Tag Archive | "homework"

Battling against homework


Last week, the Guardian published an article about a Canadian couple who launched and won a court case to exempt their children from completing homework ‘after successfully arguing there is no clear evidence it improves academic performance’.

The article explains thatĀ ”Sherri and Tom Milley, two lawyers from Calgary, Alberta, launched their highly unusual case after years of struggling to make their three reluctant children do school work out of the classroom.

After waging a long war with their eldest son, Jay, now 18, over his homework, they decided to do things differently with their youngest two, Spencer, 11, and Brittany, 10. And being lawyers, they decided to make it official.

It took two years to negotiate the Milleys’ Differentiated Homework Plan, which ensures their youngest two children will never have to do homework again at their current school. The two-page plan, signed by the children, parents and teachers, stipulates that “homework will not be used as a form of evaluation for the children”. In return, the pupils promise to get their work done in class, to come to school prepared, and to revise for tests. They must also read daily and practise their musical instruments at home.”

How do you feel about homework? Do all of your children complete it? What benefits does it have?

In my experience, lots of children return homework but there are always some who don’t return it and it takes lots of time to chase them up and then organise the next set of differentiated work to go home. I would love to hear your opinions in the comments below…

Image – introspection

Posted in 1. Education NewsComments (4)

Eduset – a classroom communication tool


Eduset provides an easy way for teachers to share assignments, news, files, and more with their classes, without requiring them to code their own class websites.

The site is free for teachers to use with a single class. If you wish to use it with all of your classes, there is a charge of $4.99 per month. If you are interested in finding out more, watch thisĀ video tour of Eduset.

I would be interested in hearing your experiences with the site… so feel free to post a comment if you try it out.

Posted in TechnologyComments (0)

One Million Giraffes


One Million Giraffes is an online project in which one person is hoping to collect 1 million giraffes by 2011. People are sending pictures of their giraffes (which can’t be created on a computer) and at the time of writing, the collection has reached over 250,000!

Could your class get involved?

  • Ask each child to draw one giraffe… or maybe more! This could be as part of an Art activity or set as homework.
  • Think of creative ways of making giraffes… they don’t have to be hand-drawn but they cannot be made using a computer.
  • Explore the giraffe images on the site… how were they made? Could your pupils create their own giraffes using similar techniques?

Get your pupils involved and have one of their giraffes as part of the million!

Posted in Art, Teaching IdeasComments (0)


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