By: Megan Prats
10/22/2015
Homework is imperative because it is the student’s map from learning to application. For homework to be effective, it needs to be given in accordance with the customized curriculum.
Below I’ll detail some key things to consider when providing the student’s homework.
No matter what you do in the lesson, there is always more that the student can do to apply what she’s learned or to learn more. Thus, homework must always be given. Hence, the homework section of the 2learn® Progress Report is required.
Because 2learn® firmly believes in the principle that equilibrium is maximization, when designing the homework you need to find the right balance of what the student needs and wants to learn. For instance, after my last Spanish lesson, my 2learn® teacher told me to read articles and fix my translations of the Teacher Newsletter articles to practice the concepts that we discussed in the lesson – the subjunctive, gerund, stylistic differences between English and Spanish. However, the homework assignment was so broad that it would easily deviate me from the topics that I covered in the lesson (what I wanted and needed to learn) thus I asked for my teacher to provide me homework that was more specific. Therefore, my teacher provided me with a handout with sentences for me to translate that focused on the specific issues discussed but also exposed me to a nice amount of other concepts in Spanish. So, in this case, the balance was reached with a homework assignment that focused the student’s attention to the topics covered as well as exposed the student to some (but not too many) other concepts.
Since 2learn® doesn’t coerce students to to their homework, you should make the homework assignments fun so that the student will voluntarily do them. Thus, add some jamming to the homework that you give to your music students or have your students watch a fun video in their foreign language for the language learners.
When the student does her homework, make sure to reward her accordingly. The 2learn® Bank allows for an increase for the completion of homework so your can reward her that way. Also, praise her in the lesson and show the connect between her achievement and completing the homework. Again, because homework is not “mandatory”, we need to try to incentivize the student to do the homework in as many positive ways as possible.
Because homework is a part of the customized curriculum, no two homework assignments should look alike. If you follow the aforementioned principles of always providing
homework, balance, fun, and reward, you’ll be providing the student with productive homework assignments and incentive to do them.
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