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Creating a Homework Policy With Meaning and Purpose

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M.Ed., Educational Administration, Northeastern State University
B.Ed., Elementary Education, Oklahoma State University

We have all had time-consuming, monotonous, meaningless homework assigned to us at some point in our life. These assignments often lead to frustration and boredom and students learn virtually nothing from them. Teachers and schools must reevaluate how and why they assign homework to their students. Any assigned homework should have a purpose.

Assigning homework with a purpose means that through completing the assignment, the student will be able to obtain new knowledge, a new skill, or have a new experience that they may not otherwise have. Homework should not consist of a rudimentary task that is being assigned simply for the sake of assigning something. Homework should be meaningful. It should be viewed as an opportunity to allow students to make real-life connections to the content that they are learning in the classroom. It should be given only as an opportunity to help increase their content knowledge in an area.

Differentiate Learning for All Students

Furthermore, teachers can utilize homework as an opportunity to differentiate learning for all students. Homework should rarely be given with a blanket "one size fits all" approach. Homework provides teachers with a significant opportunity to meet each student where they are and truly extend learning. A teacher can give their higher-level students more challenging assignments while also filling gaps for those students who may have fallen behind. Teachers who use homework as an opportunity to differentiate we not only see increased growth in their students, but they will also find they have more time in class to dedicate to whole group instruction .

See Student Participation Increase

Creating authentic and differentiated homework assignments can take more time for teachers to put together. As often is the case, extra effort is rewarded. Teachers who assign meaningful, differentiated, connected homework assignments not only see student participation increase, they also see an increase in student engagement. These rewards are worth the extra investment in time needed to construct these types of assignments.

Schools must recognize the value in this approach. They should provide their teachers with professional development that gives them the tools to be successful in transitioning to assign homework that is differentiated with meaning and purpose. A school's homework policy should reflect this philosophy; ultimately guiding teachers to give their students reasonable, meaningful, purposeful homework assignments.

Sample School Homework Policy

Homework is defined as the time students spend outside the classroom in assigned learning activities. Anywhere Schools believes the purpose of homework should be to practice, reinforce, or apply acquired skills and knowledge. We also believe as research supports that moderate assignments completed and done well are more effective than lengthy or difficult ones done poorly.

Homework serves to develop regular study skills and the ability to complete assignments independently. Anywhere Schools further believes completing homework is the responsibility of the student, and as students mature they are more able to work independently. Therefore, parents play a supportive role in monitoring completion of assignments, encouraging students’ efforts and providing a conducive environment for learning.

Individualized Instruction

Homework is an opportunity for teachers to provide individualized instruction geared specifically to an individual student. Anywhere Schools embraces the idea that each student is different and as such, each student has their own individual needs. We see homework as an opportunity to tailor lessons specifically for an individual student meeting them where they are and bringing them to where we want them to be.

Homework contributes toward building responsibility, self-discipline, and lifelong learning habits. It is the intention of the Anywhere School staff to assign relevant, challenging, meaningful, and purposeful homework assignments that reinforce classroom learning objectives. Homework should provide students with the opportunity to apply and extend the information they have learned complete unfinished class assignments, and develop independence.

The actual time required to complete assignments will vary with each student’s study habits, academic skills, and selected course load. If your child is spending an inordinate amount of time doing homework, you should contact your child’s teachers.

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Evidence-Based Homework Philosophy

Homework is often a source of stress for students who learn differently and their families. That’s why we do homework differently!

We recognize homework as a necessary part of our students' educational experience. However, we also recognize that for students with learning differences, hours upon hours of daily homework can be damaging—adversely affecting their home life in many unexpected ways.

Homework at Lawrence is designed so students of all ages can balance a healthy academic career with family life and after-school activities. Our school-wide homework policy allows only previously mastered material to be assigned as homework. This way, students are able to complete it independently, and in a reasonable amount of time. Learn more about our approach on The LionShare Podcast.

Our Philosophy:

We believe when thoughtfully designed, homework promotes responsibility and a healthy home-school connection. Consistent, successful completion of homework enhances a student’s learning experience and helps strengthen executive function and life skills.

The purpose of homework at Lawrence School is to...

