| Parent: | Are you finished with your homework? |
| Student: | I need your help on one last thing. For language arts, I have to interview you about what it was like when you were my age and then write a paragraph comparing your experiences with my experiences at this age. |
| 10 minutes later . . . | |
| Parent: | I enjoyed talking with you about what it was like when I was your age. |
| Student: | I never knew you liked to do some of the same things I like to do now. I’ll read you my paragraph after I finish writing it. |
Did this conversation take place on another planet? Could your students and their families enjoy working on homework together? The answer is “yes” if a few changes are made to standard homework assignments.
Educators often discuss the amount and not the quality of homework that teachers assign students. A report last fall from the Brookings Institution concluded that students in the U.S. are not overloaded with homework.1 Research studies show, too, that students who do their homework do better in school.
It is important to look beyond time on homework to more interesting questions about the purpose, design, content, and results of homework assignments. NNPS studies identified 10 purposes of homework: practice, preparation, participation, personal development, parent-child relations, parent-teacher communications, peer interactions, policy, and public relations. The 10th purpose, punishment, obviously, is not legitimate (Epstein, 2001).
NNPS researchers are developing and studying interactive homework for three of these purposes: increasing parent-child interactions and parent-teacher communications, while building students’ skills in math, science, and language arts. Teachers Involve Parents in Schoolwork (TIPS) interactive homework is an innovative approach to help students and their families discuss homework together.
The TIPS interactive homework process enables teachers to design homework assignments for students to share their work, conduct science experiments, gather reactions, discuss real-world applications of school skills, and celebrate successes with a family partner. TIPS assignments help parents understand what their children are learning in class; promote positive conversations about schoolwork at home; and improve students’ homework completion, subject-matter skills, and readiness for classwork (Van Voorhis, 2003). All of this, without asking parents to “teach” school subjects at home. Manuals for teachers (Epstein, Salinas, & Van Voorhis, 2001), and a CD with over 500 TIPS assignments in math, science, and language arts for the elementary and middle grades (Van Voorhis & Epstein, 2002), are available from NNPS to help teachers design engaging, curriculum-related homework activities for students and families to share.
It takes some planning to use TIPS activities in math, science, or language arts. Educators can take three important steps this spring and summer to prepare to use TIPS interactive homework next fall.
Once the assignments are ready, other actions will be needed to implement TIPS. Teachers need to orient students and families to the new homework process; assign TIPS on a regular schedule; introduce each assignment to students before they leave class; and conduct appropriate follow-up activities when the homework is due.
Many schools in NNPS use innovative practices to help parents monitor assignments, work with students on specific skills, and review homework policies and practices (Salinas & Jansorn, 2003). TIPS is one way to increase good communications between school and home and between parent and child on homework. It is possible to make curriculum-linked homework fun and beneficial for all.
1Lovelace, T. (2003). The 2003 Brown Center Annual Report on American Education. Part 2: Do Students Have Too Much Homework? Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution.