Should Educators in the Lower Grades Consider Eliminating Homework?

Challenge Success is a project out of Stanford University’s School of Education. Its mission is to “work with schools, parents and youth to develop and implement action plans to improve student well-being and engagement with learning.”

Recently, they announced that they are working on a series of white papers that evaluate and summarize the body of research in a given topic in order to make the research more accessible and to offer suggestions for educators and parents. Their first paper is on homework and rather than take one side of the argument or the other, they try to answer both viewpoints using the available research. Part of their conclusion included the following:

“Much of the research supporting and refuting the benefits of homework seems to be contradictory, and some of the arguments actually have no research to support their claims. Given that much of the research points to little or no benefits of homework, we urge educators to take a hard look at their current practices and policies. Some educators in the lower grades might consider eliminating homework altogether, and just asking students to spend time reading for pleasure (which is positively connected to achievement), or allow them extra time for play and time with family….”

The research on homework is indeed ambiguous, so it’s nice to have a group that has the time to look at the research more closely. Over the past three years I have looked at my current practices (the policies are outside of my control) and considered eliminating homework (short of reading for pleasure), but the reception of this has been mixed. I’m glad that there is more support for what I’ve been advocating.

The suggestions they offer to teachers and parents to make homework more engaging and meaningful are also good.

An example of a recommendation for parents: “Parents can help organize [students’] time or prioritize assignments, but when parents deliver forgotten assignments to school or step in to rescue a child at the last minute, they may be denying the child the opportunity to develop resilience and fortitude.”

For many adults, finding work/life balance can be tricky. Especially if one is truly engaged and finds meaning in their work. An article published in today’s NYTimes about a course at Google to help their employees achieve that balance comes as no surprise. It would be nice to ensure that our students begin to develop a healthy balance?

Two Words I’d Like to See Disappear From Education Articles This Year

Finland & Singapore.

Both countries are on my list of places I’d like to visit one day. What I’m tired of reading is articles that keep trying to compare their education system to the US’s. I agree that it’s important to look for what’s working in education. Unfortunately, comparisons to student achievement and teacher quality in those countries to the US cannot be done easily. There are many challenges that face US education, both independent and public, but simply comparing them to Finland or Singapore is unfair. Finland, Singapore and the US are very different.

In the past few years, Finland has been one of the countries that has consistently placed first on international academic tests. It doesn’t surprise me then that many education reform leaders are trying to look at their practices. In a nytimes article last month, it even mentioned that the president of the National Association of Independent Schools, Pat F. Bassett has made the pilgrimage. The one thing I like about Finland’s education system is that most kids don’t start testing and homework until their teens!

Still, Finland or Singapore are small countries that value teaching. It can be harder to get into a school of education than into law or medicine (and the schooling is fully subsidized). they recognize that the quality of teaching matters and they support that from the beginning.

Apart from that, looking at what Finland or Singapore is doing right is not going to fix the challenges that exist today in the US. I agree with Linda Darling Hammond, that it might be a good model for a state like Kentucky, but both those countries have a much more homogenous society.

The US education system has to stop being reactionary. It cannot repair itself simply by learning from Finland. It has to innovate and lead. Education in this country has always been able to do that, and I am optimistic that it will continue to do so. There are many amazing schools with incredible teachers doing many things right. We should start to look at those as models first. Good teachers eventually find the schools that fuel and support their passion and purpose. It should be the other way around. Schools should be finding those qualified teachers.

Just think of all the people who learned Russian or Japanese not too long ago. I think it’s great that they learned a foreign language, but I wonder if those choices were based on what was going on in the world at that time. Finland and Singapore are both on my list of countries I’d like to visit, but somehow I don’t think the general population is going to be learning Finnish anytime soon.

hyvää yötä

Elite New York “Pressure Cooker” Schools are Rethinking Homework

An article about homework in this weekend’s nytimes couldn’t have happened at a more appropriate time, as I continue to search and explore ways to make homework (now called “home learning” in our second grade classes) be meaningful.

Sending a worksheet home, so that it can be returned the next day for the sake of compliance is not the message I want students to get. If I have to assign it, and kids have to do it, it has to have purpose beyond that. Being prepared to share something in class with their peers is valuable.  So is practicing various skills as long as there is immediate and meaningful feedback. Unfortunately, over the course of a regular busy schoolday, one often doesn’t have a chance to check a child’s homework until after the end of the day, so by the time a child receives feedback, was the home learning task really that successful?

