Recently I had the opportunity to have a conversation with a first-year teacher. She didn’t like the way homework check was going in her classroom. She felt like the students were “getting away with not doing their work”. I’m not sure if she liked my response, but I told her, “They probably are”.
See, the homework check system I’m going to share with you today isn’t perfect. I know there are students who still find a way around giving their best effort. But it’s a homework check system that I have been able to tweak enough that it’s seamless for me, easy to keep up with, and catches most issues with inconsistency.
The first thing I will tell you is that my homework check system does allow for students to check one another’s work. I have done this both ways in the past — check your own or check someone else’s. I like students checking their peers for a few specific reasons:
- It’s an extra layer of accountability — students tend to work harder if they know their classmates will see it. Again, not 100% success here, but I have found it works better than the alternative of knowing only they will see their work.
- It follows the “INSPECT WHAT YOU EXPECT” philosophy — they know eyes are going to be on this work. It’s important.
- Positive peer pressure — seeing the work of another student helps others to see my expectations in action. Maybe that student who is not being neat and showing their work will see it real-time on another student’s paper.
Before we break this down, I should mention that this post does not delve into my grading routine. If you want to read that detailed information, read this previous post.
BEFORE CLASS BEGINS
The first homework procedure I teach my students is that homework is to be turned in prior to the bell ringing. I like there to be a mindset shift when the bell rings. Talking stops, work begins. If students are still scrambling to find their homework, how do you decide when to cut that off? The easy solution is to let the bell cut that off.
If it’s not turned in by the bell, they lose a point for being late.
As soon as the bell rings, my students begin working on their daily warm-up. dI then collect the homework from the turn-in tray and begin a quick spot check. I’m looking for the following:
- Missing Work — students who don’t have their homework receive a lunch detention per my school’s policy. They also lose their points for the day.
- Completion — a quick glance at the assignment will tell me roughly how much work there should be for the particular assignment. If a student’s work only took 2 lines of the page, I’m skeptical. At this point, I would put a question mark on top of that paper. Nothing more.
- Neatness — does it look presentable? Are the answers circled? This is just a quick spot check; not a detailed check for correct answers.
If someone needs to have points deducted at this stage, I will go ahead and do that using my homework tracking page. Again, if you’re interested, you can download my spreadsheet here for free. It’s nothing special, but it will save you time.
CLASS OFFICIALLY BEGINS
To begin class, we will usually go over the answers for the warm-up problems the students have been working on as I quickly checked over homework and gathered attendance.
After warm-up, we move to homework check. My curriculum suggests that this process take 5 minutes. Honestly, it usually takes me longer than that, but I can see where it could be done in that timeframe.
When I pass out the homework papers, I stand at the front and begin passing the papers back the rows. Students simply take a paper of another student, never their own. They use red pen and simply mark answers wrong. They do not write in the correct answer.
The first thing I do is send any students to the board who are going to put up visual work for certain problems. Usually, I strategically choose these students based on what I have noticed during homework check. Maybe it’s a student who needs a confidence boost, and I saw that they have the correct answer. Maybe it’s a student who didn’t complete their work or show it completely, and I would like them to correct that. It just depends on the problem and how much time we actually have.
Take out your red pens, let’s begin homework check
Next, we check the actual answers. This gets done multiple ways. First, sometimes I will simply call out the correct answers. I usually do this on days we are shorter on time. Most often, I go around the room and have the students read me the answers from the paper they are checking.
As we are checking, the students are looking for multiple things:
- Did the student show their work?
- Is the work complete?
- Did they miss more than half of the answers?
If any of those 3 things do not meet standard, the student checking the paper puts a question mark at the top of the page. This alerts me to go back later and see what happened.
When we finish checking, the papers are passed up, and I put them on my desk. As soon as independent work time begins, I go through the papers again and look for those with question marks to see if they need additional attention.
So… how do I know who needs additional help after homework check?
The controversy of having students check the homework of other students is often centered around if it’s beneficial for the student who did the work.
To combat this issue, I train my students that, as they are working on their homework, to circle any problems they need to ask me about in their book. When we check homework, we open our books, and they see their check marks.
We end homework check time by me asking if there were any questions about the problems from the previous night. The students know to have those questions ready.
Another important step! As I check back over the papers, I look to see if there are any problems missed by majority of the class. If this is the case, that problem or problems become our warm-up work for the next day.
If majority of the class missed a problem, we need to reteach. This is the entire purpose of homework — to practice the material.
I hope something here has helped you or sparked an idea. Let me know what you do in your classroom.
Talk to you soon!
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