Homework: Beneficial for All?

An everlasting debate between educators is about the effectiveness of homework. Research has shown mixed effects of homework, but one idea that research has shown is that when homework is a practice (not a new concept), students have a greater benefit from it (Hill, 2013, p.118). In my own experience in a primary grade, my homework policy was mainly an issue of teaching students responsibility--can they take an assignment home, spend time on it at home, and then return it the following day.  I had mixed outcomes each year overall and I can say that generally students who did the homework (math practice from the day and choice reading 20 minutes per night) showed more academic success and greater involvement from parents from those who did not complete homework. From reading this ARTICLE I can see a benefit for ELLs who receive culturally responsive and language scaffolding homework. To constitute meaningful homework, I think homework must be accessible by families, limited , and tiered. In order to be accessible by families, we don't have to necessarily translate everything (think if you were working with multiple languages in your classroom). Homework can include a lot of picture cues. Also, it may be appropriate for you to send a link (or whichever way to communicate with families you prefer---class website, facebook, twitter, etc.) which has a recording of the sight words you are practicing that evening or the vocabulary words in the assignment. I also think homework should have a time limit. One of my biggest complaints through the years was that their children could not sit and do homework for a very long time (or the families were not home to help them for very long). In order to help (from which I received good feedback and a great homework completion rate) I told parents that homework should take no more than 40 minutes total--20 minutes math practice and 20 minutes reading. However, I used a monthly reading log with a goal... so if some nights they only had time for 10 minutes of reading that was OK if they read more another day. Students who met the goal or went above had a monthly readers lunch with me and the others who met the goal. Students who read every day on the reading log received recess time with me and readers lunch(yes, they loved it...I don't know why they would want to miss recess to help me in my room, but they were young so helping the teacher was still an honor). For the math practice (usually the only other content I sent home besides the reading log), I only gave students 20 minutes worth of homework. I explained to the parents at Back to School Night and also in my class brochure that if a students spends 20 minutes working on homework and does NOT finish, parents can sign their initials where they left off. Homework for me was not intended to be the parent's homework, as I found out that when homework is too hard for students their parents---and students!---end up getting frustrated. If a student only got to problem 3 of 10 equations but spent a good effort, that was enough for me. But remember, homework for my class was more about responsibility an structuring home time. 

Hill (2013) describes a homework structure which can benefit ELLs in particularly, as many times I have hesitated to give certain homework activities due to the fact that their parents did not speak English. When content area homework is tiered for students using the Thinking Language Matrix (Hill, 2013, p.123). I think this is a way to help me personally create homework in which I was hesitant to send home in the past. If we are able to send home a recording (through the above mentioned ways) of the reading students will have quick access to ways to practice their language through oral language homework. Requiring students to complete homework from that reading can be beneficial to them when giving them appropriate tasks according to their level:

Preproduction: nonverbal response

Early production: one word response

Speech emergence: short phrases/sentences

Intermediate fluency: longer and more complex sentences

Advanced fluency: near native 

Using the language matrix and technology tools can help us who are afraid to send home language based homework start giving meaningful home practice. 

Reference

Hill, J. D. (2013). Classroom Instruction That Works with English Language Learners, 2nd Edition, 2nd Edition. [BryteWave]. Retrieved from https://shelf.brytewave.com/#/books/114004E4/