policy under the current political environment in the United States,” he says.

As NPR has learned, Foshan No. 1 Middle School, where Walz once taught, has instructed its teachers not to give independent interviews about "an American who previously worked as a foreign teacher at school," without specifically mentioning Walz by name.

Aowen Cao contributed reporting from Beijing.

• Kamala Harris
• Vice President Kamala Harris

Smart Classroom Management

A Simple, Effective Homework Plan For Teachers: Part 1

So for the next two weeks I’m going to outline a homework plan–four strategies this week, four the next–aimed at making homework a simple yet effective process.

Let’s get started.

Homework Strategies 1-4

The key to homework success is to eliminate all the obstacles—and excuses—that get in the way of students getting it done.

Add leverage and some delicately placed peer pressure to the mix, and not getting homework back from every student will be a rare occurrence.

Here is how to do it.

1. Assign what students already know.

Most teachers struggle with homework because they misunderstand the narrow purpose of homework, which is to practice what has already been learned. Meaning, you should only assign homework your students fully understand and are able to do by themselves.

Therefore, the skills needed to complete the evening’s homework must be thoroughly taught during the school day. If your students can’t prove to you that they’re able to do the work without assistance, then you shouldn’t assign it.

It isn’t fair to your students—or their parents—to have to sit at the dinner table trying to figure out what you should have taught them during the day.

2. Don’t involve parents.

Homework is an agreement between you and your students. Parents shouldn’t be involved. If parents want to sit with their child while he or she does the homework, great. But it shouldn’t be an expectation or a requirement of them. Otherwise, you hand students a ready-made excuse for not doing it.

You should tell parents at back-to-school night, “I got it covered. If ever your child doesn’t understand the homework, it’s on me. Just send me a note and I’ll take care of it.”

Holding yourself accountable is not only a reminder that your lessons need to be spot on, but parents will love you for it and be more likely to make sure homework gets done every night. And for negligent parents? It’s best for their children in particular to make homework a teacher/student-only agreement.

3. Review and then ask one important question.

Set aside a few minutes before the end of the school day to review the assigned homework. Have your students pull out the work, allow them to ask final clarifying questions, and have them check to make sure they have the materials they need.

And then ask one important question: “Is there anyone, for any reason, who will not be able to turn in their homework in the morning? I want to know now rather than find out about it in the morning.”

There are two reasons for this question.

First, the more leverage you have with students, and the more they admire and respect you , the more they’ll hate disappointing you. This alone can be a powerful incentive for students to complete homework.

Second, it’s important to eliminate every excuse so that the only answer students can give for not doing it is that they just didn’t care. This sets up the confrontation strategy you’ll be using the next morning.

4. Confront students on the spot.

One of your key routines should be entering the classroom in the morning.

As part of this routine, ask your students to place their homework in the top left-hand (or right-hand) corner of their desk before beginning a daily independent assignment—reading, bellwork , whatever it may be.

During the next five to ten minutes, walk around the room and check homework–don’t collect it. Have a copy of the answers (if applicable) with you and glance at every assignment.

You don’t have to check every answer or read every portion of the assignment. Just enough to know that it was completed as expected. If it’s math, I like to pick out three or four problems that represent the main thrust of the lesson from the day before.

It should take just seconds to check most students.

Remember, homework is the practice of something they already know how to do. Therefore, you shouldn’t find more than a small percentage of wrong answers–if any. If you see more than this, then you know your lesson was less than effective, and you’ll have to reteach

If you find an assignment that is incomplete or not completed at all, confront that student on the spot .

Call them on it.

The day before, you presented a first-class lesson and gave your students every opportunity to buzz through their homework confidently that evening. You did your part, but they didn’t do theirs. It’s an affront to the excellence you strive for as a class, and you deserve an explanation.

It doesn’t matter what he or she says in response to your pointed questions, and there is no reason to humiliate or give the student the third degree. What is important is that you make your students accountable to you, to themselves, and to their classmates.

A gentle explanation of why they don’t have their homework is a strong motivator for even the most jaded students to get their homework completed.

The personal leverage you carry–that critical trusting rapport you have with your students–combined with the always lurking peer pressure is a powerful force. Not using it is like teaching with your hands tied behind your back.

Homework Strategies 5-8

Next week we’ll cover the final four homework strategies . They’re critical to getting homework back every day in a way that is painless for you and meaningful for your students.

I hope you’ll tune in.

If you haven’t done so already, please join us. It’s free! Click here and begin receiving classroom management articles like this one in your email box every week.

What to read next:

• A Powerful Way To Relieve Stress: Part One
• A Simple Exercise Program For Teachers
• Why Your New Classroom Management Plan Isn't Working
• 27 Things That Make Your Classroom Management Plan Work
• When And How To Teach Your Classroom Management Plan

21 thoughts on “A Simple, Effective Homework Plan For Teachers: Part 1”

Good stuff, Michael. A lot of teachers I train and coach are surprised (and skeptical) at first when I make the same point you make about NOT involving parents. But it’s right on based on my experience as a teacher, instructional coach, and administrator the past 17 years. More important, it’s validated by Martin Haberman’s 40 years of research on what separates “star” teachers from “quitter/failure” teachers ( http://www.habermanfoundation.org/Book.aspx?sm=c1 )

I love the articles about “homework”. in the past I feel that it is difficuty for collecting homework. I will try your plan next year.

I think you’ll be happy with it, Sendy!

How do you confront students who do not have their homework completed?

You state in your book to let consequences do their job and to never confront students, only tell them the rule broken and consequence.

I want to make sure I do not go against that rule, but also hold students accountable for not completing their work. What should I say to them?

They are two different things. Homework is not part of your classroom management plan.

Hi Michael,

I’m a first-year middle school teacher at a private school with very small class sizes (eight to fourteen students per class). While I love this homework policy, I feel discouraged about confronting middle schoolers publicly regarding incomplete homework. My motive would never be to humiliate my students, yet I can name a few who would go home thinking their lives were over if I did confront them in front of their peers. Do you have any ideas of how to best go about incomplete homework confrontation with middle school students?

The idea isn’t in any way to humiliate students, but to hold them accountable for doing their homework. Parts one and two represent my best recommendation.:)

I believe that Homework is a vital part of students learning.

