Aside from avoiding homework entirely, there are other alternatives. The following recommendations can make those assignments more effective, creative, and motivational.

According to the National Education Association’s Research Spotlight on Homework, the “majority of US students spend less than an hour a day on homework, regardless of grade level.” Multiple sources recommend about ten minutes per night in the first grade, then add ten minutes for every subsequent grade, for a maximum of two hours in all subjects by the 12th grade.

Whenever possible teachers should:

• Communicate with parents so they know what homework to expect. Also invite them to tell you if their child is experiencing anxiety.

• Align your homework policy with colleagues. Determine how much to assign and how often, and what the procedure is for incomplete or late work.

• Create engaging handouts.

• Vary the types of problems that students can use to show mastery of a subject, using tools like PowerPoint or Canva.

• Allow students to start homework during the class in which it is assigned so that they can ask clarifying questions if needed.

• Keep homework under 10 percent of the total points possible in a course.

Teachers should not:

• Make homework a punishment.

• Assign homework every day.

• Introduce new concepts, skills, or material as homework.

• Over-complicate directions.

• Make completion depend upon resources not available to students at home.

• Give zeros. The consequence should be completion of the work.

• Neglect to explain the purpose of the assignment or your late-work procedure.

All homework assignments should contain four parts:

1.The purpose

2. Directions on how readers are supposed to go about it

3. What readers are supposed to learn

4. Applying during the next class what was learned doing the homework

Here is an example: Tonight when you read Chapter 12, I want you to think about the causes of the American Revolution. As you’re reading, draw a T-chart to keep track of the British perspective and the American one. When we come in tomorrow, we’re going to divide into two teams and debate.

or

Tonight when you read about the Akeidah make a chart comparing what Avraham and Yitzhaq might have been thinking about during their journey to Moriah. Tomorrow we will act out the scenario.

Make Homework Apply to Real-Life Objects or Situations

An elementary math example would be to have students count a set of items such as windows, doors, eating utensils, chair or table legs, and then manipulate the numbers using addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division.

Incorporate Visual Thinking

Students can follow up trip-based assignments with an experience map, on which they draw where they were, what they did, and the insights that occurred at those moments. Before making a class atlas out of all the maps, each learner writes on the back of the map what he/she felt was the most challenging part of the field experience.

Differentiate

Give students homework choices.

Motivate On-Time Completion

Before students leave the classroom, teachers should ask one important question: “Is there anyone, for any reason, who will not be able to turn in their homework in the morning?” This strategy heads off excuses.

In 2012, the Chicago Public School district no longer required its teachers to assign homework. But so far, Hamilton Elementary School has been the only school to introduce a homework ban.

Children should read at home for pleasure, not because it is an assignment. The same goes for learning any Jewish text. If we want to kill the love of reading, hand a child a reading log and force him or her to monitor it each night, and make it a chore to finish. Each school needs to evaluate its homework policy and perhaps follow it up with some professional development workshops on how the brain integrates and retains information.

Rabbi Dr. Wallace Greene has had a distinguished career as a Jewish educator. He has taught children, teens, and adults. He was a college professor, day-school principal, and director of two central agencies for Jewish education, including our own community’s Jewish Educational Services for over a decade. He is the founder of the Sinai School, and has received many prestigious awards including the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Lifshitz College of Education in Jerusalem and The World Council on Torah Judaism. He is currently a consultant to schools, non-profit organizations, and The International March of The Living. He can be reached at [email protected].

By Wallace Greene