I began to dig further in to my topic and found some great tips for teachers. A wesbite that immeidately caught my attention was www.smartboybadgrades.com. It mentions that teachers focus too much on tiny behaviors that don't actually affect other students in the classroom instead of focusing more on learning. Another important point they brought up is to push students to re-do their homework assignments. I think this is an awesome idea because it pushes students to push themselves and truly figure out the answer. Not only will this alleviate some stress for the students feeling pressure to get a good grade on their homework, but it will allow them a better grade and an opportunity to truly learn.
Another tip that was mentioned was to allow students to "quiz out" on homework. If they can prove that they know how to do the assignment and can show all of their work, than they would be allowed to quiz out of having that assignment as homework. I am strong believer in not giving a large amount of homework and this would push a student to really learn what is going on but I see many negative aspects of this. Some students might become frustrated because they never test out and always have a homework assignment and some students might just not care and don't want to put in any effort. I believe that there are many negative and positive aspects of this idea.
My thoughts concur with yours. I am a big fan of letting students redo homework. Isn't that what science is about anyway? If you don't get the desired results, you have to try something else? And what about the proverbial, "If at first you don't succeed, try again!"
ReplyDeleteOur job as future teachers is to have our students learn the material and not hand out grades. Therefore, I, like you, think redoing homework pushes the students to figure out the answer and learn the content.
I also don't like a "quiz out" on homework concept. Rather, I think quizes should reinforce that homework is being done. They should be for checks and balances and not for deciding what work load a student will have.
I also agree with letting students redo homework- how many of us master a task or concept the first try? While the quiz out is a good idea, I think it might be limited to only certain things. I think that while a student might be able to quiz out of a topic or unit, I think there are projects or presentations with research that they could do rather than smaller homework assignments like the rest of the class.
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