Towards the end of last year, I thought I’d give Kahn Academy a try, and while it worked for some, it didn’t achieve what I was hoping. What I did like was the immediate feedback kids were getting at home. Sal Kahn spoke at our regional conference this year and I was surprised how novel his ideas seemed to many teachers.  He isn’t the only one who’s been trying new things, but he’s been endorsed by Bill Gates and has also done a TED talk, so he’s definitely more visible.

So this year, my teaching partner suggested some other online tools which were more age appropriate than Kahn’s, covered multiple subjects so that kids could have some choice in their learning, used tech in a way that allowed for immediate feedback, and allowed us to still included elements that required kids to be prepared to share as well as take some responsibility to bring certain things back to school (even though it might not be daily).

Well, I wouldn’t call it a complete success after the first month. There were a lot of elements to consider, and some we have reconsidered.  Many things, however did work. There are elements that really seem to be doing what we hoped, and they just need to be revised and tweaked. In the classroom, my students have begun to start appreciating the idea of process and revision and not always about getting it right on the first try. It’s great that I can show kids that it is also how adults learn. We didn’t get it right on the first try, but we’ll see how the adjustments go, and report back. Thanks to all my students’ parents who provided excellent feedback in helping us refine it.

It’s nice, though, to know the most elite independent schools in New York (not that it should be a measure of anything) are also working on similar issues. We too, will be giving a “Home Learning” holiday on October 31st!

Great Article on Homework in the NYTimes

I almost missed this great article about homework in the NYTimes Sunday Review, but thanks to a parent who forwarded me this story, I had a chance to read it yesterday. I’ve always struggled on finding that balance in working within my school’s homework policy and making homework as meaningful as possible. My teaching partner and I are also looking at ways to have homework be more flexible (for those whose kids are suddenly inundated with extra-curricular activities depending on the season), and we want homework to encourage time together with families rather than a battle with some to get it done.

The article in the times stresses three main findings in looking at neuroscience, psychology, and education.

1. Spaced repetition

2. Retrieval practice

3. Interleaving (the article describes this really well)

Along with recent studies on motivation, we are going to try and incorporate these practices into our students’ home learning assignments. I’ll keep you posted on how things go.

Something I Wrote is in Independent Teacher’s Spring Issue

It was fun to see something I wrote appear on another website. Independent Teacher decided to publish an article I submitted about making homework meaningful. I would rather not give my second grade students homework, but since it’s a school policy, trying to make it meaningful rather than just busy work or eliminating it was my main objective. If the purpose of some homework is to honor kids who need a little more time to finish their work, why ask those who’ve done the work to do more of the same? Also, when you give kids their own choices about homework, you’d be astonished how many of my students, motivated purely by their own curiosity, go well beyond what one would expect.

Anyway, here’s a link to that article. It’s my first, so I’m a little excited.

PDF: Playtime, Downtime, and Family Time

As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, a few colleagues and I were at an incredibly inspiring panel discussion about education which featured a diverse group of speakers from the Reverend Al Sharpton, Denise Pope, Chester Finn, Kati Haycock, Nick Hanauer, to Tyrone Howard. One thing that struck me was how each said very similar things, but each clearly had their own focus. This post focuses on Denise Pope’s angle.

Denise Pope, a senior lecturer at Stanford University’s School of Education,  stuck to her main issue that schools today do not foster healthy children – both physically and mentally. She is featured in the movie “Race to Nowhere”  and has written the book, Doing School: How We Are Cheating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic and Miseducated Students.

I’ve only read parts of it, but here are a few things mentioned in the book:

• homework has no correlation to success at the lower elementary levels
• kids today don’t get enough sleep
• they are more concerned about how to get an “A” than what they are learning
• they are becoming more disengaged
• they are more stressed and as a result, she concludes, have a higher rate of weight loss due to not eating, drug abuse (usually the use of stimulants), low self-esteem, and so on.

Denise Pope (image from Seattle U's website)

Pope co-founded Challenge Success to redefine what ‘success’ means. She asked us to imagine if our bosses would suddenly give us a test about something school related, had it timed, and then told us the stakes were high. Is that really what happens in our life? Tasks and learning for students should be authentic and relevant. She remains adamant that standards should be high for all students, but that the way we are going about it is unhealthy for all.

She gave us an acronym to remember: P.D.F. (and it’s not a document)

P = Playtime – kids need unstructured play (well-meaning adults structure their lives too much)

D = Downtime – just chilling

F = Family time

Our school has one half-day inservice devoted to community building. Today we enjoyed playtime, downtime and family time. I say family, because my colleagues are indeed like family to me. It was time well-spent.

Here’s an article Pope wrote that’s worth reading.

And another one in last year’s Ed. Leadership.

