HOMEWORK

3/27/2010

Connection with Marzano

I believe homework is very important component of language learning as Marzano says it is an instructional technique. If you do not use Spanish every day, you will lost it. More exposure to Spanish is better. That was my belief, which during this student teaching, it started to make me rethink about it.

There are a lot of intertwined considerations I have to take into account, than simply said "more exposure is better."

The amount of HW is very difficult to decide. To the motivated students, the amount I have been giving might not be enough while to non-motivated students it was absolutely too much.

To those who want to do more, upon returning I wrote the comment of "if you want to expand your SPanish more, write a diary or 3 sentences a day about anything you did, you want to do etc, and turn it in for my correction. Two students actually did this activity weekly and have been turning in to me.

On the other hand, some did not even complete or turned in. The small amount of HW was too much because they do not want to do at all. Even for those who think it is OK if managable amount, too much HW could shut them down. creating not wanting to do at all.

Then I read on Marzano's book, "the purpose of HW should be identified and articulated. Yes, this is it! I should tell them why this HW is important, and after this HW, what they are able to do. I thought this could motivate them to do and turn it in.

Wrong.

My students are tougher than I expected. Some of them are absolutely non-motivated to begin with. They are in this class because they need to be in order to graduate, (not with their own will). I asked Ms. Ross how she is handling. It was very simple. Her HW is usually project based which requires more thoughts putting into it or online research, and my type of activities from Workbook and textbook are done during the class time period and turned in at the end. (thus most of students turn in.)

I started to do the same which improve the turn-in rate. But where is the 50 minutes instruction? Because they are allowed to help each other (cooperative learning), some students are just copying the answers from the able student. I don't think they are learning in this way.

Back to the my way of HW assignment. I give instruction and practice during the class, and they do HW activity (very small amount) outside of the class.

Of course, in the HW return, I write many feedbacks related to the learning progress and correction, as well as classroom participation level, the room for improvement, personal comment, encouragement etc. Amazingly I started to receive more participation from the students who used do other class's assignments during my Spanish class (because that has been OK to do so.)

It might be a little late, but I established my way of HW expectation. To those who missed the class, check Ed-line. (My weekly lesson plans as well as HW is listed on there.). Each HW is due next day and has 10 points to turn-in plus 0-100 points depending upon the correct answer rate. I not only gave them this rule in writing, but have them read aloud in class.

Sure they hate the authority, and I think I lost some students' interest and cooperation due to this policy, but in the end I needed to do what I needed to do. (I cannot save all???)

My last assignment was given this past Friday which they moaned when they received.

As a last stage of my student teaching in Unit 3, the HW was given as follows.

Instead of another written test, we will have an oral performance sessions on next Wed (3/31) and Thu (4/1). You and your partner will create a dialogue in Spanish using the vocabulary and grammar from Lesson 3A and 3B. In this dialogue, it should be a format of A-B-A-B-A-B so that each presenter has at least 3 lines to talk. The grading criteria (100) is:

1. inclusion of the content of Lesson 3A and 3 B (30)

2. Spanish pronunciation and understandability (20)

3. Without paper (you both need to memorize the dialogue) (25)

4. Before you present to the class, you and your partner need to turn in the written form of your dialogue to me. (25)

HW is to start making the dialogue with the partner. Decide the part, and memorize the dialogue. Some students even asked me if I would give them a time to work on it during the class period. I usually would not like it, but I said I would because this project needs cooperation from the partner which can be difficult to do for some students during the outside of the class period.

Another reason for agreeing to provide the time during the class is if this is solely the work at home, I would not know how they memorize the dialogue with correct pronunciation. I would rather them memorize it correctly, than doing at home.

Thus, lesson for me is that I really have to put the thoughts into HW. I think I need the entire summer to look into the textbook and develop UbD/DI including HW as an instructional (effective) tool.