I’m still a student–in a classroom management class. So I have no experience with this, but I’m having to plan a procedure for my class. What about teacher sitting at desk and calling student one at a time to bring folder while everyone is doing bellwork or whatever their procedure is? That way 1) it would be a long walk for the ones who didn’t do the work :), and 2) it would be more private. What are your thoughts on that? Thanks. 🙂

I’m not sure I understand your question. Would you mind emailing me with more detail? I’m happy to help.

I think what you talked about is great. How do you feel about flipping a lesson? My school is pretty big on it, though I haven’t done it yet. Basically, for homework, the teacher assigns a video or some other kind of media of brand new instruction. Students teach themselves and take a mini quiz at the end to show they understand the new topic. Then the next day in the classroom, the teacher reinforces the lesson and the class period is spent practicing with the teacher present for clarification. I haven’t tried it yet because as a first year teacher I haven’t had enough time to make or find instructional videos and quizzes, and because I’m afraid half of my students will not do their homework and the next day in class I will have to waste the time of the students who did their homework and just reteach what the video taught.

Anyway, this year, I’m trying the “Oops, I forgot my homework” form for students to fill out every time they forget their homework. It keeps them accountable and helps me keep better track of who is missing what. Once they complete it, I cut off the bottom portion of the form and staple it to their assignment. I keep the top copy for my records and for parent/teacher conferences.

Here is an instant digital download of the form. It’s editable in case you need different fields.

Thanks again for your blog. I love the balance you strike between rapport and respect.

Your site is a godsend for a newbie teacher! Thank you for your clear, step-by-step, approach!

I G+ your articles to my PLN all the time.

You’re welcome, TeachNich! And thank you for sharing the articles.

Hi Michael, I’m going into my first year and some people have told me to try and get parents involved as much as I can – even home visits and things like that. But my gut says that negligent parents cannot be influenced by me. Still, do you see any value in having parents initial their student’s planner every night so they stay up to date on homework assignments? I could also write them notes.

Personally, no. I’ll write about this in the future, but when you hold parents accountable for what are student responsibilities, you lighten their load and miss an opportunity to improve independence.

I am teaching at a school where students constantly don’t take work home. I rarely give homework in math but when I do it is usually something small and I still have to chase at least 7 kids down to get their homework. My way of holding them accountable is to record a homework completion grade as part of their overall grade. Is this wrong to do? Do you believe homework should never be graded for a grade and just be for practice?

No, I think marking a completion grade is a good idea.

I’ve been teaching since 2014 and we need to take special care when assigning homework. If the homework assignment is too hard, is perceived as busy work, or takes too long to complete, students might tune out and resist doing it. Never send home any assignment that students cannot do. Homework should be an extension of what students have learned in class. To ensure that homework is clear and appropriate, consider the following tips for assigning homework:

Assign homework in small units. Explain the assignment clearly. Establish a routine at the beginning of the year for how homework will be assigned. Remind students of due dates periodically. And Make sure students and parents have information regarding the policy on missed and late assignments, extra credit, and available adaptations. Establish a set routine at the beginning of the year.

Thanks Nancie L Beckett

Dear Michael,

I love your approach! Do you have any ideas for homework collection for lower grades? K-3 are not so ready for independent work first thing in the morning, so I do not necessarily have time to check then; but it is vitally important to me to teach the integrity of completing work on time.

Also, I used to want parents involved in homework but my thinking has really changed, and your comments confirm it!

Hi Meredith,

I’ll be sure and write about this topic in an upcoming article (or work it into an article). 🙂

Overall, this article provides valuable insights and strategies for teachers to implement in their classrooms. I look forward to reading Part 2 and learning more about how to make homework a simple and effective process. Thanks

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

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Tim Walz, in DNC speech, draws on past as coach, urging Americans to "leave it all on the field" before election

By Melissa Quinn

Updated on: August 22, 2024 / 12:12 AM EDT / CBS News

Washington — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz officially accepted the Democratic nomination for vice president Wednesday, casting the final weeks before Election Day as the closing minutes of a football game that will require the difficult work of "blocking and tackling" to defeat former President Donald Trump.

Walz closed out the third day of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago with a speech that drew on his time as a teacher and football coach in Minnesota.

"We got 76 days. That's nothing. There'll be time to sleep when we're dead," he told the crowd of Democratic delegates, elected officials and supporters. "We're gonna leave it all on the field. That's how we'll keep moving forward. That's how we'll turn the page on Donald Trump."

Walz's speech served as a platform for him to introduce himself to the broader public. He charted his rise from the small town of Butte, Nebraska, to joining the Army National Guard, becoming a teacher and then representing Minnesota's First Congressional District. 

Elected governor in 2018, Walz touted his achievements as Minnesota's chief executive, including passing paid family and medical leave, cutting prescription drug costs and protecting abortion access.

"In Minnesota, we respect our neighbors and the personal choices they make," he said. "And even if we wouldn't make those same choices for ourselves, we've got a golden rule: mind your own damn business."

Walz was nominated as the Democratic vice presidential candidate by Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Ben Ingman, a former student who lived next door to the governor and his wife, Gwen. Walz coached him for seventh-grade basketball and track, and Ingam was soon joined on the convention stage by former football players from Mankato West High School, where Walz taught and coached.

During his speech, Walz accused Trump and vice presidential nominee JD Vance of pushing an agenda that would make Americans' lives more difficult. While Trump has distanced himself from the policy proposals described in Project 2025, a presidential transition initiative overseen by the Heritage Foundation, Walz likened the guide to a playbook that will be put to use if Trump is elected to a second term.

"It's an agenda nobody asked for. It's an agenda that serves nobody except the richest people and the most extreme amongst us. And it's an agenda that does nothing for our neighbors in need," he said. "Is it weird? Absolutely. But it's also wrong. And it's dangerous."

Walz denounced Trump's understanding of leadership, and said good leaders "don't spend all day insulting people and blaming people."

"Leaders do the work," he said. "I don't know about you all, but I'm ready to turn the page on these guys. So go ahead, say it with me: 'We're not going back!'"

He then laid out his and Harris' agenda if they are elected president and vice president, which includes tax cuts for middle-class families, lower prescription drug costs and affordable housing.

"No matter who you are, Kamala Harris is gonna stand up and fight for your freedom to live the life that you want to lead," he said. "Because that's what we want for ourselves and it's what we want for our neighbors."

Harris announced Walz as her running mate earlier this month after a truncated search that included several Democrats from battleground states, including Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly and Roy Cooper of North Carolina.

A popular two-term governor, Walz was selected in part because of his executive experience and policy achievements on key issues, including gun safety, abortion and paid leave. He served in the National Guard and coached football, and is a hunter and gun owner.