Day 1 of Flipping the Classroom

There’s the common expression, “Change is hard. You go first.” Well, I’ve been doing a few firsts this past year or so, partly because I decided not to wait. If I think it’s worth experimenting with, I’ll try it. What I’ve learned is that with a few of these things, I might have been better off talking about it, rather than dive right in. As a result, I may have ruffled a few feathers here and there and had to repair a few work relationships. It was actually a good exercise in growth for me and made me a lot more reflective about what I want to do next.

I started this blog, for example to share what I learned at a conference, but decided to keep it going because I actually enjoy it. Because I had no expectation of anyone else blogging, I was oblivious to the fact that some might feel that they would have to share what they learned via a blog. It’s just my way, and I enjoy it. I also started my own classroom website because I couldn’t wait for our school’s official site to have all the features I wanted. It’s worked for me and my students’ parents and that’s really all it boils down to. There are so many ways to communicate, sometimes the purpose dictates they type.

Well, I’m at it again. After only a couple of weeks since the TED talk “Flipping the Classroom” aired, I unleashed Khan Academy upon my second graders. Honestly, the videos are pretty dry and boring for the most part, but the kids love the exercises, the immediate feedback, and the choice. One child decided for homework tonight to head to the geometry section which asks for the area and circumference of circles. He made a few attempts, got all them wrong and decided he’d come back another time. It was very non-threatening. Today was just the first day, we headed to the media lab so they could learn how to login and logoff. And even though I assigned about 10 to 20 minutes, I noticed that many kids were engaged enough to spend much more time on it. I’m actually more excited about the data that might come back after Spring Break. Why? So much of good math pedagogy is not just helping a child develop a concept, but asking the right questions. Knowing what children have mastered, allows you to target your questions more precisely. Of course good teachers who already know their students well do this, but with the added data, who knows.

One interesting unintended consequence occurred. Many of my students have older siblings. So far, I’ve gotten great feedback from parents, but they wanted to know how their older child could sign in. I told them how and that they could sign me up as their coach if they wished. This is a big experiment. I don’t intend to have students using Kahn Academy in class, but only at home. What I will do, is use the data to help inform the way I teach each child. As Kahn put it in his TED talk, “Flipping the Classroom.”

Kahn Academy approaches math in a very linear, sterile manner, but with some of the basic skills under their belt, they may be able to really grapple with project based learning activities which involve plenty of mathematical problems, creativity, and the beauty of math that doesn’t always get to see the light of day the way our math texts are written. Who knows? This is still day one of doing things a little differently. It may just end up being something faddish, which is something I  usually try to avoid, but when I see some potential in how it can help kids, I’ll dive head first. Sign in for yourself and try some of the later differential questions. Do you even remember how to do them? More importantly, do you know why? I’ll keep you apprised of how my little experiment goes.

Pressure Cookers are Designed for Food, not Kids

I just returned from a screening of the documentary film Race to Nowhere. If you didn’t get a chance to see it, I would recommend any teacher, parent, administrator, school policy maker, and high school student to see it. This link shows where the nearest screenings are in your area. It’d be great if our school were able to host a screening for parents, teachers, and anyone in our community who wished to view it. There’s a link on that page to request a community screening.

In this country, starting in the 80s with Nation At Risk, followed in the 2000s by No Child Left Behind, the pressure for all kids to perform at high levels on tests in order to get into colleges has had an adverse effect on our students health and their ability to think critically, find and solve problems, and work well together. After a seven hour day of school and three to four hours of extra curricular activities, should our kids then tackle five to six hours of homework each night? Many of the examples were those of middle and high school students, but it was painful to watch a family end what was probably already a taxing day arguing about homework. The film reiterated what I’ve read and tried to advocate at my school, that there is no evidence linking homework in elementary school to achievement. The correlation begins in middle school, but after an hour of homework, the correlation disappears. By high school the correlation becomes stronger, but again, after two hours of homework, the correlation drops off significantly.

Many of the AP tests don’t test for critical thinking skills, but rather for a bulk of content. One teacher mentioned there is too much content to realistically learn, so they speed it up. The results are kids relying on cramming and cheating. Sadly, there is an increase in all kinds of stress related disorders with the extreme being an increase in teen suicide. It’s hard enough to be a teenager. It was extremely sad to see a parent discuss the suicide of her 13 year-old daughter over a letter grade (the letter grade was a B).

Something I struggled with was watching a teacher who, through her words and tears, was passionate about teaching and cared deeply about her students, However, through the bureaucracy of the system, she couldn’t take it anymore and decided to resign. There are already too few passionate teachers that care so much about what they do. Yet the system is so broken that it  makes them leave the profession.

