We will be viewing sections of an article in the Educational Leadership magazine put out by ASCD. The title of the article is If They'd Only Do Their Work. The article examines homework, motivation and research behind why students don't do homework. It is a rather long article. I will break it up into a few different blog posts with some questions.
Click here to see this week's section of the article.
Here is the link to the article: http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/feb06/vol63/num05/If-They'd-Only-Do-Their-Work!.aspx
Questions To Consider:
1. How do you/we make sure that assignments we give are authentic and engaging?
2. One of the people quoted in the article talks about homework being meaningful when it is used the next day in class. How does this work in your classroom?
3. The very end of the article talks about homework that requires students to prepare. What does that mean to you? Do you do that in your classroom?
I'm piloting PBL in my room this quarter; my kids are creating a magazine. Students are earning money for every assignment and classroom activity to put in an imaginary bank account. Everything is very student motivated; they are choosing their topics, article types, etc. They are extremely engaged and like the article stated, they are always asking to stay after school or to stay in my room during their study hall to finish their writing. In class, the students are engaged int heir writing and they have even taken on roles similar to that of a magazine business scenario. The majority of assignments for this unit are completed in class, but occasionally I give out the task of finishing an article and underlining information for our discussion. The students know that when they discuss they earn money to put into their imaginary bank account; needless to say, they complete the homework and are prepared for the discussion and are excited to earn money! I've found students copy homework too often, so assignments that engage them to find their own answers/have many different interpretations work in my classroom for homework.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing. Hopefully the motivation of students is evident and this is something that you can share with everyone.
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