reasons we should have summer homework

Should kids get summer homework?

by: Leslie Crawford | Updated: June 12, 2023

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Jill Notte’s daughter Sara is a straight-A student, and she’s taking five advanced-placement courses this fall. It’ll be her senior year.

This ambitious undertaking may prove Sara’s undoing — at least if the 17 year old wants to enjoy her summer vacation. Somewhere in between spending a week at a Girls State program, a month at the New Jersey Governor’s School of Engineering and Technology at Rutger’s University, and visiting a few potential colleges, Sara must complete the following workload before school starts:

• Read five novels for AP English • Read one book for AP History • Complete a packet of assignments and problems for AP Calculus • Complete a packet of assignments and problems for AP Chemistry • Write several summaries of scientific principles for Honors Physics

Oh, and her English teacher recommends that she attend Shakespeare performances at the local college to supplement the many plays she’s required to read as part of AP English. “I try to put a positive spin on it,” says Sara’s mother, Jill. “I told her, ‘Summertime’s a great time to read Shakespeare!'” But, admits Jill, it’s not so easy to put the same kind of “fun” spin on the stack of mind-numbing calculus and chemistry books hefty enough to take down a Yellowstone grizzly.

Forget languidly balmy weeks unwinding from the stress of an intensive school year. Goodbye, as well, to working her usual summer job as a lifeguard, which Sara unhappily has to forgo — along with the money she hoped to save for college. As her mother puts it, “Summer homework is a full-time job.”

A working vacation

Sara’s not alone. The oxymoronically named “vacation work” is on the rise. Sara’s older sister had only a few books to read over the summer when she was in high school — and that was just eight years ago. Jill, who like her daughters was a high achiever in the top five percent of her class, remembers completely homework-free summers.

Many parents remember their own childhood summers as true respites from school, devoid the rigor and rigidity of academic life. Summer was a sprawling mass of unstructured time that ranged from idyllic laziness to stupefying boredom to invigorating camps and family vacations, not scores of math worksheets, science packets, and lists of “good-for-you” classics that hardly qualify as light beach reads.

Harris Cooper, chairman of the department of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University and America’s leading homework scholar who co-authored the landmark meta-study on homework , says that while there exists no formal studies on the rise in summertime homework, he’s witnessed a particularly sharp increase over the past two years — probably a response “to high-stakes testing and accountability issues for schools.”

Just say no?

Some parents argue summer homework is nothing more than bland busywork that saps the joy and spontaneity from summer. So says Sara Bennett, founder of StopHomework.com . “Even if there is a summer slide, I don’t think homework is the solution,” Bennett says. “Kids don’t have enough downtime during the school year. I think they need that freshness during summer.”

Here’s a revolutionary approach for vacation purists who say kids deserve a good, old-fashioned summer free from intense brain-strain: Just say no. That’s what Bennett suggests a parent do in the fall if a child is averse to doing the packet. “I’d send it back and say, ‘I’m sorry, my child didn’t have a chance to do it.’ ” (A parental dispensation only possible for kids who haven’t entered the high-school pressure cooker where — as with Sara Notte — summer homework is graded and can directly affect a student’s chances to enter a top-tier university.)

Protecting young minds from melting

On the other side of the summer homework debate are the moms and dads who, when the school doors slam shut, ramp up the supplemental brain work, even if the teachers didn’t provide it themselves. Most parents, though, fall somewhere in the for-better-or-worse-summer-homework-is-here-to-stay camp.

So if the kids have to do it, can we at least be reassured that it’s a magic bullet to protect young minds from melting? “We can’t say that with any objective data,” Cooper says. “But we would make the assumption if students are continuing to flex their mental muscles over the summer, this would have a positive effect on how much material they retain when they return.”

No buy-in from the kids

“There definitely is a lag — I’m not denying that,” says Denise Pope, senior lecturer at the Stanford University School of Education and co-founder of Challenge Success , a research and student-intervention project. “I absolutely agree that three months is a long time to not do anything. That said, I’m not sure this idea of giving workbooks and pages and pages of handouts works.”

The reason it doesn’t work? “There’s not a buy-in from the [kids],” Pope argues. “In order for any learning to be retained, there has to be engagement on the part of the students.” Pope explains that students need the “ABCs of engagement,” which means they’re engaged affectively, behaviorally, and cognitively. “If they’re intrinsically motivated, then they’ll want to do it.”

“I know kids who get these huge 40-page math packets,” Pope says. “It’s because [teachers] want [kids], over time, to have systematic practice. The problem is that this requires an adult to monitor this kind of disciplined work. It’s not like a kid can do that on his own. So it puts a burden more on the parents.”

Year-round homework blues

So, alas, those nightly angst-ridden homework dramas that run from September through June now get year-round billing. The other problem, Pope says, is that summer homework packets (frequently put off until the last unhappy week before school begins), often seem to fall into an academic black hole once they’re turned in — with no feedback from teachers and no effect on kids’ grades.

As for the work that Pope’s three kids — ages 10, 12, and 15 — get handed at school’s end, she tells them, “‘I won’t bug you about this at all. I won’t be the police.’ We look at the assignments they get for the summer and I say, ‘How long do you think this will take? Do you want me to remind you to do it?’ ” But if they leave it until the tail end of the summer, Pope says, well, that’s their choice. It’s their vacation, after all.

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The New York Times

Room for debate | the crush of summer homework.

The Crush of Summer Homework

Updated, Aug. 31, 11:45 a.m. | Harris Cooper offers more details about research on the link between homework and student achievement. Scroll down to read his added explanation .

For many young Americans, going back to school might seem like rest and relaxation. In the last week before Labor Day, how many students across the country were racing to finish their summer homework, from “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” to math refresher exercises?

The pile of books and other vacation assignments appears to grow every year. Is all this homework beneficial or should children be given a break? An article in The Times on Sunday described a debate over assigned reading throughout the year. Some educators argue that students should be given wide latitude in deciding what they want to read, while others defended the “Moby-Dick” model. How should this issue be treated in summer, when some schools insist that everyone finish “The Old Man and the Sea,” while other schools say that “Gossip Girl” helps satisfy the requirement?

We asked some experts for their perspective, now that the summer homework is due.

Harris Cooper, psychologist, Duke University
Nancy Kalish, co-author, “The Case Against Homework”
Mark Bauerlein, author, “The Dumbest Generation”
Denise Pope, Stanford University School of Education
Richard Allington, education professor, University of Tennessee
Elizabeth Birr Moje, education professor, University of Michigan
Tyrone Howard, education professor, U.C.L.A.

Forgotten on Vacation

Harris Cooper is chairman of the department of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University. There is growing concern about the summer vacation’s possible negative impact on learning. Many educators argue that children learn best when instruction is continuous. The long summer vacation disrupts the rhythm of instruction, leads to forgetting, and requires time be spent reviewing old material when students return to school in fall.

Research evidence bears out these concerns. A group of colleagues and I conducted a review of 39 studies, and it confirmed that, on average, achievement test scores declined between spring and fall, and the loss was more pronounced for math than reading. The reason for this subject matter difference is simple: kid’s out-of-school environments provide more opportunities to practice reading skills than math.

Students, regardless of economic status, lost roughly equal amounts of math skills over summer.

Also, the research indicated that the impact can differ based on a child’s economic background. All students, regardless of economic status, lost roughly equal amounts of math skills over summer. However, substantial differences were found for reading. On some measures, middle-class children showed gains in reading achievement, particular word recognition scores, over summer. Low-wealth children showed losses.

In addition, while research evidence is scarce, educators argue that the long summer break can have a greater negative effect on the learning of children with special educational needs. The long break also can add an extra burden for children who do not speak English at home. Not only might they have to relearn academic material, they also must reacquaint themselves with the language of instruction.

What Homework Can’t Do

Nancy Kalish is the co-author of “The Case Against Homework: How Homework Is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do About It.”

Summer homework sounds like a good idea…until you see how miserable a child looks as he slogs through that pile of book reports, math packets, journal entries, and other typical assignments. The summer load has grown significantly since we were kids. But a little hard work never hurt anyone, right?

Well in this case, it might. Schools should rethink summer homework, and not just because it stresses out kids (and parents). The truth is, homework doesn’t accomplish what we assume it does. According to a Duke University review of more than 175 studies , there is little or no correlation between homework and standardized test scores or long-term achievement in elementary school, and only a moderate correlation in middle school.

Do we want our children to start the year refreshed and ready to learn? Or burned out and resentful?

Some studies claim that students lose skills they don’t practice over the summer. However, if a child can’t regain his grasp of fractions with a brief review, maybe those skills weren’t taught well enough in the first place. Doing a mountain of math sheets without a teacher’s help — and perhaps incorrectly — is not the answer.

But there are a few things summer homework does accomplish effectively: It steals time away from other important aspects of learning such as play, which helps kids master social skills and teamwork. In addition, writing book reports means kids spend fewer hours being physically active, which is essential for good health and weight control, not to mention proper brain development.

Perhaps worst of all, summer homework affects how kids feel about learning and school. Do we want our children to start the year refreshed and ready to learn? Or burned out and resentful? It’s something every teacher should carefully consider.

Reversing the Summer Brain Drain

Mark Bauerlein is a professor of English at Emory University and the author of “The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future.”

To the general question of whether or not schools should assign summer homework, the answer is, “Yes, most assuredly.” What the assignment consists of will vary with the student population, but some extension of learning into vacation time is sorely needed.

The reason stems not only from the brain drain of summer and the fog of texting that enwraps youths during leisure hours. It relates also to an attitude young people take toward education. In a word, they regard learning as a classroom thing, that’s all. They tie knowledge to the syllabus, not to themselves. They read and study to write the paper and ace the test, not to furnish their minds. Learning is to earn a high score and good grade, not to form responsible citizens and discerning consumers.

Students regard learning as a classroom thing, and spend their leisure hours text-messaging. Here’s how we can deal with that.

A good measure of the attitude is how often they talk to teachers outside of class. According to the 2008 National Survey of Student Engagement, the rate of college seniors who “Never” or “Sometimes” (two or three times a semester?) discuss readings and ideas with teachers reaches 72 percent.

At the secondary level, according to the 2007 American Freshman Survey, the rate of high school seniors who went on to college (the high performers) who talked to teachers less than one hour per week came in at 53.4 percent. That’s a 10 point rise over 1987’s tally.

The free-ranging, back-and-forth conversation with teachers that signifies a student’s interest in the subject didn’t strike the majority as important. And why should it, when the system encourages them to respect only how learning shows up on a transcript or a test result?

The outcome is unsurprising. Once the assignment is finished and class ends — poof! The knowledge goes away. It’s done its work. Why retain it? This explains why on assessments of general knowledge learned in high school, college freshman often score higher than seniors. Time hasn’t yet taken so high a toll on their learning.

To halt the decay, teachers need to change the attitude. This means inserting more out-of-class engagement with teachers and materials, including summer homework, but not linking them so closely to a grade. The goal is not to pile on more tasks and instill more “achievement-thinking.” It is, instead, to make knowledge firmer, and to attach a message which says:

“Life is short, and the years of school pass in a rush. This is your only chance to encounter deep ideas and complex histories with a mentor to help you through. The works of beauty and truth are not chores to slog through. They are the raw materials of mind and character, and they should shape not only your resume, but you, too.”

Procrastination and Busywork

Denise Pope is senior lecturer at the Stanford University School of Education and co-founder of Challenge Success , a research and student intervention project.

