Homework can have many purposes and a teacher’s homework policy should be in agreement with the teacher’s style and the purpose of the homework.
The purpose of this post is describe and justify some of the choices I have made for my classes.
Math 9
From grading the first set of homework students have submitted, I have a pretty good picture of the work/study habits of most of the students (even those who did not hand anything in). My primary goal is to help (force) these students develop better homework habits. Specifically, work on doing homework regularly and doing homework correctly.
To get students to do their homework regularly, there needs to be a reasonable amount of homework and the work is checked regularly.
The amount of homework is hard to determine since the same number of questions can mean drastically different work time depending on the student. Therefore, it might be a good idea to have a set of “basic” homework questions that covers the bare minimum and have “tiered” homework list for those who want to aim for higher grades. The main advantage of this is to motivate students who are weaker with a reduced workload so they can focus on building work habits and the basics. Having a reduce amount of work may also motivate students who simply are not interested to do it for the homework grades. I speculate the “tiered” system for homework would have no effect on students who are motivated and are aiming for higher grades. For all tiers, students will be expected to complete the assigned questions, check the solutions, and correct the ones they got wrong.
I plan on collecting and grading homework in the next class. Late work will be penalized with a mark reduction. The grading scheme will be similar to what students are already use to, 2 marks in total, 1 for completion and 1 for marked and corrected work. If more than two questions (including subsections of a question) is incomplete or not corrected, 0.5 will be reduced respectively. A late penalty will be imposed in the form of -0.5 to encourage students to work on math regularly and complete their homework on time.
AW 10
The 10s are a little more unique, since their math abilities vary so much. Most students would engage with their homework and are usually able to complete it given enough time. The workbook used in AW10 has a good selection of questions that would be beneficial for all students to attempt so it is not likely that I will use I will most likely do random homework checks for completion for all the assigned sections.
Pre-Calc 12
The grade 12s will be given significantly more freedom with their homework for two reasons: it is fair to assume they understand that they are responsible for their own learning, and therefore it is up to them whether they want to do homework or not; they have the freedom to choose what to work on at what time, allowing them to allocate their time accordingly.
Homework will likely be collected and checked during the test since some students might do all their homework before the test as review. I still plan on employing the two point system for completion and corrections to encourage students to check their work and get help on the questions they did not get.
Update (Feb 9)
After being with the grade 9s for 2 weeks and marking homework a few times for both my grade 9 classes, I would like to reflect upon the homework policy I have made for my grade 9 classes.
The idea of tiered homework is interesting and I would like to formally propose the idea to the class, especially the weaker class where many students are just being lazy and choosing to not do their work for whatever reason. I hope this tiered system would serve as an incentive to get students to actually get work done. However, I will make sure to enforce stricter grading policy for students who are choosing to do the lower tiered homework. Specifically, if weaker students opt for less work, they will need to make sure the quality of their work is superb to compensate for lacking in quantity. Less leeway will be given, such as the work will need to be on time and cannot have more than 2 incorrect questions on the homework otherwise they will need to stay after school to work through those problems.
Something else I have discovered while I was marking homework is the incredible amount of time that is needed to grade the homework. The purpose of homework (for me) is for students to practice, put the knowledge to the test and for the teacher (me) to learn what students are understanding and what they aren’t. For those purposes, am I spending too much time on carefully going through each question when I can be planning activities or more “interesting” lessons? How efficient is my time being used when I am grading three sections of homework? Assume I spend 2-5 minutes grading each piece of homework, that would put the time I spend on homework between 2*(28+28+27)=166 to 5*(28+28+27)=415 minutes, which is basically anywhere between 3 hours to 7 hours for each homework across three different sections. My question is, what is the return on my 3 hours to 7 hours of work and is there a more efficient way of assigning and grading homework?
While combing through each question in the homework thoroughly would catch all the mistakes students make, what exactly would students do with that information? Would they actually look at the comments and mistakes and make corrections or would that piece of paper go into their bag and not see day light ever again? For this reason, I want to make a few changes to my current grading system and test out how it would work for my grade 9s.
New system:
Separate homework questions into 3 categories
- Level 1 problems: bare bones basic questions, the essential and serves as the underlying structure for the more complex word problems
- Level 2 problems: a step up from level 1 problems, lower level applications that build upon techniques used to solve problems from level 1
- Level 3 problems: the more challenging problems that require not only understanding of the ideas and concepts, but also able to apply those ideas and concepts to unfamiliar questions
Students who are <60% would have the option of doing only level 1 and level 2 homework problems and would be treated as a completed homework set. However, students who choose to do this will have conditions imposed upon them:
- All the questions need to be completed on time. The consequence for late work would be staying after school to complete it before homework marks are granted.
- All work must be shown, since answers are given to students, no work means no work.
- If more than 2 problems are incorrect, the student will be required to stay after school or correct the problems before homework marks are granted.
- Late penalty applies as with other homework
- Any work that is handed in on time with work fully shown and less than 2 inaccuracies would get full homework marks.
The primary concern I have regarding this system is the potential lowering of expectations. How would students see it? Would they try and push it even further or would they be motivated to actually do work? Would students who are doing the full homework load feel they are being treated unfairly? This would be hard to tell but I plan on trying this out and see how it goes.