Walz sought to contrast his beliefs on gun ownership with those of Republicans, who have pushed back against efforts to enact new firearms restrictions in the wake of mass shootings.

"I believe in the Second Amendment. But I also believe our first responsibility is to keep our kids safe. That's what this is all about," he said. "The responsibility we have to our kids, to each other, and to the future that we're building together, in which everyone is free to build the kind of life they want."

Walz could also help bolster support for Harris in the "blue wall" states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. The states have historically backed Democratic candidates, but went for Trump in 2016 and then Mr. Biden in 2020. Winning the trio of battleground states will be crucial for Harris and Walz as they look to deny Trump a second term in November.

While Democrats have responded with enthusiasm to Walz's selection, he has come under scrutiny for his military record. The Minnesota governor served honorably in the Nebraska and Minnesota Army National Guards for 24 years, but questions have been raised by conservatives about the last days of his service, namely his rank and if he retired to avoid a deployment to Iraq in 2005.

Walz achieved the rank of command sergeant major but was reduced in rank to master sergeant after his retirement because he hadn't finished coursework for the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy, according to a CBS News review of Walz's record and statements from the Minnesota Army National Guard.

Records also show Walz retired before his battalion mobilized and deployed to Iraq. He deployed in 2003 in support of Operation Enduring Freedom and was stationed in Vicenza, Italy, before returning to Minnesota in 2004. The Minnesota Army National Guard said the governor retired in 2005.

Republicans, including Vance, have also accused Walz of lying about having children through in vitro fertilization, a fertility treatment that gained considerable attention after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled in February that frozen embryos can be considered children under state law.

Walz has said he and his wife underwent fertility treatments for seven years before Gwen Walz became pregnant with their daughter, Hope, and he spoke about their experience in his first appearance on the campaign trail as Harris' running mate. The Harris campaign also said in a statement that the Walzes had their daughter "through reproductive health care like IVF."

But the couple is now facing criticism after Gwen Walz revealed this week she underwent intrauterine insemination, or IUI, a process different from IVF.

Walz spoke at the convention of his family's experience with infertility and decision to turn to fertility treatments, saying it underscores the role freedom plays in the upcoming election.

"When we Democrats talk about freedom, we mean the freedom to make a better life for yourself and the people that you love. Freedom to make your own health care decisions. And, yeah, your kids' freedom to go to school without worrying about being shot dead in the hall," he said.

James LaPorta contributed to this report.

• Kamala Harris
• Democratic Party
• Democratic National Convention
• 2024 Elections

Melissa Quinn is a politics reporter for CBSNews.com. She has written for outlets including the Washington Examiner, Daily Signal and Alexandria Times. Melissa covers U.S. politics, with a focus on the Supreme Court and federal courts.

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Wonder of the Day #1385

Why Do We Have Homework?

SCIENCE — Health and Fitness

Have You Ever Wondered...

• Why do we have homework?
• What are the benefits of homework?
• Is there such a thing as too much homework?
• classroom ,
• education ,
• knowledge ,
• mathematics ,
• prioritization ,
• repetition ,
• responsibility ,
• time management ,
• Classroom ,
• Education ,
• Knowledge ,
• Mathematics ,
• Prioritization ,
• Repetition ,
• Responsibility ,
• Time Management

Today’s Wonder of the Day was inspired by Nicolas from fort lauderdale, FL. Nicolas Wonders , “ Who invented homework? ” Thanks for WONDERing with us, Nicolas!

What has eight letters and strikes fear into the hearts of students around the world? No, it's not broccoli, but that was a good guess! Give up? HOMEWORK !

Did you just gasp in fear and anguish ? We're sorry, but homework is a fact of life and it's time we took a closer look at it. Even though it might get in the way of playing outside or watching your favorite television show, it's necessary and, believe it or not, good for you!

Homework creates a bridge between school and home. Parents rarely get to spend much time with you while you're at school. Homework allows them to keep up with what you're doing in your classes on a daily basis. But you don't have homework purely for your parents' benefit . It's good for you, too!

Homework can help you become a better student in several different ways. First of all, homework given in advance of a particular subject can help you make the most of your classroom discussion time. For example, before beginning a discussion of a complex period in history , it can be very helpful to read background information as homework the night before.

Homework also gives you valuable practice with what you've learned in the classroom. Often, the brief period of time you have during class to learn something new is simply not enough. Repeating classroom concepts at home helps to cement in your mind the things you learned.

For example, you've probably experienced the value of homework when it comes to mathematics . A new concept explained in class might seem foreign at first. With repetition via homework, however, you reinforce what you learned in class and it sticks with you. Without homework, a lot of classroom time would be wasted with repetition that could more easily be done outside the classroom.

In these ways, homework expands upon what is done during the day in the classroom. Your overall educational experience is better, because homework helps you to gain and retain more knowledge than would be possible with only classroom work. As you learn more, you know more and you achieve more…and you have homework to thank!

Homework teaches lessons beyond just what's taught in the classroom, too. Bringing homework home, completing it correctly, and turning it in promptly teaches a host of other important life skills, from time management and responsibility to organization and prioritization .

Despite these benefits found by researchers, the topics of who should receive homework and how much homework are hotly debated among educators and researchers. In one study , researchers found that academic gains from homework increased as grade level increased, suggesting homework is more beneficial for older students. Some researchers have found that too much homework can lower or cancel its benefits and become counterproductive , because students become burned out.

How much is too much? That depends upon many complex factors, including the individual abilities of the child, other demands upon time, such as sports, part-time jobs, family responsibilities, and types of classes. If you feel overburdened by homework, the best thing you can do is to open a dialog with your teacher. Be open and honest about your feelings regarding homework and work with your teacher to strike a reasonable balance that helps you achieve your educational goals.

Wonder What's Next?

Tomorrow’s Wonder of the Day feels just like home!

