The text below is being added to the Primers if you ever have the “homework discussion” with your students, colleagues, or parents:
There is a place for Homework, just not homework as it is traditionally conceived. Many people read Alfie Kohn (The Homework Myth), for example, and think he is saying “No Homework”. He is not. He is saying that homework must be justified on its own merit, not simply be given because that’s what you do. I have four “types” of homework that I give:
a. Something that will take just a few minutes to finish because we didn’t have quite enough class time. (Essentially I’m admitting that I didn’t plan that day’s lesson quite well enough.)
b. Something to get ready for a lesson, but I don’t want to spend class time doing it. For example, one assignment I give is for students to write a list of their favorite things. In class I read the list, and the class tries to guess who it is. Sometimes I don’t have students put their names on the paper so that I am guessing as well. When we have identified the person, then I write the name. My “completion rate” on this assignment hovers at about, oh, 100%.
c. Something that they simply cannot do in class. Many teachers have a “cultural project”. As long as it is a chance for students to explore the culture and not filled with extraneous requirements, why not?
d. Get more exposure to the language: read in TL (I have a student who read The Hobbit in German last year, just for fun, on her own), watch a movie in TL, change the language on your family’s electronic devices, play video games in German (or other target language), find someone to talk or write to (student can write/speak in English and interlocutor writes/speaks in German).
e. Show your parents what you are doing in language class and impress them with how much you know by reading (translating) a class story for them.
f. Assessment (i.e. take-home test) so you don’t spend class time doing this. There are various ways to do this. One is to find, copy, and illustrate the Essential Sentences in a story.