The problem with summer homework is a lack of buy-in from one of the main constituencies: the students. During the school year, the students don’t necessarily enjoy doing homework, but they understand it is part of their daily routine. In the summer, students expect, and often need, a break from this routine and the daily pressures that usually accompany it.

Why should we care if the students are bought in? We know from research that motivation plays a central role in engagement with learning and, subsequently, student achievement. If students are given choice and voice in the learning process, for example, they are more likely to want to learn the material and more likely to retain it.

Summer should be seen as a gift, an important time to explore new hobbies, work a summer job, gain independence.

When students are not motivated, the teacher –- or in the case of summer, the parent — often needs to become part of the homework equation, monitoring, reminding, cajoling to make sure the work gets done. In my community, many parents complain that they don’t want to serve as “homework police” in the summer, and many admit that they are as frustrated as their kids when it comes to summer assignments.

One parent complained that her third grade son had to read five books and write five book reports over the summer. The problem was that he hated the books and kept procrastinating, and the stress on the child and on the entire family over the nine weeks became “unbearable.” Other parents admit that their kids wait until the very last minute to sit down and do the work, usually a day or two before school starts up again, and then they are cramming to get it all done.

I have seen the research that shows that students lose valuable skills when they are not in school during the summer months. And I worry especially about the kids who will spend most of the summer inside, in front of TVs or video games, and will be wasting the value of this free time. However, summer homework fails to serve its purpose if it causes undue stress on kids and families, if it is done all at once in a last minute rush, or if it is viewed as meaningless busywork.

Summer rest and exploration is especially important these days, given the increased pressure on students from high-stakes testing, the increase in homework during the school year, and the busy-ness of the extracurricular lives of many of our kids. Ideally, summer should be seen as a gift, an important time to explore new hobbies, enjoy the outdoors, read for fun, work a summer job, take on an exciting challenge, gain independence, and foster deeper connections with family and friends. The learning that happens during these experiences is as important as the skills and content learned during the school year.

If we want students to use this time wisely and appropriately, we ought to educate them about the benefits of summer time and encourage them — perhaps even give an “assignment” — to use the break to pursue interests of their choosing. Then, when they get back to school in September, they can write about, discuss, or present their “summer learning” in a way that is meaningful to them.

The Risk of Falling Behind

Richard Allington is a professor of reading education at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

In some schools, it is common for students to be assigned teacher-selected books for the summer vacation months. I know of not a single study supporting this practice, but I do know of studies showing the various methods students use to convince teachers they did the reading even though they didn’t.

A basic problem with this old, and desperate, model of summer reading assignments is that only rarely do teachers (or schools) assign books that a typical kid would ever want to read.

Low-income kids lose about three months in reading proficiency every summer.

At the same time, research has also demonstrated, including with New York City school students, that students from low-income families rarely read during the summer while middle-class kids typically do. This difference accounts for roughly 80 percent of the gap in reading achievement that exists between rich and poor kids. By grade 9 that reading achievement gap is three to four years wide.

Middle-class ninth graders, on average, read at the ninth-grade level. Low-income ninth graders, regardless of ethnicity, read at the fifth- or sixth-grade level. On average, students from low-income families learn as much during the school year as kids from wealthier families — even in New York City. But every summer the lack of reading practice produces losses in reading proficiency, while doing some reading during the summer produces small gains.

The evidence is clear that how kids spend their matters. Low-income kids lose about three months in reading proficiency every summer. That means every three years they fall a year behind middle-class kids, even when their teachers are just as effective as the teachers middle-class kids have.

Several research studies have shown that simply giving low-income children books on the final day of school can stem summer reading loss. But these books must be books they can and want to read. Our studies allowed students to select the books from 500 or so titles we had picked to match student reading levels and interests. We spent about $40 per child per summer (about the same cost as a test preparation workbook). The kids each selected 12 books, which they got to keep.

I know there are readers thinking, “Why not just have these kids go to the public library to get their book?” While public libraries are essential, and good outreach programs from public libraries can increase summer reading for all children, those efforts may not get all kids to check out a dozen books every summer.

Parents (and teachers) are right to worry about whether students read during the summer. But assigning books is about the least effective strategy to achieve that goal. It is past time for schools to provide children with easy summer access to books they want to read.

Choosing Your Assignment

Elizabeth Birr Moje is a professor of education at the University of Michigan.

The question of how to prevent summer learning loss has plagued U.S. schools for years. There is no question that some level of skill is lost or diminished for a large number of children and youth over the summer months. In many cases, these skills are easily renewed as soon as students begin school again. But in some cases, the loss chips away at learning gains; this is particularly true for children and youth who find school learning difficult during the academic months as well.

Whether assigning vacation homework would help to diminish the effects of the summer learning loss is an open question, but an equally important set of questions revolves around what such “homework” would involve, how it would be “regulated” (i.e., would students choose or would they be forced to do homework?), and how it would be supported.

In general, we know that assignments that merely drill students on basic skills is less useful than homework that supports them in meaningful thinking and activity. Summer homework, in particular, needs to provide choice with guidance, be embedded in projects or activities that have a real purpose, connect students to networks that support making sense of the activities, and ensure that youth from all backgrounds and socioeconomic levels have equal opportunity to participate.

For example, if schools want to promote the maintenance of reading skills, then they should consider assigning reading lists that offer choices. Such lists should not only promote the reading of novels, but should include informational texts, short stories, poetry, newspaper and magazine articles and web blogs in both paper and digital forms.

Providing children and youth with guided choice reduces the likelihood that they will resent being forced to do the work over the summer months; encouraging wide reading prepares them for the reading demands of upper grades by building world and word knowledge.

Schools (or parents) should also build opportunities for students to discuss the readings, either through face-to-face or on-line discussions. Offering opportunities for discussion and even application of concepts can push students to read beyond their initial preferences as they offer texts to one another, thus diminishing the need to “force” students to read particular texts.

Without discussion, children and youth may complete assignments just to check them off the list, not really engaging with the ideas or learning new critical skills or knowledge.

Another possibility for summer homework is community service or work projects where students can learn new academic skills, and also practice those they have learned during the school year. Combining the use of these skills in meaningful social and workplace activity can be motivating for even young children. This kind of “homework” is more challenging to monitor, but the benefits to young people and communities are high.

Whatever the form of summer homework, it is only a good idea if efforts are made to make it meaningful, engaging, and accessible to all.

What Low Achievers Need

Tyrone Howard is an associate professor at the U.C.L.A. Graduate School of Education and Information Studies.

The utility of homework has been a sacred cow in many education circles for years. I think homework has become a practice that has continued on because it has been normalized in educational behavior. Homework should help to reinforce content or materials that teachers have taught or covered in class. But in many cases today, homework has been reduced to busy work that posseses minimal value in developing deeper understanding.

That said, assigning summer homework is a good idea in theory. Some researchers have documented that some students lose grasp of key reading and mathematical principles when they have not used them for a two to three month period.

A better approach than homework is to have more intensive, small learning community-type summer school programs that last four to six weeks.

But the issue becomes one of accountability and reinforcement of understanding. If teachers cannot get students to turn in homework during the school year, when they see them every day, what is the likelihood that they will get them to do it, and with accuracy, when they do not see them?

I do think that there is a need to reinforce key academic concepts and skills, especially for lower achievers, who tend to be students of color, and students from poor backgrounds. A better approach than homework over the summer is the more intensive, small learning community-type summer school programs that last four to six weeks. These programs allow students to have access to teachers in a smaller learning environment for three to four hours a day. The benefits, I believe, would be far greater than more mind-numbing homework.

Homework and Achievement

Harris Cooper offers more details about the link between homework and student achievement:

Homework’s effect on achievement is best gauged by experimental studies comparing students who are purposely assigned homework with students purposely assigned no homework but who are similar in other ways. The results of such studies suggest that homework can improve students’ scores on the class tests that come at the end of a topic. In five such studies, students assigned homework in 2nd grade did better on math, 3rd and 4th graders did better on English skills and vocabulary, 5th graders on social studies, 9th through 12th graders on American history, and 12th graders on Shakespeare.

Less authoritative are 12 studies that link naturally-occurring (not manipulated) amounts of homework to achievement. On the positive side, these studies used sophisticated statistical models to control for lots of other things that might influence the homework-achievement connection. The controlled factors have included the student’s ability level and family background and the teachers’ experience. These studies have the added advantage that they are often based on national samples and use measures of achievement such as grade point averages and standardized tests. They find a similar positive link between time on homework and achievement. But most of these studies were done with high school students.

Yet other studies simply correlated homework and achievement with no attempt to control for student differences. In 35 such studies, about 77 percent found the link between homework and achievement was positive. Most interesting though, these results suggested little or no relationship between time on homework and achievement for elementary school students. These inferior studies are at odds with the more trustworthy experimental studies mentioned above. But, if we assume that the experimental studies involved relatively short assignments, they do suggest too much homework for young kids might not be a good thing. (Too much homework might also not be good for adolescents but studies show assignments can be longer before reaching the point of diminishing returns.)

Comments are no longer being accepted.

When I was fourteen years old, I was working almost 60 hours a week. This is because, on top of the 40 hours of work we did at school, our teachers each assigned us one hour of homework per night. Four classes, times five days, equals another 20 hours of work.

I was conscientious enough to do this work; most of my fellow students blew it off, of necessity. If you were going to play a sport, or an instrument, or even have a social life, you had to. I barely had time after school to go for a quick run for fifteen minutes, and to wash the dishes after supper. That’s all I did, besides schoolwork.

This was not good for me or my fellow students. For the people who didn’t do the work, it taught that you could just blow off responsibilities. For me, it taught me that if I obeyed the teachers, I couldn’t play music, or a sport, or goof off at all after school.

I say: structure school so that the necessary work can go on during school hours. And for goodness sake, leave kids alone during the summer!!

In the summer children should be running and playing and swimming and camping and learning important interpersonal skills by creating activities of their own with their friends and sometimes peers who are not so friendly. They should go to the library and read as they please, IF they please. Travel to new places. Structured activities stifle creativity and stunt natural thought processes. Looking at the sky or a bug or a leaf or just day dreaming are not uselss activities. Time to wonder is VERY good for developing minds.

Think of all the inventors in our history who must have had time to wonder, “What if…?” Maybe Edison wanted to read into the night and the light of a candle wasn’t enough. Ben Franklin must have been curious about lightning. DaVinci must have been curious about everything. Children don’t have to have ALL their time regimented in order to become well educated. What is wrong with our society that we want to take the joy out of EVERYTHING?

No. Homework should NOT be assigned during the summer. But when it is assigned during the school year, I feel that discussions of homework should focus on the quality of the work instead of on the quantity or time limits set for it. For example, if homework was not graded and used only rarely and only when it really helped turn the kids onto learning, it could be a useful tool.

Too much homework that my own kids have done in the last ten years has been bland, non-creative, non-inspired, teacher-assigned busywork. Most of it seems to be about how well kids can follow the teacher’s directions, instead of how well kids can think for themselves. Is this really the best way to prepare our kids for the 21st century?

Check out my blog: East Bay Homework Blog – //eastbayhomework.blogspot.com/ and check out the film Race To Nowhere, //www.RacetoNowhere.com

The problem with summer homework is that there is little supervision or help. The children will do the works, but they’ll forget about them soon afterwards. If we really want to get serious about summer memory loss, we should send our kids to summer schools or tutoring.

