I taught 6th period algebra today after watching and taking notes while my cooperating teacher taught 1st period algebra. Our first item of the period was to review the homework and have students check their answers. I used the doc cam to post the answers as I asked the students to get out their homework. I heard "we had homework?" "what was the homework?" "I didn't know there was homework."
Our school is implementing standard-based grading, which doesn't assign points to completing the homework. Our students know that their homework does not affect their algebra grade, so they choose not to do it. The theory is that students will be able to self-regulate and only do the homework when they need the practice, but in reality, the majority of the students don't do any of the homework. It made the first few minutes awkward for me, as I don't want to waste time in class, but I wanted to give the few students who had done the homework a chance to review their answers. I was tempted to call on students, chosen randomly, to show their answers at the board, but I didn't want to spend a lot of time on the homework if students were going to flounder at the board.
Afterwards, my teacher and I discussed that middle-school students are not necessarily mature enough to do work that doesn't get checked. We may institute a homework check that we record with either a missing, incomplete, or complete. This method would also give parents visibility if students aren't completing their homework.
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