When a student is up late doing homework, they may decide to let some of it slide. The next day, homework looms uncompleted. They ask a classmate if they can copy down the answers to the math homework between classes. This poses no problem, the student thinks, because the problems were merely busywork.
To challenge this notion and increase the usefulness of homework by fostering students’ understanding, math teachers Ron Taylor and Bruce Mallory have changed the way they grade homework this year. These changes have been received differently by individual students, and the overall effects have not yet come into shape.
In Taylor’s Precalculus Honor class, homework counts for 20 percent of a student’s grade. This grade comes not from daily checks but from short, daily homework quizzes.
In Mallory’s Advanced Placement AB Calculus class, he checks homework daily to give feedback and check on his students, but only tests and quizzes factor into a student’s grade. Quizzes only count if they help a student’s average, and all tests are scaled.
“I’m looking at homework and quizzes as practice,” Mallory said, “and if you are going to practice you have to have the space to mess up.”
Mathematics Curriculum Coordinator Joshua Paris said completing homework only to earn credit causes problems.
“If you do homework that way, you are not actually learning a whole lot, so there’s a second part of homework which is really correcting it and assessing whether or not you understood the material,” Paris said.
According to Paris, the main purpose of homework is to have a positive impact on students’ learning. Paris said both Taylor and Mallory’s policies accomplish this purpose.
Mallory and Taylor each cited removing the benefit of copying as one reason for their policies.
“I want the work that the students do to be their own, and I want them to own the work that they do,” Mallory said. “If they are writing down something, if they are doing a homework problem, they are doing it so that they understand the homework problem and they are not doing it so they get a check.”
Taylor said he found that since homework focuses on mastery, students who already understand the content can skip repetitive homework with no detriment.
“Let’s say you have a big tennis match tonight, and you also have a paper to write for your history class, and you feel comfortable with what we’re doing in class that day. You don’t need to go and spend 45 minutes on my homework, because you understand it. You can demonstrate that to me the following day on a quiz,” Taylor said.
Junior Danielle Vishlitzky, who is in Taylor’s class, said the homework quizzes have both benefits and drawbacks. She said that some students might enjoy having the choice not to do the homework, but others might suffer due to the pressure associated with assessments.
Vishlitzky said she personally has found that the quizzes are fair and that the policy is helpful so far.
Kate Finnerty can be contacted at [email protected]