I think it is more pertinent to ask what the purpose of such assignments is. If you are trying to inculcate a reading habit amongst these youngsters, you are a far way off. Burdening them with reading assignments is never going to work. This is particularly true of specified readings. I think it would be a better approach to let them set their own targets, of course after stipulating a bare minimum. Homework help at aafter.com

My answer to this question in general is NO. I am a rising junior at Bronx Science and I am dreading it. I have homework for three different classes. About 28 essays for AP US History , English assignments plus Research assignments as well. By going to this tough school, the school year is a pain in the glutens! i was hoping i would be able to relax and unwind my mind this summer by focusing on what I plan to do in the future but doing all these things inhibits my brain functions of thinking like a normal teenager. It is so sad teens who go to this school miss out on all the joy of being a teenager. It just sucks big time, I would rather write articles for the NYT criticizing anything in the world, besides doing summer homework!

I remember my days of school in India where the students would go to 4-6 hours of private tuitions everyday to try to finish their whole syllabus for the entire year BEFORE school even started just to get an edge.

So, if the US wants their kids to compete, assignments are hardly even enough ( bare minimum if you ask me)

Or you could just go on as always and hope for the best. The immigration policies have already made it impossible for International students with advanced degrees ( like me) to get jobs. Maybe that will protect American kids in the future too.

Yes, mandate summer homework if you want to train children to be available to their “job” every day, all day, even when they’re not compensated. (The new global economy!)

If I take a vacation, I expect to be on vacation. Children should have the same expectation of their free time. If educational theorists wish to create interesting, multi-sensory experiences (i.e,. camp, travel, nature walks) into the summer for a certain group of children, go to it. But, lay off the required summer reading lists, book reports, etc. It’s absurd. Children need more play opportunities, which will help them grow and mature, and give them a necessary break.

Nancy Kalish makes it seems like if kids have hw, they can’t go outside and have fun. There are 24 hrs in a day. It’s not like you would be spending 8 hrs a day doing summer hw. There is plenty of time for both. If you set aside 2 hrs a day for summer hw, that leaves the child 22 hrs to sleep, play and eat. I don’t see how those 2 hrs of hw would hurt the child.

I have taken summer school since I was in second grade. Every summer from June till 1.5 weeks before the new school year, I was in city summer school. I took two classes, one fun and one academic from 8am – 3pm. I do not know whether I would lose my math or reading skills over the summer since I was utilizing them year around. I am not good at math. If I didn’t take summer school, I am pretty sure that I would forget math pretty quickly. The subjects you don’t enjoy, you forget the fastest and the easiest.

I do not think that a math homework packet and doing 2-3 book reports during the summer for a third grader is unreasonable. The teacher could have a list of 50 books that the child could select from.

Children in American have 2.5 months of free time. 2.5 months to do 2-3 book reports and a math packet isn’t very much. The child procrastinating is the parent’s fault. It is up to the parent to make sure that the child is on track with his or her learning and homework. If you let your child wait until the last minute to do the homework, you are causing your child undue stress.

It is not a strange a idea to have the child set 1/2 – 1 hr a day to read. Maybe instead of video games or playing with the computer, the child could read a book.

Summer hw is done in other countries as well. In Japan, every kid has summer homework.

One size doesn’t fit all. Some kids may well benefit from summer homework, but others won’t. I expect that this would work best when the student has a role to play in selecting the assignment, or at least a choice from several alternatives.

Children can run , play and swim on the weekends. School should be 12 months a year. I think how different my life would have been if it hadn’t been for that 3 months of mostly inactivity with nothing to challenge the mind but countless rounds of gin rummy, and getting into trouble with the neighbor children. There can be JOY in learning. Nowadays, there is too much JOY in drugs, alcohol and trouble from neglect . Save our children, keep them in school.

Commenters ## 1 and 2 get it.

But the dramatic idea of Richard Allington, to give students a few books of their choice — any choice — sounds just right to me. If they take the books, it’s their lookout to read them or not. And since they have them right there, and chose them for themselves, they’re likely to read at least some. Without pressure. That’s what reading should be.

In many countries with higher achievements for children in school. The summer breaks are even longer. The method to fix education in the US today is not to make kids study all the time but to fix the US education system. Children need room to grow, by doing other things. Do we want happy kids or workaholics?

Summer homework and assigning things over breaks in general is a bad idea. My senior high always gave summer assignments which I of course procastinated on, so all summer I was stuck with the guilty feeling that I should be working on school work and parents who were happy to remind me. All this did was make summer less fun and strengthen my ability to ignor the “I should be working” feeling.

Kalish is spouting complete nonsense. She is a direct threat to American competitiveness, a living example of technological regression.

My son completed first grade in both Japanese and American schools. At the end of the first grade, the two curricula were even in mathematics. Then the American first graders had 3 months of nothing. The Japanese first graders had 6 weeks with daily maintenance homework. The American kids will never catch up.

You don’t need a Duke study to identify the source of the lag between the U.S. and Japan.

My son is now finishing the summer break of 4th grade in Japan. Over the last six weeks, he has completed about one hour a day in maintenance homework for mathematics and language. He has also completed two small projects, a one-page ‘newspaper’ and an art project, just enough to keep his hand warm. The projects were selected from a list of 100+ provided by the prefecture. For this list, the prefecture gathered the cooperation of fire departments, police departments, water departments, parks and museums to provide a selection of subjects. Most of the cooperating organizations will exhibit childrens’ projects during September.

And my son still has had plenty of time for TV, Legos, games, play at the childrens’ hall and travel – and to sing the Star Wars theme song, the Indiana Jones theme song, or any other ditty that comes to mind.

The above conversation either assumes or fosters the notion that a summer vacation is a given; a necessary recharging of the batteries; a time for play and socialization. I suggest that we rethink this long-standing and almost uniquely American tradion in light of our demonstrable educational distance behind so many other countries.

Now, I am not arguing that play and socialization are unimportant, but that we consider other ways of structuring our educational system that would allow for both play and continuous learning. I am not a professional educator, although I did a great deal of techincal teaching throughout my career, but my experience tells me that segmenting learning into distinct modules of extended, intense learning followed by extended, intense periods of play is not efficient. Education, like the learning it is intended to impart, should be an integral part of life. It should, among other things, develop a strong sense of its own value because it is a part of life, not just something to be done during rigidly specified times to satisfy rigidly specified requirements. All of life is about learning, whether from books or on the playground, and is a continual process.

Our education system should be year-round, with more, shorter breaks. I would argue that the same should be true of our work environment, but let’s leave that for another time. What I think is important, even crucial, is that learning be a continuous, integrated process – as it is in real life.

If summer vacations were not so long, kids wouldn’t need the additional homework over their breaks. The number of in class days per year keeps shrinking and it’s little wonder why other countries with longer, more continuous school years outshine our educational system.

Rather than having a long, continuous stretch of summer holidays, why not have school all year round, with more smaller breaks?

Joy can still be in learning–but often isn’t, in typical school assignments. My 8th-grade grandson (in a different state) will start school today (8/31) with his summer homework done–but only because a diligent parent worked with him and made the learning sessions –well, not necessarily fun, but reasonably enjoyable.

That said, there are often summer school enrichment opportunities -or chances for fun and learning through park district, YMCA, day camp, library events and well-planned reading programs with corresponding activities (my public library invites kids in on certain days to read to therapy dogs…reluctant readers often enjoy snuggling with a friendly pooch and reading aloud to the dog…

Unfortunately, too many parents are time-stressed and work stressed – if they haven’t lost jobs because of the economy – too many grandparents (like me) are at least 1000 miles away from their grandkids, or I’d help with the summer homework to make it fun and interesting… and well-meaning, well-intentioned parents who’d like to get involved just may not have the money to do the extras like museums, vacations, music lessons or group playing-instruments, or even, if appropriate and desired, vacation Bible school.

These things come with fees–and often, lack of public transportation. If it’s a choice between food on the table, often because a parent has a part-time or second job, and registering a child for a learning activity, I do understand why the homework or enrichment doesn’t happen.

I haven’t any answers – even taking a child to a nearby public park often requires time a working parent doesn’t have. That said, sometimes agencies have programs that parents can seek out and get their kids into–reasonably. For instance, my Chicago suburb’s community college offers Kid Zone enrichment things that are learning, but fun, for what in the suburbs seems a reasonable, modest price. Art activities, field trips, science stuff, music (“bucket band”) etc. Trained college and high school students are the leaders, supervised by adults, of course – but these give kids something more constructive–and, what’s best of all – FUN – during summer vacation.

Jan Bone, Palatine IL

Sometimes I wonder if school is just a way of breaking a person’s spirit in order to prepare them for a lifetime of desk work. I was raised in the 1960s, when kids had actual lives and were not sent to Japanese style cram schools, Kaplan prep, or hothoused in any way. During my free time, I ran, learned to balance on a 1 inch wide fence, collected sea creatures and put them in a bucket, dissected plants, stared deeply at bugs, learned to share my toys, played “war” and cowboys (no Indians, we all had six guns, even the girls), made clothes for Barbie, and learned to knit from a 70+ year old woman who told me about what brooklyn was like at the turn of the 20th century. Try to get that with some professionally trained “child development” type who wants to make sure your flow of social studies, whatever passes for math, or texts with pictures of plants and bugs.

This is simply more proof that a school schedule designed around a farming culture ( that we no longer practice) is ill equipped to support us in our current culture. The amount of knowledge necessary to succeed has gotten multitudes larger while the amount of class time available has increased only marginally. Summer assignments need be an option for children who are doing academically well, but a requirement for those who are not.

Kids aren’t reading enough? I must have missed those 1 mile midnight lines for 800 page Harry Potter books. However in the Dumbest Generations Author’s defense I’m sure the older generations used their summer time much more wisely than these idiotic spoiled children by spending every summer vacation day reading Tolstoy, going to math camps and volunteering at the local hospital.

Speaking of which kids aren’t proficent in math? Well maybe that means that they aren’t smart enough to come up with “fullproof” math equations that explain how the value of worthless securites are actually AAA bonds.

The kids today are alright. They are definitely harder working and more service oriented than my generation. Went back to college recently and thought it would be a breeze but the caliber of students being produced is alot better than it was just 15 years ago.

I wonder if time spent staring at the ceiling, sorting interesting colored pebbles on the beach, reading a few low-brow books and building tree houses provides something fundamental and invaluable to a child’s development? There is no denying that skills developed during the school year become ‘rusty’ and it would seem that the brain (certainly in the case of my children) re-wires and relegates unused skills into a fog. However, the summer break is a time during which a child is truly free of the formalized process in school in order to drift freely in his or her imagination. This stated, the television (and computer) should be left off and the child sent outdoors (it is summer afterall!). Looking at the responses of the ‘professionals’ in this column, it is clear that there is no consensus.

I think homework is way overdone. I think a ton of homework is mindless busy work that de-motivates poor students and is an unnecessary drain on motivated students.

I don’t care about scientific studies. If you look carefully at how most social research is designed, it is virtually always designed to get the results the study designers are looking for. A friend of mine did his PhD dissertation at the U. of MI, back in the early seventies, a quantitative, scientifically rigorous study of research dissertations — and proved that study designs heavily influence, and usually determined, results.

People who want to prove that homework is beneficial design, unconsciously, studies that will prove what they want to prove.

I am increasingly discouraged by the steady decline in education in this country. The challenge of poor performing students cannot be met only in the classroom. The quality of children’s lives outside of school is in steady decline. Americans work many more hours than Western Europeans, meaning parents spend less and less time with kids. The economy continues to drain the middle class, requiring both parents to work longer and longer hours. Kids end up passing their one precious life, their one precious childhood in front of televisions, online, tweeting and texting.

Kids — and parents — need meaningful quality time, with themselves, with their parents.

