Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Homework- am I doing this right?

Great post on homework from The Science Goddess. I can agree with anti-homework people on one thing: busywork is worthless. I cannot agree that all homework is busywork. It should be practice, as pointed out in the post.

I'm ruminating on our reading requirements in English. We typically require 2 hours per week of independent reading- texts of the students' choice. It's graded through a simple form handed in weekly. Practice reading on the independent level is essential for maintaining and gaining fluency. But how could we do it better? I never considered not having it affect a student's grade. Hmm...

I do not require independent reading in my honors class, because these students have mastered independent reading. I do, however, have the students participate in book groups. Those have typically not gone as well as I intend, mostly because I haven't set them up well. More to consider . . .

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