Educational Leadership:Giving Students Meaningful Work:Five Hallmarks of Good Homework

Educational Leadership:Giving Students Meaningful Work:Five Hallmarks of Good Homework

September 2010 | Volume 68 | Number 1 Giving Students Meaningful Work Pages 10-15 Five Hallmarks of Good Homework Cathy Vatterott Homework shouldn't be about rote learning. The best kind deepens student understanding and builds essential skills. For tonight's homework, Write the 10 spelling words 3 times each. Write definitions of the 15 science vocabulary words. Do the math problems on page 27, problems 1–20 on dividing fractions. Check any homework hotline, and you're likely to find similar homework assignments, which look an awful lot like those we remember from school. But do these tasks really reinforce learning? Do they focus on rote learning—or on deeper understandings? The Fundamental Five The best homework tasks exhibit five characteristics. First, the task has a clear academic purpose, such as practice, checking for understanding, or applying knowledge or skills. Second, the task efficiently demonstrates student learning. Third, the task promotes owner ship by offering choices and being personally relevant. Fourth, the task instills a sense of competence—the student can success fully complete it without help. Last, the task is aesthetically pleasing—it appears enjoyable and interesting (Vatterott, 2009). Hallmark 1: Purpose Let's start by examining how purposeful tonight's homework assignments are and whether there are better alternatives. The purpose of the spelling homework—"Write the 10 spelling words 3 times each"—might be to practice spelling words correctly—a rote memory task. Many teachers believe that writing is a good method, especially if they learned well that way when they were students. But not all students remembe