I’d like to see a study that compared what great academic student stars do in the summer compared to the kids whose math and reading skills atrophy in the summertime. I bet that study would prove that kids with a rich quality personal/family life do lots of educational things in the summer only they think they are just having fun.

I grew up in Chicago. Every week of every summer vacation while I was growing up, my dad took his kids and some of their friends on an outing in the city. My dad was very proud of all the wonderful institutions in a great city like Chicago and he seriously considered it part of his job as a parent to expose his children to everything. The only thing my dad didn’t care to do with us was take us to art museums . . . but my mom is an artist and she covered art. We didn’t just go to the science museum once in our childhood: we went several times a year. Plus the dinosaur museum. We went to the zoos countless times each year. Parks, amusement parks, the beach, the forest preserves that ring the city.

Not that many of the other kids in my neighborhood did stuff like this with their folks but, fortunately, in our Catholic Irish ghetto, most kids joined the boy or girl scouts and went on good outings that way.

What do parents do with their kids these days? It seems to me that parents don’t often spend lots of time just hanging out with their kids.

My kid and I had fun when we weeded the garden together. My kid and I had fun driving to the lumber yard and planning her new shelves, discussing the design, the measurements, getting her to participate. When we first went camping together, just me and my young daughter, as soon as she learned to read, I would have her navigate our way from the entry to the state park to our camp site. . . that was her first lesson in map-reading. Gradually, I encouraged her to plot all our routes, when we took interstate trips in the car, let her navigate the whole thing. The first time I took her to NYC, we flew there but then rented a car and she was very proud to be able to navigate us around that city.

I began to teach her how to count in the grocery store. If she wanted to buy apples, I began by saying “we will buy as many as you can count’. The first time we had a math lesson in produce, we only bought one apple. . . but then she immediately made sure she learned how to count higher so she could buy more apples.

I began to teach her how to reach in the grocery store, too. She was always begging me to buy stuff I didn’t want to buy. but then I thought of this trick: I would show her what the letter ‘C’ looked like, point her towards the breakfast cereals and promise to buy Cheerios if she could find a box where the product began with a ‘C’. This worked well for a long time. I say it worked because I never wanted to buy commercial cereal. Cheerios, which many parents consider one of the better, more healthy ones, is still loaded with sugar and cheap unnutritious carbs. It took her a long time to distinguish all the symbols and images on cereal boxes. But she figured out strawberry jam fast. The s was easy, the red jam was easy, the jars were low and easier for her to read.

I didn’t turn every minute of time with my kid into a lesson but pretty much every minute I spent with my kid was educational. I was always trying to think of ways to get her to pay attention, to get her to think about what she saw.

Actually, I used to be an art docent and the main goal for the tour program at my old art museum was, simply, to get the children to look closely, to try to see what really was on the canvas, to get them to see and think.

I made it a point to take my kid to a museum at least once a month. I also committed to taking her to an arts performance once a month. Cities are chock-a-block full of free arts experiences. Public concerts, theater in the parks. I know the economy is tighter these days, there are less free things. . . but the world is still stuffed with free or almost free great things to do with kids. There are always parks, free to walk in. Hills to climb. Neighborhoods to walk and observe. Bird watching is free.

In the third grade, Charlotte, a little girl in my daughter’s class had a very small birthday party. She was allowed to invite two other girls. The party? The girls went butterfly hunting with Charlotte’s mother and at the end, the girls had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and apple slices. That was the whole party.

Our whole society keeps trying to turn everything into metrics, worshiping the god of data. It is almost meaningless to discuss the value of summer homework if you aren’t going to discuss how children and their parents spend their summers. Our economy, which worships corporations and not humans, does not need all its citizens to be multi-dimensional, well-developed human beings seriously pursuing happiness. Our economy wants mindless wage slaves that pretty much act like cogs in the corporate machinery. Wool-gathering does not benefit the bottom line plus it is time most parents could be putting pins in widgets at the plant. Mindless wage slaves don’t become parents who have fun hanging out with their kids and exploring the world together.

If most kids spent their summers having close, loving, fun interactions with their families, their math and reading skills would not atrophy over the summer.

Let the children have summers free. It is a time when they can learn a lot of things that are not taught in the classroom. Family and friends relationships, exploring the world a bit without having to worry about tomorrow’s book report (in other words, reading a book for its own value, not in order to get a good grade).

Walking in the woods, or in the streets. Playing with the cats and dogs. Helping the folks with household work.

The so-called experts who evaluate “success” based on test grades are out of touch with reality. In my pre-collegiate school days, 1955 to 1967, there were many fellow students who weren’t stellar in their academic achievement levels. Yet more than a few of them have gone on to have interesting, productive, and successful lives. In some cases, very successful lives. Predicting success cannot be based just on GPA and SAT scores. Success is based on much more than the numbers.

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A daughter sits at a desk doing homework while her mom stands beside her helping

Credit: August de Richelieu

Does homework still have value? A Johns Hopkins education expert weighs in

Joyce epstein, co-director of the center on school, family, and community partnerships, discusses why homework is essential, how to maximize its benefit to learners, and what the 'no-homework' approach gets wrong.

By Vicky Hallett

The necessity of homework has been a subject of debate since at least as far back as the 1890s, according to Joyce L. Epstein , co-director of the Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships at Johns Hopkins University. "It's always been the case that parents, kids—and sometimes teachers, too—wonder if this is just busy work," Epstein says.

But after decades of researching how to improve schools, the professor in the Johns Hopkins School of Education remains certain that homework is essential—as long as the teachers have done their homework, too. The National Network of Partnership Schools , which she founded in 1995 to advise schools and districts on ways to improve comprehensive programs of family engagement, has developed hundreds of improved homework ideas through its Teachers Involve Parents in Schoolwork program. For an English class, a student might interview a parent on popular hairstyles from their youth and write about the differences between then and now. Or for science class, a family could identify forms of matter over the dinner table, labeling foods as liquids or solids. These innovative and interactive assignments not only reinforce concepts from the classroom but also foster creativity, spark discussions, and boost student motivation.

"We're not trying to eliminate homework procedures, but expand and enrich them," says Epstein, who is packing this research into a forthcoming book on the purposes and designs of homework. In the meantime, the Hub couldn't wait to ask her some questions:

What kind of homework training do teachers typically get?

Future teachers and administrators really have little formal training on how to design homework before they assign it. This means that most just repeat what their teachers did, or they follow textbook suggestions at the end of units. For example, future teachers are well prepared to teach reading and literacy skills at each grade level, and they continue to learn to improve their teaching of reading in ongoing in-service education. By contrast, most receive little or no training on the purposes and designs of homework in reading or other subjects. It is really important for future teachers to receive systematic training to understand that they have the power, opportunity, and obligation to design homework with a purpose.

Why do students need more interactive homework?

If homework assignments are always the same—10 math problems, six sentences with spelling words—homework can get boring and some kids just stop doing their assignments, especially in the middle and high school years. When we've asked teachers what's the best homework you've ever had or designed, invariably we hear examples of talking with a parent or grandparent or peer to share ideas. To be clear, parents should never be asked to "teach" seventh grade science or any other subject. Rather, teachers set up the homework assignments so that the student is in charge. It's always the student's homework. But a good activity can engage parents in a fun, collaborative way. Our data show that with "good" assignments, more kids finish their work, more kids interact with a family partner, and more parents say, "I learned what's happening in the curriculum." It all works around what the youngsters are learning.

Is family engagement really that important?

At Hopkins, I am part of the Center for Social Organization of Schools , a research center that studies how to improve many aspects of education to help all students do their best in school. One thing my colleagues and I realized was that we needed to look deeply into family and community engagement. There were so few references to this topic when we started that we had to build the field of study. When children go to school, their families "attend" with them whether a teacher can "see" the parents or not. So, family engagement is ever-present in the life of a school.

My daughter's elementary school doesn't assign homework until third grade. What's your take on "no homework" policies?

There are some parents, writers, and commentators who have argued against homework, especially for very young children. They suggest that children should have time to play after school. This, of course is true, but many kindergarten kids are excited to have homework like their older siblings. If they give homework, most teachers of young children make assignments very short—often following an informal rule of 10 minutes per grade level. "No homework" does not guarantee that all students will spend their free time in productive and imaginative play.

Some researchers and critics have consistently misinterpreted research findings. They have argued that homework should be assigned only at the high school level where data point to a strong connection of doing assignments with higher student achievement . However, as we discussed, some students stop doing homework. This leads, statistically, to results showing that doing homework or spending more minutes on homework is linked to higher student achievement. If slow or struggling students are not doing their assignments, they contribute to—or cause—this "result."

Teachers need to design homework that even struggling students want to do because it is interesting. Just about all students at any age level react positively to good assignments and will tell you so.

Did COVID change how schools and parents view homework?

Within 24 hours of the day school doors closed in March 2020, just about every school and district in the country figured out that teachers had to talk to and work with students' parents. This was not the same as homeschooling—teachers were still working hard to provide daily lessons. But if a child was learning at home in the living room, parents were more aware of what they were doing in school. One of the silver linings of COVID was that teachers reported that they gained a better understanding of their students' families. We collected wonderfully creative examples of activities from members of the National Network of Partnership Schools. I'm thinking of one art activity where every child talked with a parent about something that made their family unique. Then they drew their finding on a snowflake and returned it to share in class. In math, students talked with a parent about something the family liked so much that they could represent it 100 times. Conversations about schoolwork at home was the point.

How did you create so many homework activities via the Teachers Involve Parents in Schoolwork program?

We had several projects with educators to help them design interactive assignments, not just "do the next three examples on page 38." Teachers worked in teams to create TIPS activities, and then we turned their work into a standard TIPS format in math, reading/language arts, and science for grades K-8. Any teacher can use or adapt our prototypes to match their curricula.

Overall, we know that if future teachers and practicing educators were prepared to design homework assignments to meet specific purposes—including but not limited to interactive activities—more students would benefit from the important experience of doing their homework. And more parents would, indeed, be partners in education.

Posted in Voices+Opinion

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Access this article and hundreds more like it with a subscription to The New York TImes Upfront magazine.

LESSON PLAN

Should schools give summer homework.

Analyzing Authors’ Claims

Read the Article

YES: Harris Cooper, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University NO: Nancy Kalish, co-author, The Case Against Homework

Analyze the debate.

1. Set Focus Frame the inquiry with this essential question: What factors should officials take into consideration when creating curriculum?

2. R ead and Discuss Have students read the debate and then answer the following questions:

What is the issue being debated? How does it relate to current events? (The issue is whether schools should assign homework to students over the summer break. The issue is timely because disruptions to education stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic have resulted in significant learning loss for many students.)
Evaluate why these two authors might be interested in and qualified to comment on this issue. (Harris Cooper is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University. Nancy Kalish is the co-author of a book that argues against assigning homework.)
Analyze Cooper’s view. (Cooper argues in favor of schools assigning summer homework. He says that a long summer vacation without schoolwork leads to forgetting and results in teachers having to waste time reviewing old material in the fall. He says summer homework can minimize these negative results the way summer school has been proven to.)
Analyze Kalish’s view. (Kalish argues against assigning homework over the summer. She says that doing so might result in more harm than good, such as by stealing time away from play and other forms of learning, reducing time spent on being physically active, and turning reading into a chore. She says students should start the year refreshed.)

Extend & Assess

4. Writing Prompt In an essay, evaluate one of the debaters’ arguments. Assess whether the reasoning is valid and whether it’s supported with evidence. Point out biases or missing information.

5. Classroom Debate Should schools give summer homework? Have students use the authors’ ideas, as well as their own, in a debate.

