In this guest post, Southborough resident Julie Jenks tackles a subject that plagues many of us: homework. With three children in the public schools and a varied background in education, including 15 years as a private study skills tutor, Julie offers some great tips to help stressed-out parents (and their kids).
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Homework. We all have it on our minds this time of year, as we are back to the routines, the busy schedules, and the balancing act that the school year brings. While homework probably elicits different reactions in each of us, and while students vary greatly from each other, I would be willing to bet that many of you are not completely satisfied with the homework situation at your house.
Maybe your child rushes through their homework, or forgets it at school. Perhaps your child takes forever to finish assignments or starts doing homework so late that they aren’t done by bedtime. Do you feel like you take more of the responsibility for getting homework done than your child does? Does your child insist that they can complete homework while talking on the phone, watching television, or singing along to their music?
While homework is ultimately your child’s job, like most things in life you can play a positive role in guiding them. There are specific things you can do to decrease homework struggles and increase academic success. What should you encourage your child to do?
1. Use an assignment notebook
Students should record nightly assignments and use the monthly calendar in their assignment notebook to budget long-term projects. Students (and in many houses, parents) need to look at both of these regularly.
2. Do the hardest homework first
Remind your kids that they have the most energy when they start homework. Chances are, some of the homework battles will lessen if they get the hardest assignments done when they are fresh. Obviously note when things are due as well. The hardest homework that is due in a month wouldn’t take priority on a busy night.
3. Have a set location to do homework
Help your child choose a location where distractions are minimal, lighting is good, and supplies are handy. They should work at a desktop or table where they have space and can sit upright.
4. Make homework time consistent or at least predictable
If homework time is predetermined, it is not a debate every night. If activities make a consistent time impossible, then look at your week and set a schedule. For those of you with a flexible schedule, I will note that generally households run smoother when homework time is earlier.
5. Review, Review, Review
Reviewing materials should be part of the nightly homework routine (especially for the student who blows through their homework or gets it all done in study hall). It’s not surprising that students will be tested on the materials they are learning. Even if a teacher hasn’t announced a test, it is inevitable. Expecting your child to study all along will help them to achieve good grades.
Encouraging these five things will give your child an advantage. All five things are simple enough. The tricky part? The challenge comes in making these things part of their routine. It’s all about habit! When students do something different from the way they have always done it, effort and thought are required. It is only after repetition and commitment to something new, that it becomes habit.
While some students have the ability to learn a strategy, try it, and then make it their own, I have found that most need parental support to keep bringing them back to the same skills again and again. It is a commitment on your part, and one more thing to add to your balancing act, but if you stick with it, some day they just might thank you!
This is a great guigeline Julie and thank you. We follow these pretty much as well.
The one thing I can add, and I have learned over the years, the one place not to multi task is in the class room.
If you pay attention with a single eye in class, I tell my kids, you start with a B before doing anything at all. The key is to listen with discipline in the class room and the skill of listening is a real short coming with most people today becasue our minds or thoughts are elsewhere.
homework has always been part of the daily schema so there have never been any battles over the task, to us it is just an extension of the day at school. I would like to add that where a child does their homework is also very personal to them. I learned this the hard way thinking that my older child “should do his homework in his room at his desk” that is actually the complete opposite of how he operates wanting to spread out in the kitchen and be amongst stimuli and the family. Our other child needs help to organize and then seeks out the quiet solitude of the attic space making the desk up there her own area. Supporting what your kids *need to be successful I believe is a learned skill as a parent, there is not a one size fits all model.
I can’t find the item, but I recall a recent New York Times report that varying study environments and outside stimuli actually, against expectations, lead to better learning.
My daughter is past needing my help with this since she’s a senior in college – and didn’t much need it anyway (lucky me) – but I still have the strong sense that children have way too much homework to be educationally productive. Instead, it just crowds out play, reading, and childhood. Schools push homework because parents demand it. Can we please stop pushing for more, more, more and instead push for moderation and effectiveness of everything that’s assigned?