MEI Elem Homework Group

First Step

Hello fellow homework deliberators, Just a thought I had after our last conversation about dreaded dioramas... I attended a workshop for gifted children at the ACSI conference and I went back to look over the information again after our meeting. The presenter had some great information! But the main two ideas that he addressed were these: 1. Most of the projects, activities, assignments and teaching in school is catered to students who are extremely left-brained; these types of people excel at languages, phonics, memorization, spelling, reading, writing, ideas and concepts. These kids learn by hearing and seeing. According to him, those who often struggle in school are children who are quite right-brained, and excel in the arts and sports. They learn by doing hands-on activities, they need to see pictures, and always prefer doing projects that require using their hands to written assignments. So, my first thought here is that dioramas might really benefit these kids as they will learn much more about a topic by constructing something. However, maybe having an option of a hands-on project and a written assignment is the key here.

2. The presenter also addressed Bloom's Taxonomy, and said that often school projects and assignments only target the first three areas in Bloom's Taxonomy: knowledge acquisition (e.g. map making and fill-in-the-blank worksheets), comprehension (e.g. compare/contrast and restating learning in one's own words), and application (creating graphs or otherwise using information and representing it visually). According to him, often times the more capable children in our classrooms will perform very poorly in these types of activities because they are bored and don't feel challenged in what is being asked of them. Their detail and neatness may also be quite poor. He said, it is crucial to also include questions and activities that target the last three areas in Bloom's Taxonomy as these are the areas in which gifted children will excel: analysis (the why's behind something; what might happen if...), synthesis (what would you do differently), and evaluation (what do you think should happen, what are the positives and negatives in a given situation). So again, in regards to dioramas, maybe it would be beneficial to consider giving students options to either do a project/assignment that is left-brained or right-brained that falls in the first three categories of Bloom's Taxonomy, as well as having a left-brained/right-brained project falling within the last three areas of Bloom's Taxonomy. According to the presenter, he said that children will always choose one of the projects that falls within their ability as well as their way of learning. This would be a little more work for the teacher, obviously, but it might eliminate some kids doing work that doesn't help them learn at all, but allowing those kids who need those types of projects to still have that opportunity available to them. This way, projects would still be furthering learning (learning outcomes) while being differentiated at the same time.

Again, just some thoughts from an expert who, I thought, had some very good ideas. I can bring the information on Wednesday if anyone is interested.

Need a system like this.

Need a form.

Aren't most of the items he lists here (spelling, math facts, vocab) merely teaching a child to memorize as opposed to retain learning? I wonder about those kids who understand the concepts, but have poor memorization skills, so even though they practice, they consistently score poorly when tested. On the flip side, often times those kids who are great at memorizing will need little practice and remember everything for the test, but then forget it all afterwards, as was the case with me. This author says that spelling, math facts, and vocab. are not fun assignments, but I would think one way to achieve retention, as opposed to mere memorization, would be to turn them into more fun and memorable assignments with which students will want to engage. All that being said, I think memorization does have its place, I just wonder if it's too greatly emphasized.

The point the author is making here is that students retain skills they are fluent in e.g., reading fluency, computation fluency, language fluency. And fluency = speed + accuracy. It's like when you ride a bike - at first it requires great concentration - but it slowly transfers to a different part of the brain as it becomes fluent. And the only way to become quick and accurate is through accurate rehearsal. This is not to say that learning concepts and ideas should not be active and fun - the moreso the better.

Yes, I read that differently, but that does make more sense... thanks for the clarification!

I quite like this approach, but it seems as though it would eat up a lot of time. Maybe I'm miscalculating, but in order to move through all three types of feedback after each assignment, wouldn't most of the math block be gone? My second question is what about those kids who have fully understood the concept and are ready to move on? Should they be used as "experts" to explain the concept to others? And at what point have enough kids mastered a concept that you move on to something else? In the area of math assessment, one thing I really liked about how my SA from last year assessed how well students mastered math concepts was by checking over the work together as a class, and depending on how many problems were assigned, telling them that if they got a certain number wrong, e.g. more than five division problems out of 25 problems total, they needed to see him. This allowed him to distinguish between careless mistakes and kids who really didn't understand the concept.

This article does a nice job of highlighting the competing positions. It does not present research. EJ

Here are the two main homework (hw) ideas - 1 - it aids learning (direct benefit) and 2 - improves study skills and attitudes (indirect)

This highlights the huge inconsistency created when formative assessment (homework) is treatedas summative assessment. This article is not so much about what constitutes good homework, but what is the point of it at all?

Nice summary