6. Vote Go online to vote in Upfront ’s poll—and see how students across the country voted.

Download a PDF of this Lesson Plan

Summer Homework: A How-To Guide for Parents and Kids

It’s become a predictable yearly debate that rolls around every June:

Should my kids really be getting summer homework?

And if they do, how should we approach it so they actually learn something over the summer (rather than just doing busywork)?

Here’s the thing:

At some schools, kids are routinely overloaded with multiple books to read, and big math packets to complete.

At other schools? Nothing is assigned.

My personal opinion is that the right balance lies somewhere in the middle… Yes, we want kids to keep their minds sharp, but not at the expense of having fun over the summer.

So in this post I’ll cover:

My opinion on the age-old summer homework debate (in the video below)
How to handle the different types of work assigned to students over the summer
Some specific recommendations for what you can do as a parent to keep your kids engaged in the process, including a recent interview I did with WTOP’s Every Day is Kid’s Day podcast on the topic

And you’ll walk away with a better understanding of how to make the most out of homework (or lack thereof) this summer.

You can click one of the links below to jump to one of the sections of the guide:

How much is too much summer homework? How to tackle summer reading (The Amazon Method) How to handle math packets and workbooks Creative ways to make Summer Learning fun

Or jump right in with the video below.

How much is too much? What the research says…

When kids do nothing at all in math and reading, the research shows that they can lose two to three months of learning progress over the summer.

Just think: That’s almost as if they decided to end the school year in March!

And if left alone, those losses accumulate over time with respect to their peers.

A 2007 study out of John’s Hopkins University showed that while students (on average) make similar gains in reading comprehension throughout the year, students without access to learning opportunities make no progress over the summer, while students with access outpace them year after year.

Ultimately, by the time they reach 5th grade, disadvantaged students are the equivalent of 3 full grade levels behind their advantaged peers in reading ability!

But, this trend need not apply to your son or daughter…

Because studies also show that kids who read just four books over the summer are able to almost completely eliminate that summer learning slide.

So here’s my take:

If your son or daughter is being required to…

Read three books, probably classics that they really don’t want to read
Write multiple essays
And complete stacks of math assignments

… that’s probably a bit overboard.

Yes, we want kids to keep their minds sharp, but not at the expense of having fun over the summer.

So my recommendation is to create a balance. Get your summer assignments done, but try to structure it in a way that makes learning fun.

Here’s how to do it…

Required vs. Recommended Summer Homework

First off, we can break down summer homework assignments in terms of required vs. recommended .

Most schools send out a recommended reading list, and sometimes subject review packets to their students to complete over the summer.

And some actually require that their students complete a certain amount of those assignments over the summer, which are included in their grade for the upcoming school year.

Now, it does make sense to prioritize required assignments over recommended assignments… especially if your school went overboard with what they handed out.

But as long as it’s not too much material, regardless of whether reading is assigned or not, I recommend working with your child to map out a plan of attack for the summer to get it done (on their terms – see below).

How to tackle summer reading (The Amazon Method)

By far, the most popular category of summer homework assigned are reading lists.

And although most schools have a recommended reading list, they tend to be very broad ( umm, should my 8-year-old really be reading MacBeth right now? )…

Specific reading requirements

Sometimes though, there are specific books that your student needs to read over the summer (see the “required” section above), especially high school students, and you’ll need to work with them to figure out a plan of attack.

Block off some time at the beginning of summer (don’t let it wait until July!) to sit down and ask them:

“You have these 3 books you have to read this summer. How would you like to tackle these?”

And then let them answer. Help them formulate a (realistic) plan with their input, and they’ll but much more likely to follow it… and not end up in the last-minute reading rush on August 30th trying to get their summer reading done!

Flexible reading requirements

But on the other hand, if you do have some flexibility in terms of what your student is assigned to read over the summer, what I like to do is create a reading list tailored specifically towards the age or interests of your student.

And one of the best ways to do this is: Amazon!

Step 1: Go to Amazon.com and type in “Books for… [insert description of your child]”

For example, if I had a 7th grader at home I would search: “Books for middle school”

Or if I was looking for something more girl-oriented for my daughter I would search: “Books for middle school girls”

It’s amazing what books will pop up on the top of the list for kids…

Step 2: Review the list and make sure that the results are relevant (sometimes they require a little tweaking), and pay attention to the options on the sidebar where you can filter by subject, age rage, etc.

Then run them by your child and ask: “Which one of these do you want to read this summer?”

Look over the summaries and let them pick the books they want to read.

Word of caution: It’s not your responsibility as a parent to pass judgment and say:

“You know what honey, this year you’re not reading a graphic novel. You can only read books with words, no pictures.

We don’t want to do that as parents. We really want to let our kids decide, because when they’re invested, they’re much more likely to meet that four book goal over the summer.

Step 3: Either order online or head out to the library…

Make sure to do this before July 4th so the summer doesn’t get away from you, and use your list of books that you picked out.

Then, when you get your books back home…

Step 4: Sit down with them and make a plan.

Don’t assume your child will gleefully run up to his room and begin flipping the pages. They’re much more likely to read consistently if you have “READING TIME” marked off on the calendar at a consistent time each day.

You can even make it a family routine! Having everyone in the house reading at the same time will help encourage your child to get their reading done, especially if they’re reluctant or easily distracted.

Now, many kids are reluctant readers and may need a parent to help them get started… And you need to be willing to make the time to lend a hand.

This can be in the form of “you read a page, he reads a page” or for a really reluctant reader, “you read two pages and he reads one,” until he’s into the story.

Make this a habit, and before long you’ll have a bookworm on your hands!

How to handle math packets and workbooks

The same principles hold true for other assigned work as well.

Don’t assume your child will be chipping away at those math packets one day at a time (and the thicker they are, the more daunting they’ll seem).

Truth be told: we get lots of calls from parents mid-August, panicked that their kid hasn’t read and annotated a three-hundred-page book and completed a bunch of review worksheets – even though the parent has reminded him at least ten times!

This situation isn’t unique.

The value to any summer learning is doing a little bit at a time over a long stretch. The brain retains information best in bit sized chunks, not by cramming.

And this is even more important for math because it’s a subject that continually builds on itself. So if you miss something early on, you’re probably going to have to back-track when you run into that same concept again in the future.

So just like with reading assignments, if your son or daughter are assigned a math packet (or any other type of subject packet) over the summer, make sure to site down and set the plan early.

Aside from your typical reading lists and workbooks though, you can also encourage learning in other (more fun!) ways this summer…

Creative ways to make Summer Learning fun

Below is a recent interview I did with WTOP’s Every Day is Kid’s Day podcast (interview starts at 0:53) on how to bring a fresh perspective to summer learning, and make things more fun and interesting for your son or daughter this year.

Give it a listen for some more tips on:

Using the Amazon Method to make summer reading more fun
Alternatives to summer workbooks that are actually fun and effective
Whether you should spend the time to try and “preview” material they’re going to see in the coming year
And a whole bunch of other useful ideas for staying engaged over the summer

Here are some of those great ways to get your child into learning, outside of school recommended assignments:

For writing: use a dialogue journal.

One of the best ways to get your child comfortable with writing on a regular basis is to make a game out of it.

So try designating a “special” notebook or journal that lives in your kid’s room that you can use to communicate with them through writing.

Then, simply leave them a note each day, that they read and respond to.

Maybe you say something like, “I noticed how you helped your brother pick up those puzzle pieces. What a nice idea. How did you know he needed your help?”

Leave the journal on his bed and allow him to write back that evening. The next day, you respond.

And be sure not to fix grammar or spelling, just let these be a carefree way to practice writing and even illustrations.

At the end of the summer, not only will they have improved their writing skills, but you’ll also have an amazing keepsake to look back on for years to come.

For reading: listen to audiobooks!

Don’t forget that audio books can be very helpful for developing comprehension and fluency.

Studies show that when kids want to read a book just above their level and listen to the book while following along with the lines, they improve their skills more than if they read independently.

So using a site like Audible.com or going to your local library website to download audio versions of the books your son or daughter has picked out (or has assigned) for the summer isn’t cheating, it’s just another way to “open the door” to getting them involved in reading.

Plus, it’s great for long summer road trips!

For math: play (math) games on the iPad.

For most of us, it’s a constant battle to keep our kids AWAY from the devices over the summer… but it need not be either or.

One of the best ways to “bridge the gap” is to give your child the opportunity to use educational apps or websites on their phone or iPad that will keep them learning, without feeling like math always has to involve drudgery.

Multiplication.com is great site for staying sharp on math facts. And pretty much every elementary schooler needs to practice their addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division over the summer to stay sharp.

Funbrain.com is also perfect for allowing a little screen time in-between reading or homework sessions, while still learning at the same time.

For learning that’s fun: find local adventures!

Yes, you could have your kids spend their summer doing workbooks and refresher material, and that would probably help them stay sharp… but most kids find that to be a drag on their motivation to learn.

Instead, find a local museum or science center and take field trip!

Use the outing to ask your kids to guide the learning session and pick out what they want to explore… and then tell you about it.

And then watch in amazement at how excited they are, not even realizing that they’re “learning,” but just enjoying the moment and experiencing something new.

Summer camps are great for this too, so do some Googling and find out what’s going on in your area.

Now let’s hear from you..

How have you handled the balance between required summer schoolwork and fun?

What have you done that’s helpful in your family to keep summer learning alive without going overboard?

I’d love to hear from you in the comments below!

What do you think? Leave a respectful comment.

The pros and cons of schools ditching a long summer break.

Lisa Stark, Education Week Lisa Stark, Education Week

Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/the-pros-and-cons-of-schools-ditching-a-long-summer-break

Though it's an American tradition, not every school takes a long summer break. About 4 percent in the U.S. use a "balanced" calendar that operates year-round, sometimes to manage overcrowding but also to boost student achievement with more consistent education. Special correspondent Lisa Stark of Education Week reports on the pros and cons for students, families and schools.

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Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.

Judy Woodruff:

For many American students and their families, summer is sacrosanct, a nice long break from school to recharge and refresh.

But students in about 4 percent of public schools attend on a year-round schedule. Supporters of the idea say they can stop a loss of learning and boost achievement, especially for low-income students who need school meals over the break.

Special correspondent Lisa Stark of our partner Education Week visited one such school in Holt, Michigan.

It's part of our weekly segment Making the Grade.

So, everybody get a little space here, just so they can get the proper grip, OK?

Lisa Stark:

It's the start of summer break in Holt, Michigan, and tennis camp is in full swing, one of a number of summer activities on tap for middle schooler Lucia (ph) Frost, who was ready for school to end.

You're on summer vacation.

Yes, it was great.

It feels good.

Yes, finally.

But for her younger sister, Caico (ph), class is still in session. Caico's school, Sycamore Elementary, is one of two in this district that uses a so-called year-round, or balanced, calendar.

There are no additional school days, still around the typical 180, but those days are divided up differently. In a year-round calendar, summer vacation is shorter, about half of the usual 10 to 12 weeks, and there are one- to two-week breaks sprinkled throughout the year.

So what would you say to kids who don't know about the balanced calendar?

I would tell them that it feels like you can get more breaks, but you still learn as much as you need to be educated.

Mom Kelly Frost is a fan.

Kelly Frost:

I think it's nice for the kids. They don't get burnt out during the school year. And in the summer, I think that by having the shortened summer, I think they're still getting their freedom outside.

Some 3,700 schools in the U.S., around 4 percent of schools, use a balanced calendar.

