Homework - Tips for Teachers by Craig Barton

Homework has two distinct advantages over all the other retrieval opportunities we might provide our students:

Doing homework doesn’t take up class time
Students can work at their own pace

But in the schools I visit, many students do not engage in homework, especially those students who most need to engage with it. Much time is lost, and frustration is caused by chasing up missing homework.

Contents

Diagnosis

What homework do you currently give your students, and how often?
Why do you give your students homework?
What challenges do you face?

Evidence

Homework research is extensive and inconclusive, which is not surprising. Homework is like the world’s worst scientific experiment: impossible to study directly and uncontaminated by other variables. More factors than any other instructional strategy influence homework assignments. Student ability, motivation, and grade level may all influence homework’s effect. In addition, there is considerable variation in whether, when, and how students complete assignments and in the home conditions in which they work on them.

Christine Blazer conducted a comprehensive literature review of homework-related research in 2009.

Here are the potential benefits of homework:

Homework serves as a diagnostic tool that allows teachers to monitor their students’ progress regularly
It eases time constraints on the amount of curricular material that can be covered in class
It can be a retrieval opportunity
It teaches students that learning also takes place outside of the classroom
It helps students develop good study habits
It fosters student initiative and independence
It promotes greater parental appreciation of and involvement in schooling

Here are the potential drawbacks of homework:

Homework provides few, if any, academic benefits to students who don’t possess the skills needed to complete the assignment
Students who have already mastered the skills derive little or no benefit from completing the assignment
Teachers have no control over who completes the work
Homework mismatch and overload can cause students to lose interest in the subject
Homework can widen social inequalities

Overall, if homework is well chosen, it is found to positively impact the learning of students, especially those of high school age.

In this section, we will look at how to maximise the effectiveness of homework by increasing the benefits and reducing the drawbacks.

Solution steps

Overall, the evidence suggests that well-chosen homework can positively impact students; learning. Homework is worth setting, so let’s look at some ideas to improve its effectiveness

Part 1: The purpose of homework

1. Make sure you know the purpose of the homework

Why do you set your students homework? Is it to:

Consolidate classwork
Extend of classwork
Diagnose areas of weakness
Provide a retrieval opportunity
Assess prerequisite knowledge for an upcoming topic
Help students prepare for tests
Help students develop good study habits
Improve motivation
Placate the powers-that-be
Please parents

There is no right or wrong answer, but it is important to know why we are doing what we are doing.

2. Make sure your students know the purpose of the homework

If you asked your students why you set them homework, what would they say? Would their answer be the same as yours?

Once we have decided upon the purpose of homework, the next step is to communicate that purpose to our students. If they do not know why they are doing something, their incentive to do it may be low.

3. Rebrand homework as “Checking for understanding”

Just as we rebranded tests as Low-Stalkes Quizzes, because of the negative connotation of the word test, homework may be due to a similar rebrand.

Most teachers would assign checking for understanding as one of the key purposes of homework, whether to consolidate the current topic, act as a retrieval opportunity, or provide a prerequisite knowledge check for an upcoming topic.

For this reason, Peter Liljedahl recommends rebranding homework as “Checking for understanding”.

4. Consider using homework as a retrieval opportunity

Most homework I see consists entirely of questions on the most recent topic students have studied. This is a missed opportunity. Homework is one of the four retrieval opportunities available to teachers.

It is also the only one that doesn’t take up any class time, and where students can work at their own pace. Including questions in homework on topics students have encountered in the past is a great way to enhance this diet of retrieval practice.

At my school, we implemented a Revision section on each of our paper-based homework to provide students with a retrieval opportunity:

We also decided to allocate a score for the Revision section and one for the Topic section to provide a better diagnostic for us and our students.

5. Consider using homework to assess prerequisite knowledge

Another underutilised purpose of homework is to assess prerequisite knowledge. If you are switching topics next week, you can ask questions on this week’s homework on concepts students have encountered in the past to see how secure the foundations upon which you hope to build new knowledge are. If you mark this homework, you know which prerequisite topics students need support with, allowing you to allocate class time efficiently.

