By Kathy Kennel & Kevin Peters
Homework gets a bad rap. Is it really as bad as its reputation with teachers and students might indicate?
Students complain that their teachers give too much homework. Teachers might check or grade it, but then it is often forgotten. It seems like the common experience of “homework” is completing a task just to get it done. This all might seem like a good argument to just forget about homework entirely. But we (Kathy & Kevin) think there is value in students doing and learning mathematics outside of class.
When we joined the Teacher Research Community last summer, we realized that if we wanted to research how to make homework more meaningful and useful for our students, we would have to rebuild what learning outside the classroom could look like from the ground up. Through our research, we proposed renaming homework as “out-of-class learning.” The out-of-class learning didn’t need to happen at home. While it may have involved work, its core purpose was learning. We hypothesized that if our students were able to take ownership of decisions that affect their learning, it could make the work that students do outside of class more meaningful and useful.
Changing the way students approach out-of-class learning
Two key implementations have made a considerable impact on how we and our students are reframing out-of-class learning. One is student choice, and the other is Problem Symposiums.
For Student Choice, we have created, with our students, a menu of choices for them to select from. These include a set of textbook questions where they can choose a set of 4 to complete, a topic deep dive, redoing classwork examples and taking notes, creating a study guide, and participating in a peer study group. This menu can be added to or changed as new ideas emerge. Giving students the chance to create ideas for the menu as well as to choose what best meets their needs helps students take ownership of their out-of-class learning. These choices can be directly referred to as we discuss their progress in the course. Using a survey and a reflection tool, students report direct connections to their personal success and confidence as they prepare for class and practice/study areas of needed growth.
To get a feel for the success of this implementation, here is some feedback from our students:
- “At first, I found after-class homework annoying, but later I realized the optional assignments helped me review and strengthen what I learned, making me more confident.”
- “I thought that homework wasn’t going to be important for me through this semester because they were worth almost no points and wouldn’t have done much to my grade. Now, I think it is important not just for my grade but for my own learning and math skills so I can do good on the big grades like the tests.”
- “Before I felt like outside of class work was just work I had to get done, but now I feel like it is studying for the test.”
- “I didn’t like the idea of just doing the problems on cpm because they kind of just felt like a thing to get done, not an actual learning process. Instead, I watched YouTube videos and made notes for myself. These things did work for me, but I think that to get them more down and confident in them, it’s important for me to start doing the problems as well. However, I think that I still put in a good amount of effort because I cared about learning the material and I still took time outside of school to explore more of it.”
The Problem Symposiums began with a desire to bring what students were doing outside of class into the classroom. In a Problem Symposium, a student chooses a topic or problem they would like to present or talk about. Multiple students present a problem to a small group of peers. Usually, three or four of these presentations are happening simultaneously in the classroom at separate whiteboards.
After a short presentation, students not presenting choose to learn about a different problem, and presenters have an opportunity to present their problem again. This creates a revision process with their presentations and leads to increasing students’ confidence in their ability to share their ideas effectively. We encourage students to select problems that are challenging, and that they know how to begin but not how to solve completely, or a problem that was a struggle for them and led them to an “aha” moment that they want to share with their peers. Through the symposium, students build confidence in presenting their work to their peers, and gain a deeper understanding of the mathematics in their own problem. Other students get to learn about a problem and/or concept through the eyes of their peers.
These presentations take about 10–20 minutes of class time, depending on the level of difficulty. We usually run one set each week. This does require the need to let go of other class activities on those days. We have found that the Symposiums are a good replacement for warm ups, Exit Passes, and review activities. The trade off has been worth it.
Helping students to leave their comfort zones
Problem symposiums have motivated students to try problems outside of class, and get help or guidance from their teacher. This has changed the way students approach out-of-class learning. Students are eager to present and learn from each other. They see problems and/or learn new topics and ask if they can use that problem for their symposiums. All our students are involved in this form of out-of-class learning, and through explaining to each other, they are clearly delving deeper into the mathematics of the problems.
Problem Symposiums have helped students leave their comfort zones and become more confident, and have provided students with the tools and structures to support each other.
To get a feel for the success of this implementation, here is some feedback from our students:
- “That was so fun. Can I do it again!”
- “He deserves a 10. He is a great teacher, we all understand now!”
- “I was struggling with this problem and then I had an ‘aha’ moment and I wanted my peers to have that same ‘aha’ moment.”
- “It can be helpful because I learn via teaching others and the repetition [of topics] is good.”
- “It helped me better understand problems I would have struggled to solve on my own.”
- “Having someone different teach with different ways to teach is helpful.”
- “When my peers present problems it is very helpful because it is a good review.”
By giving students choice and continuing to hold problem symposiums, we can reimagine what out-of-class learning can look like. Co-creating ideas with our students and being willing to think outside the box of what traditional homework has looked like make the learning that students do outside of class more meaningful and useful.