In some cases, it's to manage overcrowding, to stagger schedules, so one school can handle more students. But, at many schools, such as Sycamore, the hope is to boots student achievement with more consistent education.

Third-grade teacher Denise Schaffer.

Denise Schaffer:

I think that it gives us continuity, and, over time, we can spread our learning out a little bit and take things a little more deliberately.

Long summers, though, are part of the American culture, and can be a magical time for some families. Any attempt to change the school schedule often causes an uproar.

Here's Harvard's Jennifer Davis.

Jennifer Davis:

The current school calendar is so ingrained in the American society and family life, that it's very hard to change.

Davis, though, believes this school schedule is way out of date.

Today's American school calendar was created for the 19th century farm and factory economy, and hasn't kept pace with the needs of our changing economy and with the needs of families in today's world.

Kelly Frost agrees.

I think the shorter summers are better for education. I think the longer summers, they're out too long.

Long summer breaks can be a time of learning loss, known as the summer slide, especially for low-income students, who may not have the money for camps, classes or summer activities to keep their minds active.

Every summer, low-income students lose about two months in reading skills, while middle-income students hold their own. In math, most students, regardless of income, lose some math skills.

Matthew Boulay heads the National Summer Learning Association.

Matthew Boulay:

The real problem with summer learning loss is not simply what happens over one summer, but it's the problem of loss summer after summer after summer.

Sycamore Elementary hopes to reduce that loss with the balanced calendar. It's the district's highest-poverty school. Over half of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.

David Hornak:

If we do the school the way we have always done it, we're going to get the same result we always have. So, by changing the calendar, that's one thing that we can modify to potentially make a difference.

The district superintendent, David Hornak, also heads up the National Association for Year-Round Education. He admits this schedule can be a tough sell.

Opponents argue teachers and students lose out on summer jobs. For parents, it may be hard to find child care during school breaks. Coaches worry about scheduling high school sports. And, for schools, summer air conditioning can be costly.

Hornak understands these concerns, but insists a balanced calendar just makes sense.

I think that that's something we should take a longer look at. We are spending millions and millions of dollars nationwide remediating the gaps that the traditional calendar in fact creates.

At Sycamore, internal measures show students here are not losing ground during the summer break.

Principal Steve Garrison says you can see the difference when students return after the short summer vacation.

Steve Garrison:

We don't have a long six to eight weeks of trying to get kids caught up. We start right off. Second week, instruction starts after our routines are set.

Despite the enthusiasm here for the year-round schedule, the data on its effectiveness are quite mixed. It is not clear that a balanced calendar really helps students retain more information or improves test scores.

A 2015 study found that year-round students do pull ahead during the summer, but students on a traditional nine-month calendar catch up and pull ahead during the rest of the year.

Study author Paul von Hippel.

Paul von Hippel:

Well, it is basically the same 175, 180 days spread out differently across the year. And since total instruction doesn't increase, total learning doesn't increase either.

Sycamore has tried to add learning time by offering voluntary academics and activities during school breaks. But some researchers argue it's easier to boost instruction time without tossing out the traditional calendar by simply extending school hours, adding extra days, and offering summer school.

Still, at Sycamore, they're convinced the year-round schedule is what's best for students and teachers.

I love having shorter breaks more frequently. I really feel that it is better for my — my level of energy and enthusiasm for teaching.

Those regular breaks are a big hit with Caico too.

I really want to stay on the balanced calendar.

Because it just makes me more happy.

So, Caico's just fine waiting for her summer vacation, even as her sister is already off and running.

For the "PBS NewsHour" and Education Week, I'm Lisa Stark in Holt, Michigan.

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Should Kids Get Homework?

Homework gives elementary students a way to practice concepts, but too much can be harmful, experts say.

Mother helping son with homework at home

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Effective homework reinforces math, reading, writing or spelling skills, but in a way that's meaningful.

How much homework students should get has long been a source of debate among parents and educators. In recent years, some districts have even implemented no-homework policies, as students juggle sports, music and other activities after school.

Parents of elementary school students, in particular, have argued that after-school hours should be spent with family or playing outside rather than completing assignments. And there is little research to show that homework improves academic achievement for elementary students.

But some experts say there's value in homework, even for younger students. When done well, it can help students practice core concepts and develop study habits and time management skills. The key to effective homework, they say, is keeping assignments related to classroom learning, and tailoring the amount by age: Many experts suggest no homework for kindergartners, and little to none in first and second grade.

Value of Homework

Homework provides a chance to solidify what is being taught in the classroom that day, week or unit. Practice matters, says Janine Bempechat, clinical professor at Boston University 's Wheelock College of Education & Human Development.

"There really is no other domain of human ability where anybody would say you don't need to practice," she adds. "We have children practicing piano and we have children going to sports practice several days a week after school. You name the domain of ability and practice is in there."

Homework is also the place where schools and families most frequently intersect.

"The children are bringing things from the school into the home," says Paula S. Fass, professor emerita of history at the University of California—Berkeley and the author of "The End of American Childhood." "Before the pandemic, (homework) was the only real sense that parents had to what was going on in schools."

Harris Cooper, professor emeritus of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University and author of "The Battle Over Homework," examined more than 60 research studies on homework between 1987 and 2003 and found that — when designed properly — homework can lead to greater student success. Too much, however, is harmful. And homework has a greater positive effect on students in secondary school (grades 7-12) than those in elementary.

"Every child should be doing homework, but the amount and type that they're doing should be appropriate for their developmental level," he says. "For teachers, it's a balancing act. Doing away with homework completely is not in the best interest of children and families. But overburdening families with homework is also not in the child's or a family's best interest."

Negative Homework Assignments

Not all homework for elementary students involves completing a worksheet. Assignments can be fun, says Cooper, like having students visit educational locations, keep statistics on their favorite sports teams, read for pleasure or even help their parents grocery shop. The point is to show students that activities done outside of school can relate to subjects learned in the classroom.

But assignments that are just busy work, that force students to learn new concepts at home, or that are overly time-consuming can be counterproductive, experts say.

Homework that's just busy work.

Effective homework reinforces math, reading, writing or spelling skills, but in a way that's meaningful, experts say. Assignments that look more like busy work – projects or worksheets that don't require teacher feedback and aren't related to topics learned in the classroom – can be frustrating for students and create burdens for families.

"The mental health piece has definitely played a role here over the last couple of years during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the last thing we want to do is frustrate students with busy work or homework that makes no sense," says Dave Steckler, principal of Red Trail Elementary School in Mandan, North Dakota.

Homework on material that kids haven't learned yet.

With the pressure to cover all topics on standardized tests and limited time during the school day, some teachers assign homework that has not yet been taught in the classroom.

Not only does this create stress, but it also causes equity challenges. Some parents speak languages other than English or work several jobs, and they aren't able to help teach their children new concepts.

" It just becomes agony for both parents and the kids to get through this worksheet, and the goal becomes getting to the bottom of (the) worksheet with answers filled in without any understanding of what any of it matters for," says professor Susan R. Goldman, co-director of the Learning Sciences Research Institute at the University of Illinois—Chicago .

Homework that's overly time-consuming.

The standard homework guideline recommended by the National Parent Teacher Association and the National Education Association is the "10-minute rule" – 10 minutes of nightly homework per grade level. A fourth grader, for instance, would receive a total of 40 minutes of homework per night.

But this does not always happen, especially since not every student learns the same. A 2015 study published in the American Journal of Family Therapy found that primary school children actually received three times the recommended amount of homework — and that family stress increased along with the homework load.

Young children can only remain attentive for short periods, so large amounts of homework, especially lengthy projects, can negatively affect students' views on school. Some individual long-term projects – like having to build a replica city, for example – typically become an assignment for parents rather than students, Fass says.

"It's one thing to assign a project like that in which several kids are working on it together," she adds. "In (that) case, the kids do normally work on it. It's another to send it home to the families, where it becomes a burden and doesn't really accomplish very much."

Private vs. Public Schools

Do private schools assign more homework than public schools? There's little research on the issue, but experts say private school parents may be more accepting of homework, seeing it as a sign of academic rigor.

Of course, not all private schools are the same – some focus on college preparation and traditional academics, while others stress alternative approaches to education.

"I think in the academically oriented private schools, there's more support for homework from parents," says Gerald K. LeTendre, chair of educational administration at Pennsylvania State University—University Park . "I don't know if there's any research to show there's more homework, but it's less of a contentious issue."

How to Address Homework Overload

First, assess if the workload takes as long as it appears. Sometimes children may start working on a homework assignment, wander away and come back later, Cooper says.

"Parents don't see it, but they know that their child has started doing their homework four hours ago and still not done it," he adds. "They don't see that there are those four hours where their child was doing lots of other things. So the homework assignment itself actually is not four hours long. It's the way the child is approaching it."

But if homework is becoming stressful or workload is excessive, experts suggest parents first approach the teacher, followed by a school administrator.

"Many times, we can solve a lot of issues by having conversations," Steckler says, including by "sitting down, talking about the amount of homework, and what's appropriate and not appropriate."

Study Tips for High School Students

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The Pros and Cons of Homework

Updated: December 7, 2023

Published: January 23, 2020

The-Pros-and-Cons-Should-Students-Have-Homework

Homework is a word that most students dread hearing. After hours upon hours of sitting in class , the last thing we want is more schoolwork over our precious weekends. While it’s known to be a staple of traditional schooling, homework has also become a rather divise topic. Some feel as though homework is a necessary part of school, while others believe that the time could be better invested. Should students have homework? Have a closer look into the arguments on both sides to decide for yourself.

A college student completely swamped with homework.

Photo by energepic.com from Pexels

Why should students have homework, 1. homework encourages practice.

Many people believe that one of the positive effects of homework is that it encourages the discipline of practice. While it may be time consuming and boring compared to other activities, repetition is needed to get better at skills. Homework helps make concepts more clear, and gives students more opportunities when starting their career .

2. Homework Gets Parents Involved

Homework can be something that gets parents involved in their children’s lives if the environment is a healthy one. A parent helping their child with homework makes them take part in their academic success, and allows for the parent to keep up with what the child is doing in school. It can also be a chance to connect together.

3. Homework Teaches Time Management

Homework is much more than just completing the assigned tasks. Homework can develop time management skills , forcing students to plan their time and make sure that all of their homework assignments are done on time. By learning to manage their time, students also practice their problem-solving skills and independent thinking. One of the positive effects of homework is that it forces decision making and compromises to be made.

4. Homework Opens A Bridge Of Communication

Homework creates a connection between the student, the teacher, the school, and the parents. It allows everyone to get to know each other better, and parents can see where their children are struggling. In the same sense, parents can also see where their children are excelling. Homework in turn can allow for a better, more targeted educational plan for the student.

5. Homework Allows For More Learning Time

Homework allows for more time to complete the learning process. School hours are not always enough time for students to really understand core concepts, and homework can counter the effects of time shortages, benefiting students in the long run, even if they can’t see it in the moment.

6. Homework Reduces Screen Time

Many students in North America spend far too many hours watching TV. If they weren’t in school, these numbers would likely increase even more. Although homework is usually undesired, it encourages better study habits and discourages spending time in front of the TV. Homework can be seen as another extracurricular activity, and many families already invest a lot of time and money in different clubs and lessons to fill up their children’s extra time. Just like extracurricular activities, homework can be fit into one’s schedule.

A female student who doesn’t want to do homework.

The Other Side: Why Homework Is Bad

1. homework encourages a sedentary lifestyle.

Should students have homework? Well, that depends on where you stand. There are arguments both for the advantages and the disadvantages of homework.

