How Homework Can Help Students Learn

The reason why teachers give homework to students is that homework help students to reinforce what they learn in the classroom, and it creates opportunities for parents to be involved in their children’s learning activities – this has been proved to increase academic performance.

Homework is seen as additional practice for students. Practice makes perfection! When students are engaged with homework, it gives them opportunities to practice and get better at what they do. Thus, encouraging the brain to move from short term working memory to long term working memory.

The Challenges Educators Face When Giving Homework

Homework no longer helps students when it’s often done wrongly; instead, it reinforces the wrong knowledge into their brain, and hence, it leads to frustration. Useful homework can be challenging and overwhelming when students are completing their homework alone without parental involvement.

When homework is too challenging or not challenging enough, students will not benefit from both. Hence, this is another problem faced by educators. The cause is the unavailability of tutors to monitor the students. Therefore, homework should not be too hard for students so that they don’t feel frustrated and then give up. Likewise, it should not be too easy, so that they don’t feel it’s a waste of time.

Homework that is not well-designed can destroy parent-children relationships. When homework is busywork or not productive, it creates an internal battle for parents.

Another problem is the way schools assign grades based on assignments. Students may be helped by tutors or online helpers who can do my homework for me and therefore submit error-free assignments. This won’t give adequate and useful feedback as students may not do well if not assisted by tutors or parents.

How Much Homework is Too Much?

Effective homework is challenging, but not hard that it frustrates the students. The right amount of homework is for teachers to ensure homework is given in deliberate ways that benefit students.

One of the ways tutors can strike a balance is to strategize on what homework to give the students. Students may be asked to watch videos, reflect on a class, read some chapters in a book, and come the following day to have discussions on what they have learned. To be sure homework are effective, tutors should ensure students give feedback.

Furthermore, teachers should give students some flexibility about when to submit their assignments. Also, they should ensure there are not many assignments given to students to be submitted the same day so that they won’t be overburdened and stressed out.

The Other Work of Childhood

Research establishes that when children try something new; they grow to be strong, self-asserting, and resilient when they have quality time for unstructured play. This fact is to be taken into consideration when teachers are assigning assignments to children. Educators should only give assignments when they know it will help the children to learn. Therefore, teachers need to decide if the homework they want to give is worth it or not.