We hope today's Wonder of the Day didn't feel like homework! Be sure to check out the following activities with a friend or family member:

• While some kids don't like any homework, almost every student has homework that he doesn't mind doing on a regular basis. For some, reading a novel for homework is pure joy, because they love to read. For others, doing group projects as homework is great fun, because they get to have fun with their friends in the process. Make a list of the types of homework that you enjoy the most. Once you have your list, think about ways in which you can encourage your teachers to assign more of your favorite types of homework and less of the types you don't enjoy as much. Opening a dialog with your teacher about homework can be a mutually-beneficial conversation that can increase learning both in and out of the classroom!
• You know what goes great with homework? Food! It's true. A healthy snack can give you the energy you need to concentrate and tackle your homework as soon as you get home from school. If you need some ideas, jump online and check out After School Snacks To Power Homework . Share what you learn with your friends and family members. What's your favorite after-school snack? Why?
• Do you have a lot of homework on a regular basis? It can be easy to get overwhelmed. To make sure you make the most of your homework time, it helps to be organized. Setting priorities and sticking to them will help you complete your assignments on time with minimal stress. For help learning how to do this, read through How to Prioritize Homework Assignments: 5 Steps from School Habits. Using what you learn, put a plan into place that will help you make sure you become a homework hero!

Wonder Sources

• http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar07/vol64/num06/The-Case-For-and-Against-Homework.aspx
• http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/Main-Menu/Instruction/What-research-says-about-the-value-of-homework-At-a-glance/What-research-says-about-the-value-of-homework-Research-review.html

Did you get it?

Wonder contributors.

We’d like to thank:

quenton , Jaiden , Leo , Grace and Lenysia for contributing questions about today’s Wonder topic!

Keep WONDERing with us!

Wonder Words

• responsibility
• organization
• prioritization
• counterproductive
• overburdened
• educational

Hopefully this article helped you realize why homework is helpful, nyiahna. Keep WONDERing with us!

Don't get homework at this school. :)

Hopefully this article helped you realize why homework is helpful! 

yeah me too a lot

Wow, that's great for those schools! Thanks for stopping by, Mister C.

You're welcome, Person!

Thanks for sharing, Joe!

That's a great way to look at it, Adriana! 

That's a great way to look at it, Adriana! Thanks for sharing! 

I need to vent

Homework could benefit you. It gives your brain an easier time when you get a surprise quiz.

That's a difficult one, Wonder Friend! 

It certainly is hard to do homework while at play practice! There are so many cool things going on! 

Trying to complete your math homework right after you get home and have had dinner might be the best bet. Good luck! 

Ellen The Happy Girl!

We're so glad you liked it, Ellen The Happy Girl!

We like your enthusiasm, tyonna! 

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Student! That's an interesting concept. 

clever-name-or-smth

There's nothing wrong with being a big ol' nerd. 

And, there's nothing wrong with Invater Zim fanfic, either. 

so is checking these comments like a full time job or

Here at Wonderopolis, we do have specific people that check comments, but we do much more than that! 

There's a specific amount of time during a school day--and that doesn't make a lot of time for 'independent practice' of skills learned during the school day. 

Also, it's a GREAT idea to share your homework with your parents! 

Thanks for sharing your opinon, Joe! 

That's a great question, Brady. You should post it in the Wonder Bank . 

You're welcome, Chase!

That's great, loren! Care to share your fun homework hack?

wegsfvbydgfhnry

Hey, Wonder Friend. We're sorry you think homework is a waste of time. Practice is really important when learning new things. 

Hi sofia! 

What's your secret for making homework fun? I'm sure a lot of our Wonder Friends would like to try it out! 

That seems to be a common theme, ashley. 

We're sorry to hear that, harrison. 

wonder i already know...

Yikes! Well, it's important to have good time management skills so you can get everything turned in! 

Thanks for sharing your opinion, Harold! 

Thanks for sharing your thought process, Tyrannie! 

That's great, Xavier-B-! Make homework interesting! 

Hey, Adriana! We have a wonderful Wonder team that works together to accomplish all the Wonderopolis tasks. There is a core group of three currently, but we have people that pop in occasionally to help with things. 

my next wonder is how do you know if a boy likes you because i just got a boyfriend and hes really shy.

Make sure you submit it to the Wonder Bank !

That's legit. We totally understand your position!

CaptainObvious

Thanks bunches, CaptainObvious! 

Lil’ Mousey

Hey, Lil' Mousey--

We have some Wonders about cheese already. Check them out !

I know right! ☺️

EverestAndEvetheWarriors

Thanks, E&E!

Thanks for sharing your opinion, kev.

Thanks for sharing your opinion, Giani.

Jeez bro. It’s boring. All you do is sit there and fill out worksheets and assignments. We already do work at school. Why do we need work at home? It’s boring,bro,it’s boring. That’s why nobody likes it.

Thanks for sharing your opinion, Elvisssss. 

None taken. ? And, we're glad you respect homework because it's a great way to practice skills. 

It's Crule??

...but necessary!

Video gamessssss??????????????

Great reward for finishing homework! 

Video games DUH! I have one! Would you rather eat only fried chicken for the rest of your life or suffer from homework every single day for the rest of your life. Plz reply ??

ChickenFries

I would pick fried chicken because I’m a HUGE chicken fan. Not a homework fan. One time my teacher gave the class a big report that day and said it was due the next day. It wasn’t fair because I had to miss football practice because I had to work on it.

We're sorry that happened, ChickenFries.

Homework. Definitely. 

Wonder Friend

I love homework it the best i love not being able to play with my friends and doing my homework call me i will do your homework. [redacted]

It may, Catlyn, but practice makes perfect! 

Homeworkistheworst

Catlyn smith

Homework is a way for students to practice skills. It takes, on average, doing something right 18 times before it becomes a habit. So, writing a sentence with subject/verb agreement 18 times(ish), means you have mastered that skill. 

Until you get to more complicated stuff.

The sources are listed in the left column of the WONDER, ZERVA. 

Homework is the independent practice of a skill teachers need to make sure students can perform on their own. 

We're sorry homework stresses some people out. That's a great subject to bring up with parents and teachers, though! 

We're sorry to hear that, Carter. 

Isohatehomework

I'm sure a lot of our Wonder Friends share your opinion! ?

Oh,ha ha ha.???I am not a so called Wonder Friend. Are you a robot?!

? Everyone who comes to Wonderopolis are our Wonder Friends! 

We're not robots. We actually respond to most of the comments made. 

your not one person, your multiple people who are in the "Wonderopolis" company

Oh...sorry about that...I didn’t mean to say that. I’m sorry x100 ☹️????

It's ?

We think you're not alone in that emotion!

Jack McCrea

OMG YOU ARE SO RIGHT. But to be honest I just hate it

Mason Smolen

That's WONDERful, Mason!

AnonymousPerson31

We're glad we could be of assistance, Wonder Friend!

Maybe this WONDER about expectations will help. 

Hi, Lulia! It's important to finish your homework so that you can continue to learn about topics discussed in school! What is your favorite subject in school? 

