Sunday, September 28, 2014

Homework!

The debate that will never end.


With all the ideas of authentic learning and genius hour, I had been challenged with allowing time for my students to work on personal projects. While, still being able to meet their needs in other areas of the curriculum.

It is a well known fact that students don’t like homework and to be honest I don’t like homework. Trying to come up with interesting activities that will support what they are doing in the classroom. Then having to find the time to mark it when I am a firm believer in marking with students. I have also thought about and plan to implement Flipped learning for homework as well.
It was one day when students were working on a 3D creation task that a student asked me - “For homework next week can I draw up a net and make a pizza box?” I thought about it and I said yes, look at one of the tasks and we can negotiate which task you won’t complete.

I thought more about this and then thought What if students wrote their own homework? After discussing with my grade partner, she suggested let’s start with allowing them to come up with one task and then increase on that next term.

They were excited. I had students doing such a range of tasks which include:
  • Documentary on their dance school.
  • A new song on guitar
  • Chocolate and Banana muffins and writing up the recipe
  • The Pizza Box
  • Creating Minecraft characters
  • A student recorded his statistics at football training and then drew up a graph

For one of my students with special needs he opted to spend time on an online maths game, which was also fine.

As I said they were excited, I was excited and I looked forward to seeing,
marking their work.  They then all wanted to share their homework with the class and started giving each other feedback. Definitely a winner and I can’t wait to see what they continue to do.

2 comments:

  1. I remember how much you lit up telling me about your students' ideas. Positively glowing! Never lose that passion, Maggie! Great post to start.

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