• The Homework Debate
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• Education.com
• By Johanna Sorrentino
  Updated on Jul 29, 2013
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• http://www.education.com/pdf/The_Homework_Debate/
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• The key points of this article are focused around whether or not students should receive home work to complete at home, and how much should be given.
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• In this day and age of digital "everything", how important is it for a child to be given loads of homework on a daily basis. Does the completion of rote homework act as a reinforcer for school? Does homework go against what we are trying to teach our students about the actuality of understanding?
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Portland Elementary School Bans Homework

• Portland Elementary School Bans Homework
• By Betsy Hammond, The Oregonian/OregonLive, September 9, 2016
• Website Link Here

Homework vs. No Homework Is the Wrong Question

Homework vs. No Homework Is the Wrong Question
Found on Edutopia.org, here:
http://www.edutopia.org/blog/homework-vs-no-homework-wrong-question-maurice-elias

Published March 19th, 2015
Written by Maurice Elias

This blog post tackles the long debated question, "should students be given homework?" Directly from the article: "The real question we should be asking is, 'What do we believe should happen after the end of the school day to help ensure that students retain what they have learned and are primed to learn more?'"

The approach is not to attempt to answer this question but instead reiterate the purpose that homework shouldn't imply "work" and that students should be encouraged to be learners, even outside of the classroom. Elias describes how home activities like reading should be encouraged and that students should be learning at home to "better understand the world around them in terms of civics, science, and the arts." This kind of learning can be enhanced with the encouragement and stance being taken from the school to support good parenting models in the home. The goal of this article is to show how homework doesn't necessarily need to be just that "home-work" but can be an extension of the learning process that takes place outside of school.

The audience targeted in this blog post is parents and educators as means to achieve a sense of cooperation between the two to enhance student learning.

The Trouble With Homework

By ANNIE MURPHY PAUL
NYTimes
September 10, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/11/opinion/sunday/quality-homework-a-smart-idea.html?pagewanted=1

Quality Homework: A Smart Idea

This is an interesting article that provides some good strategies for giving HMK that are reminiscent of things we cover in Educational Psychology..

Spaced Repetition - instead of concentrating study of information in single blocks, have students work with the same material in briefer sessions [even along with other information] spread over a longer period of time.

Retrieval Practice - using tests to reinforce vs. assess what students know.

Making students work a little harder to understand information [so they recall it better] through:

Cognitive Disfluency - e.g., leaving blanks or missing letters; or

Interleaving - mixing things up vs. grouping similar things by type.