Hi, caileigh! Yeah, though homework isn't the most fun activity after school, it will help you learn more about what you learned in school!

steve savie

Hi, Sara! We're sorry to hear that you're having homework problems ?.

All homework does is make students stressed out and make less time for them to be with their family and relax

no homework is based on the work we do in school and you will get better at your work.

We're so sorry to hear that you're having a tough time with homework, Wonder Friend ?.  Homework is important, and time with family and relaxing is important, too!

AngryPerson

u think all of our parents help with our homework? some of them dont, they see this as a "student's responsibility" and let them be and btw, if you delete this comment, it is easy to see that you don't want any negative comments about this and want to eliminate the people who think homework is bad

Hi, AngryPerson.  We're so sorry that you're angry.  We do want to hear our Wonder Friends' thoughts here at Wonderopolis.  If you're having trouble with your homework, we hope that you ask your teacher for help.  We appreciate your feedback!

This is so true! In my house, homework never connected me to my parents, because like work at school, I saw it as a test of what I could do individually. Thus, as all my time was taken up by homework, I almost never spent time with my parents. Now I feel isolated from them.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Kay.  We definitely recommend spending quality time with family, and we hope that learning together is a way to connect with your family!

Thank you for sharing your thoughts, Mii.  And we absolutely agree that spending quality time with your family is very important!!  Perhaps you could tell your family fun facts that you learned at school?  Learning new information is also very important, and it is awesome to share the information you learn with your family so that you can learn together! ?

Homework is both emotionally and mentally hurtful...Physically too-

We're sorry to hear that you are having trouble with your homework, Wonder Friend!  We hope that you ask your teacher if you have any specific questions about your homework.

Hi, Llamaz! We hope that you are getting plenty of sleep, too! Check out  Wonder 1775: Do Kids Need More Sleep Than Adults?   Also, thanks for sharing your thoughts!

Thanks for asking, rather! We ask that Wonderopolis be listed as the author.  Also, since we do not list the publish date for our Wonders of the Day, you may put the date you accessed this page for information.  The following is how you would cite this page:

"Why Do We Have Homework?"  Wonderopolis.    https://www.wonderopolis.org/wonder/why-do-we-have-homework .  Accessed 25 Apr. 2018.

Hang in there, Louie! It sounds like you're working really hard on your homework and essays, which is awesome!!

Louie ramirez

We appreciate you sharing your thoughts with us, Louie.   We know that homework takes a lot of work, but it's also helping you learn and Wonder!

Hi, Louie! What are you writing about in your essay?

Hi, Clara! We have MANY Wonders on these topics!! Our  Explore Wonders tab contains over 2,100 Wonders, and if you scroll down on this page, you can search for Wonders by topics that you're interested in! Have fun WONDERing, Clara!

We're sorry to hear that you are having a hard time with your homework, Ben, but we think that you are doing a great job and working hard! Keep up the great work!!

Playing games is fun, but make sure you make time for your homework, too, Mitchell! Once you finish your the homework, you should check out   Wonder 1732: How Are Video Games Made?  ?

Thank you for sharing your thoughts, Benicio.  Though the pros of homework are the focus of this Wonder, the second to last paragraph does list some potential cons:

"Despite these benefits found by researchers, the topics of who should receive homework and how much homework are hotly debated among educators and researchers. In  one study , researchers found that academic gains from homework increased as grade level increased, suggesting homework is more beneficial for older students. Some researchers have found that too much homework can lower or cancel its benefits and become  counterproductive , because students become burned out."

Hi, kody! We're glad that you're WONDERing with us!

We love hearing that, Jordan!! Thanks for letting us know, and thanks for WONDERing with us!

Thanks for WONDERing with us, Miles!

Hi, Ameir! It looks like you've really done some research on the subject! 

Hi, ameir!! If you're having trouble with your homework, you may want to discuss specific questions you're having with your teacher.  What is your favorite subject in school?

math and science are my favorite

Those subjects are very interesting!! Have you seen our  Math and  Science Wonders?

We're sorry to hear that, UJEY, but we're glad you're WONDERing with us! 

It is important to take some time to rest, but homework is also important! We hope this Wonder helps explain why!

We're sorry to hear that, Gia, but we hope that this Wonder helps explain the many benefits of homework, too!

homework gets in the way of thing i want to do. I think teachers give homework just because they have nothing else to do. like isn't going to school enough work and it takes time away from my family especially my mom who cancer and i would want to spend more time with my mom. :(

We're so sorry to hear that, digeo! ?

dogs go moo

school is kid preson!

We're sorry you feel that way! We think school is an excellent place to Wonder!!!

why do dogs go moo

Thanks for WONDERing with us!

mkewigyjdfo8ueabsn ry7gtcbsh j

We're glad you liked this Wonder!! ?

Hi, Luke! Have you seen Wonder 1529:  Why Do Cats Purr?

Hi, mew mew! Have you seen our  Wonders about cats ?

jacob baldwin

Sorry, didn't catch that, jacob! Glad you're WONDERing with us though!!

Hello, Bob! We're always looking to hear more from our Wonder Friends!!  ?

Thanks for stopping by to Wonder with us!

dogs say moooooooooooooooooooo

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!!

Thanks for sharing! Sometimes it is difficult to balance homework and other activities.  What are some of your favorite things to do when you're not doing homework?

We're sorry you feel that way, CN Olson!! We're glad you're WONDERing with us, though!

Thanks for joining the conversation, davaeh!

im sorry for anyone that feels that way but homework is good for you

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

Great points, john! We hope you will have some more free time soon!!  Thanks for WONDERing with us!!

We appreciate your feedback, jorge! 

Agreed aswell

Does your school give homework, bob? Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

xxxtentacion

Sometimes, unfortunately, it does ?. Homework also has benefits too, though! Thanks, gavin!

That certainly does add up the majority of the day!  The lessons we learn in school help us to grow up to be thoughtful and intelligent adults.  We do agree that everyone needs a break sometimes, though!  Hope you and our other friends get a few minutes to kick back and relax today!?

We should discontinue homework because some kids don’t do it or understand it, therefore kids start stressing and saying to there self I’m gonna get in trouble , I’m gonna get a bad grade and it basically leads in to this whole conflict .

Thanks for sharing, Liv!

Sorry you feel that way, Justin, but we're glad that you're WONDERing with us!!

Thank you bob, we should change our studies to something actually helpful.