I think the following is a sensible homework composition:

Questions on topics encountered previously: 30%
Questions on the current topic: 50%
Questions on relevant prior knowledge for upcoming topic: 20%

Part 2: Improving homework completion rates

A constant challenge for teachers is getting students to do their homework./ Typically, the students least likely to complete their homework are those who need to complete it.

Let’s look at some ideas to help more students do homework according to our expected standards.

1. Treat online homework just as seriously as you treat written homework

Most maths departments I visit subscribe to a platform where students complete homework online, and this is automatically marked. This is great from a workload perspective, and can also be beneficial for the student if the platform is smart enough to adapt to their needs. However, completion rates for online homework are typically lower than those for paper-based homework.

I hypothesise that there is more of a set-and-forget mentality for online homework because of the relatively small effort required by the teacher.

Students need to know that we take online homework as seriously as paper-based homework. This means chasing students up in the same way, holding them accountable as you would if they failed to complete a paper-based homework, and, as we will see below, ensuring online homework feeds into lessons.

2. Set shorter homeworks, more frequently

One robust finding from research into homework is that the teacher regularly assigning homework matters more than the quantity. More frequent homework instills consistent work habits and promotes self-directed learning in students. This aligns with the concept of homework as a tool to enhance student engagement and foster self-regulation skills, rather than simply increasing time spent on a subject.

So, if we want our students to complete, say, 1 hour of homework per week, it is better to set two 30-minute tasks, or even three 20-minute tasks, than one 1-hour task.

Of course, this has implications for the whole school in terms of students’ homework timetables, but if it is in our control, then this is a useful change to make.

3. Ensure the homework is worth completing

Research suggests that students who perceived that their homework was well-selected reported higher levels of motivation and effort, and showed greater achievement gains.

The implication is that we need to consider the homework we are setting for our students carefully. A random worksheet off the internet, an unchecked click of the Assign button on an online platform, or even printing off the next sheet in the curriculum package we subscribe to may result in homework that is misaligned with the needs of our students. Homework is not busy work; it is a key learning opportunity.

4. Establish the norm that everyone does their homework

In Motivated Teaching, Peps Mccrea explains that norms play a huge role within schools, and we can make desirable norms more visible by increasing their Profusion and Prominence.

Maths teacher Beth Kearns wrote a fantastic piece about how she worked with colleagues to establish the norm that students do homework (they use the online platform Sparx) by taking practical steps to boost profusion and prominence. Here are some of Beth’s actions:

Initial contact with parents – all year 7 parents were contacted to inform them of expectations, the new homework day and the dates that subsequent homeworks were due in. Profusion.
Parents were contacted each week if their child had not completed their homework. Profusion.
Before the first week of homework being set, all year 7 students were given the opportunity during a maths lesson to log onto Sparx to correct any issues with forgotten logins, etc. Profusion.
Lots of “air time” given to celebrating homework completion. Each week I visited year 7 form groups and publicly celebrated those students who had engaged with homework. Prominence.
I privately targeted groups of students who had not engaged and helped to discuss and break down any barriers. Profusion.
We celebrated (and sent reminders regarding) the homework completion via the school’s Instagram page (we get high levels of parental engagement with this), for example, “Well done to the 75% of year 7 students who did Sparx homework last week”. I hoped this would encourage further conversations at home with parents checking if their child was ‘safely’ in the 75%. Profusion and Prominence.
I asked form tutors and class teachers to both celebrate the successful homework each week, and remind students of when the next homework was due in. Profusion and Prominence.

5. Make homework visible everywhere

An easy way to increase the prominence of homework is to make it visible. Here are some examples from recent school visits:

Celebrating success on the maths corridor:

Including updates and reminders on lesson slides:

And even on the back of tests:

6. Consider barriers students might experience and how you can remove them

Here are some possible barriers students might face that prevent them from completing their homework:

Lack of equipment
Lack of technology
Log-in issues!
Lack of time
Poor organisational skills
Lack of support at home
No suitable environment to do the work

Considering practice steps we can take to remove these barriers will help those students who want to complete their homework have the best chance of doing so.

History teacher, Mr Thornton, shares some approaches from his school:

7. Make the first question easy

Research shows that an easy first question in an assessment leads to a lower dropout rate and higher average scores.

Make Q1 of your homework super-accessible to reduce the barrier to a student starting.