While classroom time is important, playground time is just as important. If children are given too much homework, they won’t have enough playtime, which can impact their social development and learning. Studies have found that those who get more play get better grades in school , as it can help them pay closer attention in the classroom.

Children are already sitting long hours in the classroom, and homework assignments only add to these hours. Sedentary lifestyles can be dangerous and can cause health problems such as obesity. Homework takes away from time that could be spent investing in physical activity.

2. Homework Isn’t Healthy In Every Home

While many people that think homes are a beneficial environment for children to learn, not all homes provide a healthy environment, and there may be very little investment from parents. Some parents do not provide any kind of support or homework help, and even if they would like to, due to personal barriers, they sometimes cannot. Homework can create friction between children and their parents, which is one of the reasons why homework is bad .

3. Homework Adds To An Already Full-Time Job

School is already a full-time job for students, as they generally spend over 6 hours each day in class. Students also often have extracurricular activities such as sports, music, or art that are just as important as their traditional courses. Adding on extra hours to all of these demands is a lot for children to manage, and prevents students from having extra time to themselves for a variety of creative endeavors. Homework prevents self discovery and having the time to learn new skills outside of the school system. This is one of the main disadvantages of homework.

4. Homework Has Not Been Proven To Provide Results

Endless surveys have found that homework creates a negative attitude towards school, and homework has not been found to be linked to a higher level of academic success.

The positive effects of homework have not been backed up enough. While homework may help some students improve in specific subjects, if they have outside help there is no real proof that homework makes for improvements.

It can be a challenge to really enforce the completion of homework, and students can still get decent grades without doing their homework. Extra school time does not necessarily mean better grades — quality must always come before quantity.

Accurate practice when it comes to homework simply isn’t reliable. Homework could even cause opposite effects if misunderstood, especially since the reliance is placed on the student and their parents — one of the major reasons as to why homework is bad. Many students would rather cheat in class to avoid doing their homework at home, and children often just copy off of each other or from what they read on the internet.

5. Homework Assignments Are Overdone

The general agreement is that students should not be given more than 10 minutes a day per grade level. What this means is that a first grader should be given a maximum of 10 minutes of homework, while a second grader receives 20 minutes, etc. Many students are given a lot more homework than the recommended amount, however.

On average, college students spend as much as 3 hours per night on homework . By giving too much homework, it can increase stress levels and lead to burn out. This in turn provides an opposite effect when it comes to academic success.

The pros and cons of homework are both valid, and it seems as though the question of ‘‘should students have homework?’ is not a simple, straightforward one. Parents and teachers often are found to be clashing heads, while the student is left in the middle without much say.

It’s important to understand all the advantages and disadvantages of homework, taking both perspectives into conversation to find a common ground. At the end of the day, everyone’s goal is the success of the student.

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new techniques for tackling homework

Why Summer Homework is Vital to Students’ Success?

In the US and Canada, one of the special programs in schools is referred to as Advanced Placement (AP). The program was created to develop modalities for college-level education curricula and high school testing. What does this mean? It is a great way for students to prepare for college. But many have been asking the questions: “Is summer homework really important?” and “Is summer homework legal?” The answer is, “yes.” In this post, we will take a deeper look at summer homework, demonstrate its importance, and tell you why training during the holiday is important.

During holidays, especially during the summer vacation, most students want to enjoy the lovely outdoor environment. Therefore, they consider any additional engagement, such as summer assignments for students, a serious distraction. But you can still complete the assignment by seeking writing help. Our writing company comprises of professionals with years of academic writing and can help you write any type of assignment, essay, lab report, coursework, or thesis on your request.

What is the importance of summer homework?

Today, the importance of summer vacation for students is very clear. After a lengthy learning session, the students can take a break from books and be with their families. Also, it is a great time to travel and explore nature. So why do teachers give summer homework? Here are some benefits that you should know:

Summer homework is a perfect opportunity for students to learn how to work independently.
The summer homework helps to prevent students from forgetting what they learned.
Students are able to develop time management and problem-solving skills.
A great opportunity to review and synthesize what was taught in class.
Students learn how to set priorities and stay organized.
Learners can easily identify their weak points and improve on them.
A great way to get the parents involved more in a student’s education.

Tips for completing summer homework

Now that you know why summer vacation is important, the next question is, “how do you go about it?” Here are some great summer homework ideas that you can use. The first step is creating a schedule. This will give you a clear view of the time to use for vacation and doing homework. For example, you can designate several hours (one or two) every day or a few days of each week during the holiday. When you do your summer homework well, it could help you to get extra course credits. Here are other tips you can use for doing summer homework.

Start your homework early. The worst thing that you can do with summer homework is procrastination. If you start late, the chances are that you could get stuck when trying to do the homework in a hurry and miss points. Therefore, try to start as early as possible.
Reward yourself for progress achieved with homework. By rewarding yourself, you will be motivated to complete the assignment and practice various skills. You can reward yourself for various milestones such as completing a chapter of the assignment, collecting the right materials, and formatting the assignment. Good rewards can include your favorite movie or treat in the favorite restaurant.
Literature.
Mathematics.
Use online libraries to access relevant materials.
If you are far from your school premises where you can physically access the library, consider using online libraries. This will make it easy to read the latest journals and books, among other resources.

Combine summer homework with leisure

You know what? Your summer homework should not be a downer. Think of a unique way of doing homework. What about making it part of the holiday? If you have biology or geography summer homework, why not consider working on it when on holiday in a Miami hotel? After enjoying some great time with friends and dining with family, take two hours to do the assignment. So what do you need to achieve this?

Use your tablet or laptop to access different materials that you need to do the homework online.
If you are in a holiday hotel, relax in your room as you do your homework.
If your summer holiday is outdoors, such as a campsite, look for a quiet point to do the homework.
If you have a friend nearby, consider inviting him/her and do the homework together on your holiday destination.
Ask one of the family members to join you when doing the homework. Because your dad did the same type of assignments, he could come in handy to help you solve some problems.

Summer homework made simpler

Should students have summer homework? Should schools give summer homework? The answer is, absolutely yes. The assignment experts may help students to start seeing their courses as part of career progression. This means that learning becomes part of you so that you will no longer have to worry about forgetting. For example, if you aspire becoming an engineer, calculus ceases being a tough subject but a crucial component that you strive to achieve to reach the ultimate goal. This implies that summer homework and other assignments can be simple and fun.

How To Finish Summer Homework Assignments: 14 Tips To Save Your Child’s Summer

July 19, 2018

Many schools assign homework for students to complete before they return to class in September. This results in both parents and students having to learn how to finish summer reading and homework while balancing fun summer activities.

This summer, school is out and homework is in.

If your child has been putting off a pile of summer homework and reading assignments—he or she is not alone.

Reading books and writing assignments during the summer may not sound appealing to many students—or parents. Students can also get UK homework help if they need the some help with completing their assignment! But summer assignments are a great way to combat the effects of Summer Learning Loss and keep your child’s brain active over the break.

The Facts On Summer Learning Loss

Six weeks in the fall are spent re-learning old material Two months of reading skills are lost over the summer One month of overall learning is lost after summer vacation

With the right mindset, goals, and structure, you’ll have no problem finishing summer reading and homework between BBQ’s, ball games, and beach trips.

Follow these 14 steps to learn how to complete summer homework—without sacrificing summer fun.

14 Tips For Finishing Your Summer Homework Assignments

Make a game plan, tip 1: take a (quick) break.

It’s hard to go from a full year of schoolwork to tackling summer homework right off the bat. Let your child take a week off of homework at the start of the summer. This will give his or her brain a chance to relax and reset, and enjoy taking part in fun summer activities like sports.

Tip 2: Review Project Requirements

Don’t have your child dive head-first into his or her homework assignments. Review the expectations of each project with your child and discuss how much time he or she will need to complete them.

It would be a shame to waste time redoing a project because your child didn’t understand it initially. Reviewing all requirements is an important first step to starting off on the right foot.

Tip 3: Break Down Each Project Into A Series of Goals

Think about which assignments will take the longest and what your child will need to complete them during the summer. Break these larger assignments into a series of goals that need to be met to complete the project.

Examples of goals include “read 2 chapters per week” or “write essay introduction by July 15th”.

Set Aside The Right Amount Of Time

Tip 4: plan a weekly summer homework schedule.

This should be similar to a school year homework schedule, but altered for the summer. T he ideal amount of time to spend doing summer homework per week is 2-3 hours , so figure out where that time fits into your child’s average summer week.

Tip 5: Make A List Of Supplies & Resources

Your summer adventures could take you and your child to a wide variety of places. Make sure you both know what to bring with you so your child can tackle homework when not at home.

Examples of supplies include:

Textbooks or Assigned Novels

Tip 6: Choose Assignment Topics Based On Interest, Not Length

Sometimes students are given options when it comes to topics to research or books to read over the summer. Encourage your child to make these decisions based on the topics that interests him or her most—not which is “easiest”. This will result in your child enjoying his or her work, and allow him to benefit more from it.

Help Your Child Do Work On-The-Go

Tip 7: adjust your homework schedule for trips & vacations.

Exploring new places is an amazing learning experience, so don’t feel like you should sacrifice them for more homework time. Instead, plan your child’s homework schedule around these day trips and vacations.

If you know your child won’t have time to complete work while you’re away on a longer trip, make up those hours in the weeks before and after your trip.

Tip 8: Tackle The Work Your Child Can Do On-The-Go

While writing an essay is a project to save for when you return home, there are assignments that your child can tackle from just about anywhere. Options for homework to do on vacation include projects that are doable in small chunks—like reading a book or completing a math worksheet.

Tip 9: Bring Your Child’s Supplies With You

Remember that supplies list you created? Make sure you pack that backpack and bring it with you on your trip! It’d be a waste to find a spare hour to finish that math assignment, only to realize your child left his or her calculator at home.

Tip 10: Capitalize On The Quiet Times

Even the busiest trips include some quiet time. If you’re early for a dinner reservation, have your child complete a chapter of reading while you wait. Or, encourage your child to wake up 20 minutes early to answer some math questions without disruption.

Build A Support Team For Your Child

Tip 11: schedule a weekly workdate for your child & a friend.

There’s no reason your child has to work through summer homework alone. Make a weekly work date with a friend where they can tackle summer assignments together. If that friend is in the same class as your child, they can even discuss questions and challenges together. Build A Support Team For Your Child

Tip 12: Review Your Child’s Progress Every Week

Each week, speak with your child about the work he or she accomplished, and what is planned for the week ahead. If you know your child will be busy soon, work together to reorganize his or her homework schedule.

Tip 13: Touch Base With a Tutor (Or Enrol In Summer Learning Program)

A new set of eyes can make all the difference in making sure your child gets his or her summer assignments done efficiently and effectively. Your child’s tutor will be able to give constructive feedback and turn this feedback into goals for the upcoming school year.

If you want an extra head start for your child this school year, enroll him or her in a Summer Learning tutoring program to get started on the right track.

And Most Importantly…

Tip 14: reward your child with summer fun.

While schoolwork is important during the summer, it doesn’t have to come at the sacrifice of having fun. Whenever your child completes a new project or achieves a goal, reward him or her with a treat or fun summer activity.

Work Hard—And Play Hard—This Summer

Summer might seem like it will last forever, but the school year will be here before you know it. Don’t let your child fall into the habit of procrastination—instead, make a plan together and stick to it.

If you follow these tips, your child will finish summer homework and summer reading in no time…and develop great learning and study habits that will already be in place for next year!

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Should I give my kids homework over summer break?