We appreciate you sharing your thoughts, Bob.  Thanks for WONDERing with us!

Homework hater

Homework is a disease I think we need a intercontinental cure research lab for it

But, unfortunately, creating this research lab may require some homework! ? 

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Hi!  It's good to keep the conversation going about the amount of homework that students typically get.

Thanks for sharing that, Caden!  Have you been back to Mars since being born there?

Yes, I went there with him I will send you a postcard next time we go. I think Mars is wrecking his brain.

Kai's evil twin

My friend trolled me

? Be safe out there, Caden!

Must be a fun class! ?

Thanks for the feedback, Gyanve!  Great to hear from you! ?

Perhaps they also suggested some coping strategies, too?  

OOOOOOOOOOO

Not a roast

Hi again, Kai!  Actually, if you look toward the bottom of the Wonder, under "Sources" you'll see where we got our information.  We appreciate you checking up on us with a critical eye!  It's always good to be a little skeptical and ask for more research and data. You're a smart Wonder Friend!  We Wonder if you could do some research to find support for why schools SHOULDN'T have homework. We're curious to hear what you find!

www.Scholastic.com says that there is no evidence to say that homework benefits kids at all, and Washington Post says that homework on a national level is not related to academic success. Washington post also says that some lower income countries cultures normalize long periods of studying but it is uneffective, nd neotoday.org says that the link between assigned homework and academic achievement is drastically over inflated, What do you have to say about that?(sorry If I was a little harsh in my last two comments I was unhappy at the time) neotoday.org/2014/05/13/should-schools-be-done-with-homework) //www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/09/02/homework-could-have-an-effect-on-kids-health-should-schools-ban-it

http://www.scholastic.com/browse/subarticle.jsp?id=2953

WOW!! You've really done some EXCELLENT research from some reputable sources, Kai!  Our Wonder Salute to you!  One thing to note: in the Washington Post article, they do make a distinction that heavy homework loads in elementary can be negative.  In higher grades, this might not be the case "Homework, in fact, is an important component of education for students in the middle and upper grades of schooling.".  It certainly raises a very good question which is we shouldn't assume homework is helping and adding more homework all the time seems to definitely not be helping.  It's a great question that deserves a lot more thought and research.  Thank you for WONDERing and researching, Kai! 

This might get moderated, but I am curious to see how how many people "talked" with me./?

How many people have responded to my comments

You would just have to look on this comment page and see who "replies" to your comment.  Does that help, Kai?

What do you mean, exactly?  We don't follow.

? Wow, tough review!  Well, research does support that extra practice helps.  We DO discuss the debate over how much homework and what kind.  Truthfully, homework is probably not going anywhere anytime soon, so we wanted to help show our Wonder Friends how it can be beneficial and how one can get the most out of it.  We appreciate hearing from you, Kai!

I'd agree with the fact that practice does help learning on a basic level of memory but, in experience as a student, I cannot say that homework could be considered "practice." I've had many-a-teacher that has given homework out and I've had to google search how to do most of it because I was never taught it in class. Homework is more of busy work in the way of doing hobbies, eating, sleeping, and a happy and healthy life style that could possibly be important in "the real world", as if this torture is as easy as petting a bunny. Homework CAN provide help in small, sparatic, doses. If you are bombarded with homework everyday, it really becomes more harmful than helpful.

Great thoughts, Jillian!  Really well said and we appreciate you taking the time to share that with us!  We wish more teachers made time to wonder with their class (and we are thankful for the great ones who do!).

jaime lannister

you couldn't be more right school is about seven hours every 5 days a week for about a year and we still get work to take home like school is for learning there needs to be time to separate school life from your life like you can't just do work all day and you also get homework when it's holiday and there are enough going on in childrens lives than homework so this page is bad no one needs homework i learn more from youtube videos than school and children get anxiety enough from life like puberty, family, growing older school is just boring and you need time to settle your mind because in british schools they work you forever and the teachers are tough.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Jaime!  Hang in there!

I hate homework we do work every day at school teachers know what is is like because they been through homework.Let me put it to you guys i know some people hate homework and some do not.Most teachers just overdo homework.

Good thoughts, Edrick.  Thanks for sharing and glad to have you WONDERing with us!

Do they write those essays in class or at home, Brielle? ?

they write the essays at home

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Yuguj!  Glad to have you WONDERing with us on this important topic!

I agree so much I am so scared of not doing my homework or my grade might go down and that really isn't fair for me and my peers so great point!!!

That's a great point, Anonymous!  In a perfect world, people would just do the work assigned and see the value in it.  Sadly, it's hard to do away with the consequences and still have full participation.  It's a challenging problem to try and solve, but we are glad you are WONDERing with us!

I think homework is a waste of time. it takes away from family time and exercise time.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Alisa! We think family time and exercise are important, too. The article did mention some reasons why homework has value, even if it doesn't always seem that way. Hang in there! It will all be worth it someday!

I am a very smart student with a brain to fit an adult, but even i get tired of homework. I have spent all day at school so I want a break. We don' need homework.

Yes, I agree and I too get tired of it. In my school they said that HW, was just the same lesson at home than at school. It is just a review. I am smart and don't study (LOL) and yet I have always gotten an A or a B in my tests (BTW, studying is considered homework for some reasons)

The struggle is real, Alisa. We do hope you get some time to give that super-smart brain a break! Thanks for using some of that brain power here with us at Wonderopolis!

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Kid77! Sometimes in life, the important things are not always the most fun. Some homework assignments might feel unnecessary but (as the article mentioned) there can be many functions of homework. At least in your case, if you learned the material well in class, it shouldn't take up as much time to complete at home. Sometimes, though, that extra practice can make the difference between knowing the information and truly mastering it. Hang in there, Kid77!

ethan (murphy)

If you are bullied, tell a teacher, if the teacher is the bully.... I honestly can’t help you there.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us, ethan. We're sorry it feels like you are being bullied by your teachers. Have you spoken with your school counselor or your parents? Perhaps they can help you resolve the issues you are facing.

Thanks for sharing your feedback with us, Alexia. We hope you'll keep exploring Wonders to find one you like!

Thank you for commenting, Boi. We hope you'll visit Wonderopolis again soon.

Thanks for joining the conversation, pretty456 and twanasia! We're glad you stopped by Wonderopolis!

you don't like homework?

Thanks for telling us how you feel, Isaac. We appreciate your feedback.