Assist students in building academic confidence by allowing them to experience success while also becoming aware of their limits
Encourage students to demonstrate a sophisticated level of metacognition—a student’s ability to think about their own thinking
Reinforce critical concepts taught in the classroom through independent practice
Build and enhance a partnership between home and school
Allow teachers to have an increased level of awareness of student strengths and weaknesses, thereby guiding personalized instruction
Improve executive function skills—the ability to organize, plan and manage time
Provide opportunities for students to demonstrate application of knowledge and skills in a variety of settings

Lawrence homework always...

Strategically meets the needs of each diverse learner
Minimizes any anxiety or frustration
Recognizes and respects competing demands on students' time outside of school
Is meaningful and purposeful in objective
Promotes exploration and discovery
Considers each learner's Zone of Proximal Development, which asserts true learning requires the level of challenge not overwhelm an individual's level of competence
Recognizes attempts at completion and/or attempts to problem solve

Homework assignments are thoughtfully designed with the needs and goals of our community members in mind...

Apply and expand knowledge in different settings
Gain a desire for continued learning and growth
Transfer skills to future life experience
Become more self-sufficient and accountable
Own their academic and social strengths, as well as their challenges
Practice self-advocacy without arrogance or apology
Master effective study techniques, organizational, and time management skills
Learn to balance responsibilities so they may participate in extracurricular activities
Assess students’ strengths and challenges using subjective and objective-based data.
Obtain a better perspective of how each student learns.
Adjust curriculum and methods according to students’ needs.
Provide constructive feedback regarding student progress.
Celebrate their child’s strengths and accomplishments
Protect and honor family time
Taper their involvement based on their child's developmental needs, independence, and ability
Gain a better understanding of their child’s learning style
Receive consistent feedback regarding what the student is learning and how he or she is progressing toward the constant goal of mastery

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How did we establish our K-12 homework policy?

Over the course of two years, Lawrence teachers and administrators discussed homework-related practices with the goal of creating a consistent school-wide philosophy and policy. The process was detailed and involved: much research into best practices, the benefits of homework, and consideration for the negative effects it can sometimes have on learning were explored. The team convened for more than a dozen small group meetings and two half-day planning sessions; they gathered input from student and teacher experience surveys; and contacted LD schools across the country. Careful thought formed our philosophy, which was embraced school wide and paved the way for a consistent K-12 policy.

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Designing Effective Homework

Best practices for creating homework that raises student achievement

Homework. It can be challenging…and not just for students. For teachers, designing homework can be a daunting task with lots of unanswered questions: How much should I assign? What type of content should I cover? Why aren’t students doing the work I assign? Homework can be a powerful opportunity to reinforce the Shifts in your instruction and promote standards-aligned learning, but how do we avoid the pitfalls that make key learning opportunities sources of stress and antipathy?

The nonprofit Instruction Partners recently set out to answer some of these questions, looking at what research says about what works when it comes to homework. You can view their original presentation here , but I’ve summarized some of the key findings you can put to use with your students immediately.

Does homework help?

Consistent homework completion has been shown to increase student achievement rates—but frequency matters. Students who are given homework regularly show greater gains than those who only receive homework sporadically. Researchers hypothesize that this is due to improved study skills and routines practiced through homework that allow students to perform better academically.

Average gains on unit tests for students who completed homework were six percentile points in grades 4–6, 12 percentile points in grades 7–9, and an impressive 24 percentile points in grades 10–12; so yes, homework (done well) does work. [i]

What should homework cover?

While there is little research about exactly what types of homework content lead to the biggest achievement gains, there are some general rules of thumb about how homework should change gradually over time.

In grades 1–5, homework should:

Reinforce and allow students to practice skills learned in the classroom
Help students develop good study habits and routines
Foster positive feelings about school

In grades 6–12, homework should:

Prepare students for engagement and discussion during the next lesson
Allow students to apply their skills in new and more challenging ways

The most often-heard criticism of homework assignments is that they simply take too long. So how much homework should you assign in order to see results for students? Not surprisingly, it varies by grade. Assign 10-20 minutes of homework per night total, starting in first grade, and then add 10 minutes for each additional grade. [ii] Doing more can result in student stress, frustration, and disengagement, particularly in the early grades.

Why are some students not doing the homework?

There are any number of reasons why students may not complete homework, from lack of motivation to lack of content knowledge, but one issue to watch out for as a teacher is the impact of economic disparities on the ability to complete homework.