An easily accessible Q1 also means that if a student does not start their homework, it can only be because they choose not to, instead of being stuck. This means you can hold them to account.

8. Have something students can do if they are stuck on their homework

What should students do if they are stuck on their homework?

Is there a link to a video?
Do they have access to the final answers?
Can they collaborate with a classmate?
Is there a student maths mentor they can ask?
Is there a homework club?
Is there a designated time they can come and see you?

9. Make sure students know what to do if they are stuck on their homework

Once we have decided what students should do if they are stuck on their homework, we need to communicate this to our students. A good way to test if you have done this is to pick a student at random and ask them what they should do if they are stuck on their homework. If their answer is different to yours, you have a job to do.

10. Standardise the format of homework

If we keep the structure of a task the same, students can dedicate more attention to the content of the task.

Therefore, try to make homework “look” the same. This may involve keeping things constant, such as the number of questions and the format of the homework.

11. Hand the homework out and collect the homework in on the same day and at the same time each week

In Motivated Teaching, Peps Mccrea explains routines discard unnecessary decision costs and decrease the amount of information that we have to process.

We can harness this power by always giving out homework and collecting it on the same day and at the same time each week. This makes it more likely that homework will become part of students’ routine, as opposed to something to constantly wondering when homework is due.

12. Have consistent sanctions for when homeworks are not completed to the standard you want

Nobody wants to talk about sanctions, but we know they can be an effective source of extrinsic motivation, at least in the short term. So, what happens to students who…

Don’t do their homework?
Hand it in late?
Have done it, but have clearly not put a lot of effort it?

That last one is interesting. If some students in a class rarely do homework, they are the students who incur the attention (and the wrath) of the teacher. That often leads to another group of students who do very little homework, but just enough to differentiate themselves from the first group.

The only way to avoid this is to be clear with our expectations for homework, and stick to this consistently.

13. Involve parents… carefully!

Parental impact on homework is a complex one. Research suggests that:

When parents gave encouragement and discussed pupils’ school/homework with them, this positively affected learning.
However, when parents directly assisted with homework, this was negatively associated with student achievement and study habits.

The key is communicating to parents about homework expectations, where students can go for help, and that effort and completion are much more important than correct answers.

14. Link homework to the Do Now or Low-Stakes Quiz

A good way to help students see the value of homework and thus increase completion rates is to integrate homework with what students do in class. If students perceive homework, classwork, and Low-Stakes Quizzes as part of the same machine working together to improve their learning, buy-in, increased effort, and positive results should follow.

Thus, we can design our Do Nows or Low-Stakes Quizzes to cover the same topics as the homework. Or we can go one further and use questions from homework as part of the Do Now or Low-Stakes Quiz. This way, the purpose of homework is clear: to prepare students to be successful in class.

Support and stakes are important here. If students struggle with their homework, they need to be able to access support, whether it be from us or an external source. Then, when students come to complete the Do Now or Low-Stakes Quiz, we need to hold them accountable if they can’t answer the questions, as this is a clear sign they have not put the required effort into their homework.

Part 3: Homework pro tips

Here are a few tips that wouldn’t fit into any other section.

Collect in books open at the homework

If students answer homework in their books, this will save them hours wading through, trying to find the page they have written it on or where they have stuck the sheet.

2. Consider having a separate homework book

Students tend to take more pride in a separate homework book and write neater in it when their homework is not mixed in with their messy classroom. A separate homework book also means students can keep working in their exercise books whilst you leave their books to mark at home.

3. Challenge students to create a diagnostic question

One of my favourite homework activities is to challenge students to write a multiple-choice diagnostic question on a specific topic:

This is interesting, challenging, and self-differentiating, and you can use students’ responses in class. You can provide students with a template to help embed the routine:

4. Challenge students to do a “Give an example of…”

Another of my favourite homework is to ask students to give an example of a concept we have been discussing that week. For example:

Like diagnostic questions, this is interesting, challenging, and self-differentiating, and you can use students’ responses in class.

5. Ask students to assign confidence scores to their answers

We have discussed the role confidence plays in learning. Asking students to assign confidence scores to their homework answers before you mark or review them can enhance the feedback process that follows.