We're glad we could help with your homework, Pusheen! Since we do not list the publish date, standard MLA formatting says that it's OK to list the date you accessed the page for information. Check out the Purdue OWL website for more guidance.

Thank you for WONDERing with us, Isaac! We hope you'll take a look at Wonder #1534. We think it's right up your alley! ?

Certainly, Liesel! Thank you for asking. We ask that Wonderopolis be listed as the author of this Wonder of the Day. Since we do not list the publish date, you may use the date you accessed this webpage for information (such as November 27). Cheers, Wonder Friend!

We're glad you found this Wonder helpful, sonice! There are both advantages and disadvantages to homework and sometimes those points are contrary to each other. This happens when there are different studies performed by different researchers. Sometimes the results contradict other studies.

I used this source for a case study that I am conducting on homework. I was wondering if I could know who wrote the source and when it was published. If I am allowed to have this information, please respond. Thank you.

Thank you for using Wonderopolis for your homework, Liesel! Please see our response above. ?

I know the heather

Thanks for joining the discussion, D. We're glad you visited Wonderopolis.

We're glad this Wonder helped, suicune300, even if it didn't make you like homework any more! It's great that you're WONDERing! We hope you'll stop by again! :)

Hi, bill! We're not sure we understand your comment. Do you have homework about autism? If so, head over to Wonder #1346 to explore information about autism.

We're glad you joined the conversation, avery! We hope you liked reading this Wonder -- perhaps it helped you understand some of the advantages to homework. :)

We're glad you joined the discussion, Bob. Perhaps this Wonder helped to explain why homework is assigned to students. :)

Hi, amez! Sometimes it is helpful to take a break before starting your homework. Thinking can be tiring sometimes, but it's so important! :)

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Thank you for sharing, Wonder Friend! :)

lies lies lies lies lies lies lies lies lies lies

We're sorry you feel this way, bob. Thanks for sharing your opinion. We always value hearing from our Wonder Friends! :)

Hi, Christian. We're sorry you don't agree with this Wonder. We encourage you to also explore the Wonder Sources listed. Thanks for stopping by! :)

i hate homework

Thank you for sharing your opinion, yazzie! We hope this Wonder helped you to understand some of the advantages to homework, along with some of the disadvantages. :)

i really like this article, got an A+ on my report. THANKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Great job, Wonder Friend! Keep up the GREAT work and always keep WONDERing! :)

Hi, Wonder Friend! We appreciate you sharing your opinion about homework! Thanks for WONDERing with us! :)

We appreciate you sharing your opinion about homework, nathan! Try to think about all the extra practice! :)

hey homework is good for your brain and help you to get smarter

Thanks for sharing your opinion, elroi! 

Great question, tyler! If we know who submitted the question the author is listed up by the "Listen" button. This Wonder does not have an author listed. Sometimes people submit anonymous questions! Thanks for stopping by! :)

Riley & Anna

Thanks for the KIND words, Riley & Anna! We think our Wonder Friends are pretty AWESOME, too! We encourage you to submit your question to the Wonder Bank! :)

We appreciate you sharing your thoughts about homework, bob! We're glad you think it is helpful! :)

I hate homework

Thanks for joining the discussion and sharing your opinion, Brendon! We're glad you're WONDERing! :)

Thanks for sharing your opinion, Wonder Friend! Spending time with your parents is important, too! We encourage you to share this Wonder with them! :)

Antonio yet King

We appreciate you sharing your thoughts about this Wonder topic, too! Thanks for joining the conversation, Antonio! :)

Thanks for joining the conversation, Caroline! We appreciate you sharing your thoughts! :)

Hi, Makayla! We appreciate you sharing your thoughts about this important topic! Thanks for visiting Wonderopolis! :)

Welcome, Dionna! Thanks for sharing your opinion about homework! We're glad you're WONDERing! :)

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Bob! We understand that sometimes it is difficult, but try to also think about the positive aspects mentioned in the Wonder! :)

I notice that none of the evidence presented in the article is backed by any tests or studies to show that the claims presented in the wonder is true.

Oh wow.  You got us, Unknown.  Not a fan of homework, we are guessing?  Did you try clicking any of our sources links?  We appreciate you keeping us on our toes!

Hi, d! We understand it's important for you to have free time, too! We hope you still have time for that! :)

I think you are wrong I have to stay up all night to do my homework then at school I always fall asleep :(

We're sorry to hear that, Jack. Thanks for sharing your connection. Maybe you can talk to your teacher about that. :)

Thanks for sharing your opinion about homework, avry! We appreciate you joining the discussion! Hopefully you learned some of the positive aspects of homework! :)

Thanks for sharing your opinion, Bumble Bee! We understand that there are many different opinions out there about homework. We tried to address both sides, while also stating the positive aspects of homework. We hope you understand and Wonder with us again soon! :)

wonderopolis is a lier

no your article is mostly one sided. the side being that homework is good

Thanks for sharing your opinion, Wonder Friend. You can read more about the advantages and disadvantages of homework by reviewing the Wonder Sources we provided above.

Hi, Kayla! Thanks for sharing your thoughts! We're sorry to hear homework is so stressful. We hope things get better! Stay positive! :)

That's GREAT, Emma! We love your enthusiasm for learning! Keep up the GREAT work! :)

Trinity Goebel

Hi, Trinity! Thanks for sharing your thoughts about homework. Sometimes it can be frustrating if you have a lot, but try to stay positive! Keep up the GREAT work! :)

homework is stupid why why do we have it mmmmmmm i hate it..

Hi, tyson! Thank you for sharing your thoughts. We're sure there is some good in homework -- just take a look at the Wonder text above to see! :)

A lot of students don't like homework, ..., and it can be challenging to keep up with homework with everything else going on in your life. The important thing is to do your best, because there are lots of benefits to homework even if it doesn't always seem like it. If homework is a regular problem, talk to your teacher or fellow classmates for help. We're glad you took the time to share your thoughts about homework.