What I liked about this film is that it showed many of the same kinds of pressures that kids face today to compete for a place in a ‘decent’ college regardless whether they came from an impoverished low-socio economic to wealthy suburban or private schools. The pressures trickle down from policy maker to school principal to teacher and to student. Not everyone needs to go to an Ivy league school, yet for many, they felt that it was the only choice if they wanted to be successful. What does being successful really mean anyway?  The movie mentioned that in Singapore, they offer the top 20% of the graduating class free college tuition – and a stipend – to go into the teaching profession. Here we have to go an extra year and pay for it on our own just to get the basic credentials.

Schools differ in many ways and whether a specialized public charter school or an independent one, the film makes a great case for reducing the stress on kids. Some want to extend the school day, take away recess, art, in order to cram more content into their brain. I can still remember the quadratic equation and know what to use it for, but I’ve NEVER used it since learning it in high school. Some other things, like the chemical structure of amino acids, I have completely forgotten. Are either of those things useful to me today? Did they in some way help me think in different ways? Perhaps. Or maybe I was just figured out what was going to be on the test. If that’s the case, that’s not learning. Why bother teaching if you’re just going to follow a script.

It made me think of this list from Tony Wagner’s book The Global Achievement Gap. He listed seven essential skills all people need to learn:

1. Critical Thinking and Problem-Solving
2. Collaboration across Networks and Leading by Influence
3. Agility and Adaptability
4. Initiative and Entrepreneurialism
5. Effective Oral and Written Communication
6. Accessing and Analyzing Information
7. Curiosity and Imagination.

Are those things nurtured, taught, and fostered in schools?  Are they tested?

The movie calls on all stakeholders to be brave and do what they care about, say what they believe in, and take the risk when what that is may break the rules, go against policy, or even seem radical to some. If your heart is in it, and you’re doing it for the students’ benefit (and for me, stays true to the school’s mission), then it’s worth that risk. Those with the power to make decisions shouldn’t expect their employees to interact with students a certain way until they model what that looks like and treat their teachers the same way.

Below are a few related videos including the film’s trailer, and a round panel from Stanford discussing the issues.

If you watch the latter, you will hear that students in Finland (who are one of the countries that consistently produce top scores) are involved in project based learning, and have their social and emotional needs honored. They don’t ‘cover’ content. Here are some interesting links.

Edutopia

Fair Test

NYTimes article about this film.

This screening was the first in a series of three parts hosted by Seattle University. I really liked what the Dean of Education said when introducing the film. The next in the series is the screening of the film “Waiting for Superman” – I can’t wait.

 

 

 

 

The Kids Have Spoken

A while back I posted about an article I read in the New York Times about parents pushing their children out of picture books sooner. Trying to make homework more engaging this year, I read part of the article to the children and then asked them to read a picture book for homework and whether or not they agreed or disagreed with the parent who was quoted as saying, “My kid doesn’t need books with pictures anymore,” and why or why not?

Well the children (at least in my class) have spoken, and they unanimously disagreed with that parent. Then in groups of three to four they shared what they learned from those picture books, why they could be challenging, and whether or not they enjoyed the story. I included picture books that were fiction, non-fiction, as well as a few wordless books as well. It was a great experiment and one where their conversations about books this morning was great to observe.

One of my colleagues had a birthday today, and as part of a little treat I left for her, included was a picture book: David Weisner’s new one – Art and Max. If you haven’t read it yet, do yourself a favor and take a peek. He may end up being the first person to win the Caldecott 4 times. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Great Article in NYtimes

The most read article today in the nytimes is titled: Forget What you Know About Good Study Habits. (it came out on the 6th, but I’m only getting to it now. I haven’t read an ed. article in a while, but this one really struck me.

It reinforces the importance of integration, scaffolding, and moving children around. It also highlights that there is not one single right way to do anything, but there are good and better ways to learn. It also mentions motivation and growth (two things I’m really interested in).

I like this graphic accompanying the article by Ellen Weinstein.

This week all my students sat next to a different person each day. This week we conducted lessons at their tables and on the floor in the classroom, outside around our school building, and in the hallway, just to mention a few places.

The three R’s at our school are Respect, Responsibility, and Resourcefulness. I also hope to add Resilience, Rigor, and Relationships. Also very important life skills.

Now, on to some non-educational fun magazine reading.

Bulletin Boards

Bulletin boards serve several purposes. Sometimes they can display items, like the work of children. Other times, they can hold information that can teach. And perhaps, sometimes they can do both.

