Homework worth setting, and homework set out of habit

The default homework is thirty questions on the topic just taught, due next session. It looks rigorous, it takes students an hour, and most of that hour is spent on questions they could already do before they started.

Decide what the homework is for

There are only three honest purposes, and they produce completely different tasks:

• Practising a skill to fluency, which needs many similar items, and only for the students who cannot yet do it.
• Retaining older material, which needs few items, spread across weeks, on things taught a month ago rather than today.
• Preparing for the next session, which needs a reading or a problem they cannot yet solve, whose purpose is to make the explanation land.

Most set homework claims to be the first and is actually habit. And the second purpose, the one with the strongest evidence behind it, is almost never set at all.

The four-question sheet

A format that beats the thirty-question version for most groups: two questions on today's topic, one on last month's, one on something from the term before. It takes fifteen minutes instead of an hour, so it gets done, including by the students who currently do not do homework at all, which is the population it needs to reach. And the two older questions do the retention work that mass practice on one topic never does.

The completion problem you have not tried

For the weakest students, set homework with the first steps already written. A blank page is where homework dies: a student who cannot start does not struggle for twenty minutes, they close the book. Giving them the entry point converts a non-attempt into practice, and it is the difference between a student who does homework and one who has stopped.

If you will not look at it, do not set it

Homework that is never checked teaches the group, within about three weeks, that homework is optional. Checking does not mean marking: walking the room for two minutes, or asking for one specific answer, is enough. But something has to happen, or the whole system quietly stops functioning while still consuming your students' evenings.

Sources

• What Works Clearinghouse — Educator Practice Guides (US Dept. of Education)
• OECD — Education and Skills