Multiple studies [iii] have shown that low-income students complete homework less often than students who come from wealthier families. This can lead to increased achievement gaps between students. Students from low-income families may face additional challenges when it comes to completing homework such as lack of access to the internet, lack of access to outside tutors or assistance, and additional jobs or family responsibilities.

While you can’t erase these challenges for your students, you can design homework that takes those issues into account by creating homework that can be done offline, independently, and in a reasonable timeframe. With those design principles in mind, you increase the opportunity for all your students to complete and benefit from the homework you assign.

The Big Picture

Perhaps most importantly, students benefit from receiving feedback from you, their teacher, on their assignments. Praise or rewards simply for homework completion have little effect on student achievement, but feedback that helps them improve or reinforces strong performance does. Consider keeping this mini-table handy as you design homework:

The act of assigning homework doesn’t automatically raise student achievement, so be a critical consumer of the homework products that come as part of your curriculum. If they assign too much (or too little!) work or reflect some of these common pitfalls, take action to make assignments that better serve your students.

[i] Cooper, H. (2007). The battle over homework (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

[ii] Cooper, H. (1989a). Homework .White Plains, NY: Longman.

[iii] Horrigan, T. (2015). The numbers behind the broadband ‘homework gap’ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/04/20/the-numbers-behind-the-broadband-homework-gap/ and Miami Dade Public Schools. (2009). Literature Review: Homework. http://drs.dadeschools.net/LiteratureReviews/Homework.pdf

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Philosophy and Practice of Homework

Recent posts about assignments and parental involvement had me reflecting on my own dilemmas about homework assignments and how my philosophy toward student homework has evolved depending on the students, the grade that I am teaching and my own experience. There are many factors that can influence the kind of homework students could/should receive, and that can be the students’ grade-level, ability, community access, level of support at home, the management of the classroom environment and extracurricular commitments, to name a few. It’s up to the teacher’s professional judgement to decide what is appropriate. For me as a teacher, additional influences such as experience (or inexperience) with a grade level, access to resources, ability to plan ahead and knowledge of what is actually ‘useful homework’ versus ‘make work’ influence the type of work that is sent home with the students. I am discovering that all of the factors contribute to the continuous shifts and swings in the planning and pacing of class work and assignments.

In my first year of teaching, homework only came in the form of research for class work and completion homework. The intended outcome of this kind of homework was to ‘help the students keep up with the classroom program’ (Heart and Art, p.80), which often backfired. Some of the same students who consistently did not complete their work in class also had evening commitments, parents with little spare time to supervise them and were forgetting to bring work back to school, resulting in further disruptions. Frustrations mounting, I quickly learned the importance of differentiation in the classroom and learning a better system for staying on top of the students’ progress.

In my second year of teaching, with little time and knowledge of how to access building materials for a unit that required the building of bridges, ‘Building a Bridge’ became the month-long home assignment. My assessment of the assignment required a lot of thought (weighing and grading the different aspects of the assignment) and planning, as most of the bridges that arrived in my classroom were worthy of a passing grade in an architectural course. The students’ grades were heavily derived from their classroom research and ability to orally explain the mechanics behind their work. While it was a successful assignment that enabled the students to work with and learn alongside their parents, I felt conflicted knowing that the parents/caregivers also sacrificed their evenings and weekends to support their children.

So much of what we as teachers learn is through trial and error, and most of what we learn, remember and refine is from the ‘errors’ that we make along the way. Now, the homework that I assign falls in the categories of practice, preparation and extension, which I discovered through my trials and errors, and also from the partnerships that I have this year (i.e., learning from what other’s have discovered to be successful). Weekly, my students are sent home with a language activity that reinforces and extends a concept learned in class, and a math activity (that is intended for family participation and problem solving). The math activity reinforces the skills of explaining thought processes (e.g., pictures, numbers and words to explain their solution), and is intended to prepare the students for the continued expectations through the grades. Preparing these materials isn’t too taxing of my lesson planning time, the homework is encouraged but not mandated, and through this, I hope to be considerate of ‘family time and commitments’ while giving the students (and their parents) means to practice and support classroom learning at home.

I realize that the next grade I teach will require more re-working and re-programming to find a good-fit homework outcome, and I am learning that this is normal. In planning the kind of learning that takes place outside of the classroom, I will continue to consider the many factors that influence successful ‘homework outcomes’ and utilize the tips and insights of my trusted colleagues who also continue to work and re-work their methods and planning.