With our theme of sustainability this year, I decided to create a welcome back bulletin board made entirely out of recycled or reused materials (including the information panel on the far right). The photo I’ve included below is a 15 foot bulletin board outside our 2nd grade classroom. On the far left is our school logo Consisting of our initials the E and the S below a setting (rising) sun. The slogan itself isn’t too original. It says, “Set Sail for 2nd Grade.” but if you look closely, the letters in that slogan are all created from shapes from the original E and S in our school logos. It’s an odd typeface, but I think it works.

Welcome Back! (click on image for higher resolution)

There are 10 sailboats, each with two names on them. The student’s first homework assignment is to create torsos of themselves for these sailboats. They of course can only use what’s in their recycle bin at home. Just in case, I printed out some directions on a quarter sheet of paper too – they could use the back of that if needed.

The panel on the far right (made out of recycled cardboard) asks the children to find at least three sources of renewable energy (solar, wind, tidal were the three I was thinking of).

Within the sustainability theme, we have been asked to focus on three areas:

1. Sense of Place – with our school logo clearly placed on the bulletin board, our sense of stewardship, care, belonging, and respect from ourselves to our universe, should be a fun one to continue integrating into our curriculum.
2. Transportation – Apart from sailboats on the bulletin board, I’m not sure how we’ll approach this with second graders. Perhaps graphing how they get to school, encouraging more walking, discussing how much energy it takes to move.
3. Reduction of materials, and the responsible use of materials. Considering everything on that bulletin board (except for staples and  a little glue) either came from the recycling bin or things that were going to be tossed, it’s a good start.

I can’t wait to see what the little ones turn in tomorrow. Onward to day 2!

By the way, if you notice a little book on the ledge of the bulletin board, it’s titled Once I was a Cardboard Box … But now I’m a Book About Polar Bears.

Homelearning

There is research out there that shows that the time a child spends reading outside school hours increases a child’s performance in school. The same with time spent practicing skills. In fact you can find research to support just about anything. Sometimes single studies with a sample size of 6 kids are cited. Nonetheless, after a research review on the positive effect of homework by Harris Cooper (1989), the following effect sizes were noted:

Grades 4-6: ES = .15

Grades 7-9: ES = .31

Grades 10-12 ES = .64

You can see by the time kids are high school sophomores, homework really makes a difference. The fascinating thing is that homework only had a percentile gain of 6 points in grades 4 to 6.

Some writers in the field, like Alfie Kohn (author of The Homework Myth) would conclude that there was no benefit at all to children at the elementary level to be assigned homework. Others – Cooper, Lindsay, Nye, and Greathouse (1998) suggest that while a positive correlation may not be immediately evident, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. The same study also mentions that there was a negative effect on their attitudes. Kohn’s book is great to make you examine what you do, but Kohn’s problem is that his passion to remove homework at the elementary school, he uses language that is too polemic and filled with too much emotion. If you’re in his camp, consider yourself the choir. Those who aren’t in his camp, tune him out shortly after “hello.” This is true with most of his thought provoking ideas.

There is no doubt that children continue to learn long after the final bell has rung. The dilemma for an elementary school teacher is how does one assign homework that is meaningful and engaging with fairly immediate feedback? There have been a several suggestions such as providing differentiated homework or having kids earn off their homework by their performance in school (Michael Thompson).

In the last section of Daniel Pink’s book Drive, he includes ideas for parents and educators with regard to motivation and suggests the following for homework:

When giving homework, ask yourself these three questions:

1. Am I offering students any autonomy over how and when to do this work?
2. Does this assignment promote mastery by offering a novel, engaging task (as opposed to rote reformulation of something already covered in class)?
3. Do my students understand the purpose of this assignment? That is, can they see how doing this additional activity at home contributes to the larger enterprise in which the class is engaged?

And he suggests to reframe the term homework to homelearning. With that new word, rather than just debate its pros and cons, one can at least think about how to make homework as meaningful as possible. A book that came out last year, Rethinking Homework: Best Practices that Support Diverse Needs tries to address this. Perhaps I need to put it on my summer reading list.

A teacher could never assign or replicate much of the learning that takes place outside the classroom. Dance, violin, or swimming lessons would not be something most schools could assign to all their kids. Playing on/in a community sports team or musical ensemble is another example. The learning that occurs when family and cultural traditions are passed on, or the stories that one might hear from a close family member. If you’ve ever watched a kid strap on a helmet and spend 4 hours doing the same thing on a skateboard in order to learn a trick, you’ve witness true motivation and learning. We do need to extend learning at home and it needs to include literacy and numeracy skills, but we have to validate and make sure that opportunities for all kinds of learning take place after the children leave our rooms at the end of the day.

The Center for Public Education has a great summary of what the research says about homework – apparently everything and nothing. There’s also a link to a comprehensive list of references.