Missing Homework

I have already blogged about the attendance problems in the middle school, but another aspect dealing with attendance became apparent to me this week. Many of the students fail to turn in their homework as well. This week my supervising teacher and student teacher decided to take one day to give students the opportunity to catch up on missing work. I noticed that only two of the students were entirely caught up on their work. Some of the students were missing assignments because they had missed class. Others were missing assignments simply because they had failed to turn them in. My teacher does not have a penalty for late work and most of the students were able to get caught up on their work after one day. She shared her frustration of not being able to get students to turn in assignments. I think this is particularly hard in a math class. The one thing I did notice was that the students turned in their homework more often when they had ample time to work on it in class and ask questions. Students then appeared more comfortable with the material and willing to turn it in. My goal as a future teacher is to have students turn in all their work on time. I want to find ways and possibly incentives for more students to turn in homework.

One website I found to help improve the amount of homework turned in is http://www.ed.gov/PDFDocs/hyc.pdf. The website suggests ideas such as giving the assignment a purpose and creating assignments that are challenging for the student.

Having students complete their homework is essential. If it was important enough to assign then it should be important enough for the teacher to try to get the students to complete it.