Monthly Archives: August 2020

Is homework beneficial?

The debate about whether or not homework is beneficial keeps heightening, with experts giving varied views for or against the practice. The debate focus has mostly been on the amount to tasks assigned students. Those against home tasks at night emphasize that too much of it is counterproductive and overburdens students. California had to ban it in entirety in the 1990s due to concerns by theorists that it affects the mental and physical states of children.

Nonetheless, proponents of the act think otherwise. To them, homework improves students’ skills, creativity, and independent learning. Also, parents can monitor the progress in their children’s education.

So we ask, in your view, is homework beneficial? Before you decide on your answer, let us take you through some pros and cons of school assignments. With this, you can make an informed decision about the practice.

Pros and cons of homework

Pros

  • Research has proven that homework enhances the education of students and achievement. Through this, they can strive for more with improved grades and entering college. Also, it makes them critical thinkers, ensures discipline, self-reliance, and improves time management.
  • Homework helps students to continue the learning process and develops study habit while at home. There is no doubt that practice makes perfect, and it is easy to remember things done repeatedly. Most students are slow learners and unable to retain things learned in the classroom. Through homework, they can relearn and have a grasp on the subject matter.
  • The home tasks provide the opportunity for parents to access the performance of their children and contribute to it. They can know the strength and weaknesses of the kids and find ways to help them. Also, parents get to know what kids are taught in school and see where they fall short.

Cons 

  • Counter research also shows that too much homework is counterproductive and affects the health of children. Some students suffer sleep deprivation, high-stress level, weight loss, and exhaustion, among others. They later end up using drugs and other stimulants to help them contain the adverse effects on their life.
  • Some homework demands extra equipment, research, and other resources, and this becomes a problem for students from low-income families. In the US, about 41% of kids fall in the above category making it difficult to do their home tasks. Secondly, some of these children help their parents at work or take care of younger siblings after school. As a result, they become exhausted, and having to do about two hours of homework can be challenging.
  • Homework has been touted to be very beneficial to students. However, there is no evidence that it helps in the development of kids. According to experts opposed to home tasks, the practice is detrimental to kids’ development. According to Temple University professor Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek, Ph.D., homework is not an effective way of having kids to learn and apply new things.

Conclusion

Having gone through the above discussions, what is your decision now? Do you think homework is beneficial? Are you for or against homework? Weighing the pros and cons, should take-home assignments should be scrapped, reduced, or maintained as it is now?

Is Homework Effective

Homework has been a part of us for years. Every evening after school, night after the next, year after year. We have homework from teachers and parents who hope that the homework will make us better academically. But what is the work of homework? What purpose does it serve?

Any student will say that homework doesn’t help. To them, homework is just stressful, and it makes them tired. Homework makes many students hate school in books like The homework myth, the end of homework, and the case against homework. They try and come up with a case against homework. The fact that homework gives student unnecessary pressure and make the children not spend time with family at home, homework becomes not effective. Students will not be good learners and thinkers.

What relationship is there between academic excellence and homework?

The research is done on hundreds of studies on homework by researchers. It has shown that conclusions remain a matter of debate.

When is it too much?

Children do not complain about anything. The rise of homework is evident. Over the years, the amount of homework that children get given has doubled. Due to the pressure that administrators of the schools have to ensure better performances from the students on tests. Some students have homework that takes hours to complete. How can you establish if the amount of homework your child is doing is the right amount? There is a norm that’s accepted, the 10 minutes per each grade rule.

The rule applies that as the grade advances, they add 10 minutes more on the homework. If the second graders are doing 20 minutes of homework, the third graders will be doing 30 minutes.

But this projection of the time sometimes doesn’t work. You find instead of the child spending thirty minutes doing their homework, and they spend hours. It is probably because they have other distractions.

Less can be more.

If your child’s dedicated to doing their homework and sometimes spends a lot of time on it, it is good to intervene to ensure that she is getting enough rest apart from homework. Studies show that better body and brain development is linked with enough rest or sleep.

For very young children, elementary age, homework doesn’t have any advantages. But as they grow, there is a relationship between their achievements and homework in middle school if their assignments are one to two hours every night. If they work for more than two hours, nothing improves. The optimal time for high schoolers is two hours. If you have given them more, you won’t get any achievements.

Not all homework is the same

As we have seen for middle school and high school, homework impacts the child’s grades. Studies show that they have much to gain in their academics for high school and middle schoolers when they do their homework. Students who do their homework outperformed nearly 70% of the classes that do not have homework. However, the effectiveness of this was half when it came to middle school. At the same time, there was no evidence of any relationship between achievement and homework for elementary school.

Conclusion

Homework, despite all studies, remains a history. Until there is a conclusive study on how homework affects children’s productivity at different stages of their development, the parents will have to rely on their best judgment on homework.

Need the Motivation To Do Your Homework?

Whether you are tackling a task meant for school or work, you will need some to tap into a great source of motivation to complete it successfully. We understand the hassle you might be going through just to find the right motivation to help you accomplish your homework goals. In this article, we have discussed some of the psychologically proven motivation methods that you can use right away.

The thought of failure – call it reverse psychology but by thinking that you will fail a particular class or have lower grades at the end of the term/semester, you will be stimulating yourself to work extra harder to prevent it from happening.

Look for inspiration from previously done works – we know how hard it can be to balance a complex chemistry equation while your interests are in linguistics. To help you manage without any stress, search, and go through previously done examples online as a source of inspiration.

Read quotes by famous people – by regularly reading quotes made by other famous individuals, you get to stimulate and motivate your mind with positive vibes and prepare it to finish the assignments.

Look at homework differently – try to change the way that you look at homework assignments and start seeing them as an opportunity to develop critical life skills that would be very vital for your future career.

Make a productive plan – to increase productivity, you will need to create and follow an effective routine or schedule. This helps you focus on certain tasks at different times and allows you to take a breather wherever needed.

Employ the Pomodoro method – subdivide your homework into 20-30 minute bits that you can easily manage and give yourself up to 10-minute breaks between homework sessions.

Recite encouraging mantras – positive mantras are known to create positive vibes through and through. Note down and recite your version of positive homework mantras to help keep you motivated and psyched up.

Explore different learning styles – different students learn differently. Figure out some of your best learning styles and start using a combination of learning methods to stay motivated while doing your homework.

Reward yourself for every accomplishment – apparently patting yourself on the back seems to be one of the main reasons some people get encouraged to work even harder than before. Studies show that by rewarding yourself for every task that you finish, you get to enhance your accomplishment rate as well as motivation levels.

Always be responsible for your failures and successes – many students often blame other people for their shortcomings. This is wrong and doesn’t inspire you to take appropriate actions. By becoming self-responsible for your overall achievement, you will be able to open up your eyes and learn from your mistakes.

While doing homework mail lack a physical incentive to keep you motivated, you should use any of the above tips and make your homework journey an exciting and fulfilling one. For more customized help, feel free to contact any of our available homework experts.