preview

Essay on Does Homework Actually Help Students

Decent Essays

Everyone at one point in time has complained they have had too much homework. Especially in High School. I was always told homework will help me because it is a way to practice and fully master the material I needed to learn. In high school students spend a few hours a night doing what they see as busy work, meaning they do not think it is helping them at all. Some students do not mind work load. They feel doing the problems,writing the short responses, filling out packets, helps them because they practice and remember the material. A question that has come up is whether assigning packets of homework, mostly finding a word and it’s definition, will help students master material better than assigning less or none at all. I believe that …show more content…

In cases like this, students do not learn the material. By simply writing many definitions, or even writing wrong definitions, students do not grasp a deep understanding of concepts or main points of the material. As stated in the book Helping Your Child with Homework, the best type of homework assignments are the type that include some kind of feedback from the teacher to the student; the homework assigned to students should also be at a level appropriate for the students learning abilities, and the assignments should challenge the student intellectually (book citation). Packets filled with simple questions such as “ what is meiosis” or “give the definition of simile” do not challenge students and teachers do not give much, or any, feedback to students with this type of homework. Many argue that it is difficult for teachers to give feedback when they teach one hundred or more students. The amount of papers they need to grade is high and they simply do not have the time to write comments on every assignment. My answer to this is simple. Instead of assigning packets of homework, assign a few critical thinking questions. The students would give a brief summary on the main concept, then perhaps paraphrase a definition that is important to know. Students would then really think about their answers and the teacher could give comments since they will no longer have to skim packets. Teachers would only have to read

Get Access