Homework with a Twist

There are many thoughts about the effectiveness of homework. Many say that it provides reinforcement of concepts taught during the day, others say that it teaches discipline and organizational skills. Still others say that it is a complete waste of time. I’m not sure where I fit in with these opinions, but it isn’t up to me anyway. Our school district has a homework policy that I must follow. For third grade there needs to be 30 minutes of homework, 4 nights a week.I ran across an interesting article from THE HOMEWORK MYTH (Da Capo Press, 2006) Copyright © 2006 by Alfie Kohn.  No definitive answer was found there either, so I decided to create some homework with a twist.  I developed an alternative assignment to my traditional homework using technology and our theme for the week; Penguins and the Antarctic.  My true motive for this homework assignment was to encourage increased use of all the online technology available to my class.  Students followed directions, did some research, and created a Glog project on our theme.  I will paste the homework assignment below.  One third of my class chose to do this homework in place of the more traditional paperwork.   I plan on creating a similar homework assignment for another theme coming up soon on human shelters and how they are adapted to the environment.

Here are some of the Glogs created by the third graders in my class.

http://s013.dthonus.edu.glogster.com/glog-7648/

http://s001.dthonus.edu.glogster.com/Penguins-are-cool/

http://s010.dthonus.edu.glogster.com/Taylors-Penguins/

http://s021.dthonus.edu.glogster.com/Penguins3/

http://s022.dthonus.edu.glogster.com/penguins/

Homework with a Twist: Link to homework document;

http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AeJ5Hqr5s0sBZGN3bjNnMzdfMTZjbXpodzJxZA&hl=en