To answer your question, Im pretty sure homework is NOT a law, but pretty much every teacher gives you homework. Depending on what grade you are in, usually grades 1-3 get 0-30 minutes of homework each night. grades 4-6 get 0-2 hour of homework each night, and Grades 7 and 8 get 30-3 hours of homework each night..... all of this depends on the student and how he or she learns. but this is what the average student gives to do homework in Elementary school

Thanks for the GREAT explanation, emma! You're right in that there are recommended amounts, but no particular law. We appreciate your comment! :)

Thanks for visiting Wonderopolis for your homework, Maya! Homework is not a law. It depends how much homework you have as to how long it takes. Also, some assignments, like projects, take longer than smaller assignments. We hope this Wonder was helpful in answering your questions! :)

Hi, Maya! No, homework is not a law. It is up to your teacher or school. We hope this Wonder helped explain how homework is helpful for practicing what you learned. We understand it is a pain sometimes, but we hope you understand! Thanks for WONDERing with us! :)

TENNIS is awesome

Hello, TENNIS is awesome! The WONDER mentions some reasons why homework is important, sch as extra practice. We appreciate your comment and you sharing your opinion with us! :)

One opinion

Wonderopolis

We appreciate you sharing your thoughts, One opinion! Thanks for WONDERing with us! :)

Hello, hahahah! Homework can be time consuming sometimes, but keep thinking positively about all you're learning! :)

We appreciate you sharing your opinion, Goopdi! Sometimes it may seem like a chore, but it is always a good idea to practice what you learned at school. WONDERing is a WONDERful way to learn and have fun at the same time! :)

I believe homework is a waste of time!!

Shae Skipper

Hello, Shae Skipper! You make some great points to support your opinion. Thanks for sharing your thoughts with your WONDER friends! :)

Why do we wonder?

That's a GREAT question, Alistair! WONDERing is a GREAT way to learn new things, have fun, and explore the world around us! :)

connor essary

Hello WONDER Friend, connor essary! We are glad you enjoyed this WONDER. Here is another WONDER about homework. Wonder #491: Do Dogs Really Eat Homework? Enjoy! :)

JoHaunn Mainwood

Hi JoHaunn Mainwood! Thanks for commenting on this WONDER! We appreciate our WONDER friends sharing their thoughts! :)

Welcome, Bob! Thanks for WONDERing with us and commenting on the WONDER! :)

McDonald's

Hi McDonald's! Thanks for commenting on this WONDER. We hate to hear you hate homework. Homework is another way to learn and show others what you know. Check back for more WONDERS! :)

Hi Jaheim! We hate to hear you don't enjoy your homework. Homework is a great way to show your family and friends what you are doing in school. Keep working hard and WONDERing!

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Sara! You do learn more from doing your homework! Keep up the great work! :)

Hi David! We hate to hear you don't like homework because it helps us practice what we learned in school. Homework is different everywhere you go. Keep working hard! :)

Hello, Nicole! We hate to hear you hate homework. Homework can be great practice for what you are learning in school. We know you are working hard and doing a great job. Keep it up! :)

keandre campbell

Welcome to WONDERopolis, keandre campbell! There are over 1,000 WONDERS for you to explore. Thanks for WONDERing with us. Check back every day for more WONDERful WONDERS! :)

That's great, Crazy! Keep up the great WONDERing! :)

Wonder frog

It is not school is amazing!!!

Welcome, Wonder frog! We hate to hear you don't enjoy school. School is a great opportunity to WONDER and learn new things. Then you can share your new knowledge with your friends. Try checking out Wonder #1268: Why Was School Created? Always keep WONDERing! :)

I agree totally!

We appreciate you sharing your opinion about homework, too, Kaytlyn! Thanks for stopping by! :)

We appreciate you joining the discussion, Trinity! We hope this Wonder showed a few reasons why homework can be beneficial! :)

Hello, Jordan! Homework can be great practice. It helps you continue learning! :)

Lukas Wozencraft

That's funny, Lukas Wozencraft! What do you think it will be about? Be sure to check back tomorrow! :)

Jahkeya from DE

Hello WONDER friend, Jahkeya from DE! What would our world be like if dinosaurs weren't extint? Hmmm...? Something to WONDER about! :)

We are glad you enjoyed the video, Jasahn! Homework is very helpful most of the time! Thanks for WONDERing with us! :)

We are glad you liked the video, Makayla! It made us laugh, too! Check out Wonder #1285: What Was Before Dinosaurs? Happy WONDERing! :)

Juilo from DE

Hello, Juilo from DE! Cheer up! Homework helps you practice what you are learning. After all, they say practice makes perfect! If you enjoy video games, check out Wonder #1344: Who Invented the First Video Game? Have fun WONDERing! :)

Autumn from Delaware

Welcome, Autumn from Delaware! The video was silly! Here is another WONDER about dinosaurs! Wonder #275: How Do Dinosaurs Get Their Names? Enjoy! :)

Thanks for WONDERing with us, Sara! Check back everyday for more WONDERful WONDERS!:)

Hello, Gabriel! It sounds like many of our WONDER friends agree with you about the video. We all thought it was funny too! Thanks for commenting! :)

Julian from Delaware

Welcome, Julian from Delaware! You stay busy! That shows true commitment and hard work! :)

Hi Geyonni! We are glad you liked the video. Can you imagine seeing a dinosaur at school? Check out Wonder #491: Do Dogs Really Eat Homework? Happy WONDERing! :)

christina from De

I agree!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks for commenting, christina from De! You're right, that kids also need time to spend with their family. As the WONDER tells us, it is important to not have too much homework. That leaves time for both! :)

Khyan from DE

Thanks for sharing, Khyan from DE! Homework is helpful practice and playing with your friends is important, too. Hopefully you can find a happy medium between the two! :)

Kainat from Delware

Not really... :(

im just here because of espark, of all you people you domt kn9w what espark is, well its not homework its just were on oir school ipads amd we do this app that novody wants to do and we have (quests) and are a bunch of activities put togethor.

That could be a very fun way to learn and WONDER, Mitchell! 

William Weispfenning

Homework is so fun (not) homework = ?

lol really william

Thanks for joining the discussion, William. There are pros and cons to homework and we hope this Wonder helped you learn about them. ?

We appreciate you sharing your thoughts, Trinity! Thanks for visiting Wonderopolis! :)

That's right, Kainat from Delware! Homework is great practice! Keep up the great WONDERing! :)

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Question 1 of 3

Homework plays an important role for parents by creating a bridge between home and what?

• a school Correct!
• b parents Not Quite!
• c coaches Not Quite!
• d students Not Quite!

Question 2 of 3

Which of the following is NOT an important life skill that can be enhanced via homework?

• a time management Not Quite!
• b prioritization Not Quite!
• c organization Not Quite!
• d photosynthesis Correct!

Question 3 of 3

How much is too much homework per night?

• a 30 minutes Not Quite!
• b 1 hour Not Quite!
• c 2 hours Not Quite!
• d It depends upon a variety of complex factors. Correct!

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