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Complete Homework Instructions
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12 thoughts on “Complete Homework Instructions”
How much does culture matter in a school? A lot. Luckily with CI and through teaching with love we have the ability to mold ourselves to our surroundings. We can truly be all things to all people.
I have missed me some James Hosler over the past year or two. I am happy you are back James. Your voice is strong and true. Are you teaching 8 Latin classes this year? How is the family?
lol no just 7 classes. I probably could have gotten 8 if my district were not in a terrible financial hole. Family is good. Wife is pregnant with #4! Yay! Thanks for asking. 🙂
How’d you wind up in India? Just can’t retire, can you? 😉
Congratulations Family Hosler!!!
with love,
Laurie
Hi, Ben. I am looking to use your homework idea for my Latin classes this year. Do you have a copy of homework log you use? I would love to steal it.
I am NOT a big homework guy. Ever since I started teaching in this way I never had much use for giving homework unless it involves going home and reading. Parents seem to appreciate that too in my experience.
Recently, I’ve been pressed by students to start assigning homework. This is definitely an environment where students want to be ranked based on performance. There are frustrations about earning A’s and B’s. The brainiacs want to separate themselves from the rest of the pack and they think that by assigning homework this could be one of the ways. The same students even expressed to me that Spanish class is more like Art and Music class. They are saying that it is not a serious academic class, I happen to take this as a huge compliment!
I have decided to start introducing homework in a different way and I was curious about other people’s opinions?
I am assigning a short homework essay assignment about the definition of comprehensible input and examples of it being used in this year’s class.
I am thinking if I teach them about what we are actually doing and furthermore engage the students in the realities of acquiring language that I can appease some of these 4%ers. The very interesting thing about this whole situation is that the frustrations are not about how they are learning but about how they are being compared with other students in the class. This discussion happened after my gradebook accidentally popped up and students so that everyone in the class was earning grades in the 90 percentile.
Thoughts about giving homework on second language acquisition?
Busted! 🙂
I like your idea of some SLA homework Mike, since you say it’s more about competition than acquisition.
Can you put it in the gradebook but not grade it (if you don’t want to penalize the kids who don’t do it)? Or make it 5%? I’m doing a 5% miscellaneous category this year and part of what goes in there is when kids do 10 senorwooly nuggets every two weeks (or every week in my block classes). This allows them to get some accomplished when I want a break, or in study hall, and then usually a bit at home. Not your typical homework…
Michael since I found myself in a new school this year with those kinds of brainiac privileged kids who compete and think more homework means more learning (when it’s forced that is so not true), I had a battle with 1980’s AP French teacher me and lost. I assigned one free write of 10′ per week, for the sole reason that I wanted to look like I was giving homework and have something to show at parent conferences. It didn’t work. Some would skip them for a month and then hand four in at a time. Others, really good students, never did them and I couldn’t see dinging them for doing something stupid. After a while, I kid you not, I was spending an hour or two at the end of each week shuffling through papers. Finally, I got a tap on the shoulder and the Fairy of Forced Homework flew up to my right shoulder, looked me square in the eyes, and said, lovingly, “Ben, I don’t exist any more. You are free to not do this busy work. Go boy! Fly!” I dropped the entire big pile into the waste basket under where the fairy was hovering. No more homework. I tell the parents now that we have YouTube and that is a powerful free plane ticket to any country in the world for music. Unforced, invited homework. That’s what I say.
Yeah, man! Have options for homework. But nothing required. That covers your butt.
Parent: You don’t give homework?
or
Parent: How does my kid get extra practice, because he [has a low grade], [wants more practice], because [I’m a confused super parent and think kids must have homework]?
Teacher: If your kid wants extra listening and reading practice, I have links to free online sites for that and I upload all the readings our class does so he can go read stories from his class and other classes. And, he can even cut and paste the reading into IM Translator and listen to the story at 7 different speeds. Doing more reading and listening is the ONLY way your student is going to acquire more language and the ONLY way he is going to improve on tests in this class.
Busted indeed Jim.
I am pretty much going to goof around with the homework grade so students get that artificial feeling that they have accomplished something. It kind of covers my butt. I am in it for the long game though…I want students to have that big sense of accomplishment by the end of the year and forever when they leave my class.
I am also going to try some Señor Wooly homework…how are you implementing that?
I’m curious to see how the Sr. Wooly homework works. He now has the ability to assign “nuggets” for kids to do that go with the songs. I want to get started with those.
Are you a subscriber to WoolyPro? It makes it really simple to see how many nuggets students have completed of any song, and you can assign them right on the site and students will see it when they login. It’s pretty cool. Some students have been having some loading issues with the site, but haven’t confirmed if that’s the site or our connection. All signs point to the site, so maybe he needs more server capacity or something. Not sure… But works well for the most part.