Homework. The dreaded word that makes kids moan and groan in agony across America. So why do I give it and what is my policy? Well, I believe there is a happy medium found in homework. It should not take HOURS upon HOURS of a child's evening to complete. THAT is miserable for everyone. However, a healthy amount of homework promotes good work ethic, independent practice, responsibility, and school-to-home communication.
My homework policy is that homework is practice. It is a safe place to try and make mistakes without it killing your grade. I DO give a grade for homework, but it is a completion grade. I give points for it being completed well with an obvious effort. It is absolutely OK to help your child with their homework. In fact, I encourage you to look over your child's homework every night. It shows you what we are studying in class, it allows you to see your child's progress on a particular skill, and it provides an opportunity for you to help your child fix mistakes. The worst thing that can happen is for a child to do an assignment completely wrong and therefore train his/her brain the wrong way to do something. By looking over your child's homework, you are giving them a chance to fix their mistakes and therefore retraining their brain on the correct way to do something. I collect your child's homework from them personally every day. There are no trays for them to turn it in to or places for it to get lost. It goes from them straight to me. :) I will always go through and check for correctness on every assignment. Perfect homework is given a star at the top and sent home at the end of the week. Homework that needs corrections is given back to the student to correct then turned back in to me to check. I try very hard to get through as many corrections each week as I can. (Checking your child's homework is one way that you can help me reduce the number of corrections.) I will often put an OK over an "x" once a problem has been corrected. Then, I send home all work at the end of each week on Friday. Sometimes an assignment will be returned home without all of the necessary corrections. I truly try to get as many things corrected as time allows. However, being prompt and having work returned to the student and you is also a priority for me. So, I try very hard not to keep an assignment longer than a week. Hopefully, homework will become a healthy work habit for your child and prepare them for middle school and high school. I try very hard to remember that elementary kids are still young, and I keep that in mind when I choose the amount of homework to assign. Has your child come home talking about his/her chain yet? Hopefully they have shared about their chain with you! Every student in my class wears an achievement chain. The chains are worn during the school day and then stay at school in cubbies when students go home. Chains are special! They are a place for students to showcase their accomplishments throughout the year in fourth grade. There are a variety of beads that they can earn to add to their chain over the course of the year and each bead symbolizes something different. Some beads are earned as a class when we work towards and reach a special goal. I call these our monthly motivators. Other beads represent individual success in the areas of behavior and academics! The possibilities are endless, and I'm always adding reasons to reward students with a new bead throughout the year! :) On the last day of school, we will have our final bead celebration and the students will take their chains home to keep with them forever. My dream is that this special chain of accomplishments is something they are always proud of and something they can always keep and remember about fourth grade. :) |
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September 2018
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