Section 1: Academic Achievement - National Center for School ...

students. The children would fail to bring in homework or they brought in part of the work
and tried to turn it in incomplete. I became upset and a bit angry with the fact that the
behavior hadn’t changed even with parent involvement. Why didn’t the parents and students
see the value in completing homework? Did this correlate to a lack of responsibility? My
response was to then become challenged and invigorated as to how to assist these students
with completing their homework. I wanted to help this highly mobile group of students to
understand the importance of homework, the importance of completing quality work, and to
learn about the responsible nature of the task.
To begin, I first sent out a questionnaire about homework and its significance to children and
families. The survey was sent to all families in my room, including the highly mobile and low
income families. I also had the students in the classroom fill out their own version of the
survey about homework. The survey consisted of 7 questions about homework and its
importance. Some of the results are as follows:
• The students all seemed to understand that homework is given as a review of the day’s
lessons and as a way to practice what they had learned in class that day.
• Most kids had a place set aside at home to do their work such as, the kitchen table or their
bedroom. And most agreed that homework should take anywhere from 30 minutes to an
hour a night to complete.
• The kids noted they didn’t always have the materials needed to do their homework
properly.
• Most of the students said they went to their parents for help if they needed it on
homework. Even my highly mobile kids agreed with most of these statements.
When the parents results came in it was very interesting to see how closely they resembled
their children’s answers. Of the 23 surveys I sent out, I received 16 completed surveys. Out
of these 16 surveys, 5 were from my highly mobile parents. The parent survey showed:
• Almost every parent said that homework is to reinforce work done in the classroom and to
help practice the day’s lessons.
• They all seemed to agree that 30 – 60 minutes was a reasonable amount of time for
homework completion and that their child had a place to complete their homework
without distractions.
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