I'm reaching the end of my one year teaching internship and will hopefully have my own class starting in August. This is both exciting and terrifying to me! I sway back and forth on my opinion of many classroom strategies and ideas, but one I cannot form a strong opinion of yet is homework. Yep--the dreaded math homework.
My current thoughts:
- students need to practice math and homework is great way to accomplish that.
- I want my students to try their homework and do their best.
- I want to award those students that try but may not get the right answers (this philosophy lends itself nicely to "completion" scores).
- simply taking completion scores all the time is shown in research to lower student motivation over time.
- I want to grade for accuracy so students get feedback about their individual work and see where they're making mistakes.
- I want to know what mistakes my students are making so we can talk through common misconceptions during class.
Also, there's the dilemma of when to take homework up. Do you take it up the day after you assign it? Do you wait and take everything up from the week on Friday so they have time to ask questions on what they do not understand? What about absences?
I just don't know... any and every opinion would be great as I try to think through the best approach. Thanks for responding, I really do appreciate it!!!
1 comments:
Well, a good way to check for understanding is using little white boards. I don't know if it'll work the same in math, but it's great in Spanish. Students have little indv. white boards and markers, and you give them a problem, and have them answer it. When they're done, they hold up the white boards so you can see whether they got it right or wrong. This way, you can see how many understand it, how many don't, and it doesn't make them nervous because they're not being singled out. As far as the homework dilemma... that's a tricky one. I may have to get back to you on that. :) Good luck though.
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