Q: What is your perspective on having kids do "homework" over the summer? My two kids (finishing fourth and second grades) both love to read and are above grade-level readers, so I am not worried about that element. But I wonder whether, and how much, time should be spent reviewing math, etc., over break. I have used the summer workbooks before, and while the subject matter is usually easy for my oldest kid, getting him to actually do it (two pages, should take about 10 minutes) was like pulling fingernails out. Though in many ways he is bright, I think he can benefit from keeping a bit of the formal routine over the summer instead of completely checking out.

A: As a former English teacher, I have a strong bias when it comes to reading over the summer. I want every child of every age to read as much as they can, all of the time. Graphic novels, magazines, memoirs, books about sports and historical figures, any or all reading is worthwhile. I am pretty confident that every math teacher feels the same way. Math is easily integrated into every aspect of our lives, and I know math teachers would celebrate if parents helped their children do that.

The summer conundrum: Fight brain drain, or give kids a break?

Why do we teachers want our students practicing their math and reading skills? Because we know summer brain drain is real. We now also have to deal with the fact that technology is far more seductive than books and math. Gaming and social media, left unchecked, will consume all of our children’s attention, making it even harder for them to find their creativity and love of learning.

While I would prefer every child spend less time on technology this summer, I don’t believe in creating epic power struggles over worksheets. There is no quicker way to kill a love of math than forcing worksheets when the sun is shining and ice pops are calling. So, what should a parent do this summer?

1. More important than following a school’s advice blindly, take a real assessment of your child. Is he a happy student? A quick learner? Does she take longer to learn but it sticks once she gets it? Maybe you aren’t sure, and it is absolutely fine to email the teacher and ask about your child’s learning style.

10 ways to take the struggle out of homework

2. Understanding a child’s learning style will help you better assess how you would like to move forward with summer work. Would you like to complete one big chunk a week or lots of little sessions during the week? One week on, one week off? You decide what works best for your child and your family.

3. Fun should be the rule. If the worksheets look duller than dirt, search online for math games.

4. I also don’t have a problem with sweetening the pot when it comes to completing summer work. Call a family meeting with your children and say something like, “These are the books you must read and here is the math that must be completed. Let’s figure out how to make this fun and also, let’s see if there are some ways to earn some treats!” You and your children can cooperatively decide what can be earned, and I suggest you keep it to more of a celebration. While it generally backfires to create consequences when children don’t cooperate, if you create consequences with your children in a family meeting and they are agreed upon beforehand, that could also be a powerful way to help children complete their summer work.

5. No matter how much or how little homework your children complete, please create boundaries around technology this summer. A “bored” mind will find creativity (after some time and tantrums) so you should establish spaces and times when your children won’t have access to technology . These boundaries also will help your child transition more easily into their next grade as summer ends. Their focus will be stronger, their sleep will be better, and they will be more mentally prepared for school.

6. Keep your expectations reasonable. Families are busier than ever, and many students don’t have 12 weeks off. Between day care, all-day camps and other activities, children often are tired at the end of their summer days. Be sensitive that you may have created goals to complete work but it may not all get done. And that’s okay. Just do the best you can to encourage learning while still enjoying the downtime of summer.

Summer Homework And How To Tackle It

College and university students will bear witness that homework is not the best part of academic life. Whether it is a take-away essay or week-long research for a given case study, there is no reason to smile. Nonetheless, homework is a crucial component that you cannot separate from any form of learning.

But did you know that summer homework is easy to complete when you have experts by your side? Keep reading to see how this is possible.

Why Is Summer Reading Important?

What is summer homework for starters?

It is holiday assignments that students take during the summer holidays. Such tests attract a lot of criticism from anti-homework crusaders and students as well. But why is this the case?

They argue that summer is a vacation.
Summer homework may inconvenience some students whose families move during such holidays.
The summer assignments are not quality work.

These and more reasons have compelled many to advocate against summer holiday assignments. But is there a brighter side to summer homework? Should schools give summer homework in the first place? Yes, and there is a whole list of reasons that back up this stand:

It prepares students to achieve higher goals in their academic life. It helps to keep students busy in their academic work Summer homework helps to advance the research skills of students It ensures that students stay on track in their academic careers even when schools resume It helps students become independent Students can identify their weak zones and work on them Tutors can assess the intellectual level of students Students will be able to prioritize essential topics

For all these reasons, it is close to impossible to sideline summer homework from schools. So, should students have summer homework? 100% yes! Summer homework will help students better their grades and develop the art of time management. Even though they may seem tedious at first, their results are something that the student can smile about with a sense of fulfillment.

Summer reading is essential when it comes to academic life but also the social life of the student. Having such tasks on your table will help you avoid some common problems such as peer pressure and laziness due to idleness. Therefore, summer assignments for students should be encouraged all the more!

Is Summer Homework Legal?

A student whose summer plans were spoiled sued to end summer homework in Wisconsin in 2005. It sparked legal debate attracting the attention of top lawyers. The student claimed that the summer homework was creating unnecessary stress and giving them an unfair workload. But are these reasons viable to make summer homework illegal?

Some experts argue that summer holidays subject students to increasing pressure to perform. However, such force only serves to demoralize the students all the more. The anti-summer homework crusaders are for the argument that summer holidays are for relaxing and socializing.

But there is something that all these critics get wrong; summer homework is for helping students brush up on their knowledge. Imagine having your kid at home for two months only to go back to school without knowing what they learned in their previous semester! That would not only be detrimental to the student but to you as a parent too! You would have to cater for extra tuition fees to help the student recover the lost time.

Therefore, summer work for kids will help them slip back into the school routine when the new semester starts. However, there should be a balance where teachers should not burden the students with too much homework. It will enable the students to take part in summer camps, extracurricular activities, and even internships.

Since homework will help sharpen the minds of the students, there is nothing illegal about it. No matter how evil some critics may paint summer homework to be, it will remain a critical part of the students’ success story.

What will make summer homework legal or illegal is the quantity of work assigned and the motive therein. If the task still gives the students time to relax and break away from the classroom environment, it is not illegal.

I Hate Summer School; what Should I Do?

It is for sure that you might hate summer school for one reason or another. Having gone through a whole semester with coursework all through, you may want to hate summer school. Others may think of dropping school altogether because of the pressure. But there is a way out!

It’s all about your attitude: There has been a lot of negative talk concerning summer homework. As such, most students have developed a negative attitude towards it. However, if you create the right attitude, summer homework will be your favorite. This attitude will come by realizing the importance of summer homework. Talk to your teacher about it: Do you feel like the summer homework is overwhelming for you? Remember that tutors are human too, and they understand what students go through when handling such types of assignments. Planning is essential: It may be that you hate summer homework because of poor planning. You may have given more time to leisure activities while sidelining your academic work. However, striking a balance between the two will help you sail through smoothly. You will not have to sideline your academic career at the expense of your summer vacation. Using custom assistance would be helpful: Numerous homework writing services can come in handy. You do not have to fumble with your overwhelming summer homework while there are experts ready to help you. Summer math homework will be your favorite with the right writing help.

You can see that there is nothing that can prevent you from completing summer homework. With the right attitude and professional experts by your side, you can smile your way back to school after the summer holiday.

Should Schools Stop Giving Homework?

It is a question that can spark a heated debate in any academic circle. It is usually in line with the question, are teachers allowed to give homework over the holidays? Well, we have already mentioned some of the reasons why reading is essential at any time whatsoever. Nonetheless, here are more reasons why schools should not stop giving homework:

Homework helps to identify the student’s weakness
Students can handle assignments by themselves and develop a sense of independence
Reading gives teachers a chance to evaluate the performance of their students
It also helps students prepare for their exams
Homework is crucial in teaching strong research skills among students

From the reasons above, you can note that homework helps a great deal, and you cannot overlook its essence. The result for all these is top grades that will help students achieve their dreams in the future. Who can sweep such a valuable asset under the carpet?

However, there are instances when schools should stop giving homework to students. Some of these include:

When students are going through a busy academic calendar: This will help them relax their minds and be productive in class.
When homework becomes the end goal rather than a means to success: Homework should ignite students towards excellent performance in their end semester tests.
When there is no significant change in the students’ grades: Teachers should not just give out homework for its sake but for a specific reason. If the task is not serving its purpose, they should shelve it and seek other intervention means.

Homework should not be a severe black mark that causes students agony. On the contrary, it should motivate students to pursue their academic goals all the more and succeed. Homework should develop the student’s mind towards achieving better grades.

Are you looking for something to do this summer and do not know where to start? Here are summer reading assignment ideas to get you started:

Summer Homework Ideas

Research possible places for your dream summer vacation
Create an estimated budget of how much your trip will cost
What is the best year to visit a particular vacation camp?
What type of weather is convenient for the summer holidays?
Which relative inspires you, and why would you consider visiting them this summer?
Write a diary of your summer holiday, journaling the activities you undertook and observations made.
What positive things would you promote in your community during this summer holiday?
Write an essay about a favorite spot you visited during the summer holidays.
What is the best character/mood for a summer vacation?
Discuss how your lifestyle will affect how you will spend your summer holiday
How will your interests and values affect how you spend your summer holiday?
Write a book review of a favorite book you read during your summer vacation
Discover ways of saving costs during summer holidays
Write a speech of what you learned during your summer vacation
What is the impact of the memories you gathered during your summer holiday?
What is the effect of a summer holiday on a student’s academic performance?
What is the ideal holiday destination for summer vacations?
Illustrate some of the lessons you learned from your summer vacation
Why should schools allow students to go for summer vacations without giving them homework?
Why are weather patterns important when it comes to spending summer vacations?
How much homework should students have for their summer holidays?
Is it right for students to use writing help for their summer homework?
What is the role of parents in ensuring that students make the most of their summer holidays?
How can schools make summer holidays more involving and fun?
The best internship opportunities to pursue during summer vacations
How long should a summer vacation take for college and university students?
Why should teachers care about what students do during the summer holidays?
Effects of technology on how students spend their summer holidays
How coronavirus has changed the way students spend their summer vacations
Discuss the role of mentorship programs during the summer holidays

Don’t Want To Spend Time on Summer Homework?

You can bear witness that summer homework is essential and timely. They will positively impact the student’s academic performance and help them live a better social life. Parents and teachers can rest easy when students are engaged in meaningful and balanced summer homework.

Those who still have difficulties completing summer homework should not despair. Several online writing sites provide the necessary academic assistance for summer homework. All these sites understand the essence of these assignments and help students make the best out of them.

Do you want to succeed in your summer homework today? Try our professional writing help and see the difference!

Get on top of your homework.

7 Research-Based Reasons Why Students Should Not Have Homework: Academic Insights, Opposing Perspectives & Alternatives

In recent years, the question of why students should not have homework has become a topic of intense debate among educators, parents, and students themselves. This discussion stems from a growing body of research that challenges the traditional view of homework as an essential component of academic success. The notion that homework is an integral part of learning is being reevaluated in light of new findings about its effectiveness and impact on students’ overall well-being.

The push against homework is not just about the hours spent on completing assignments; it’s about rethinking the role of education in fostering the well-rounded development of young individuals. Critics argue that homework, particularly in excessive amounts, can lead to negative outcomes such as stress, burnout, and a diminished love for learning. Moreover, it often disproportionately affects students from disadvantaged backgrounds, exacerbating educational inequities. The debate also highlights the importance of allowing children to have enough free time for play, exploration, and family interaction, which are crucial for their social and emotional development.

Checking 13yo’s math homework & I have just one question. I can catch mistakes & help her correct. But what do kids do when their parent isn’t an Algebra teacher? Answer: They get frustrated. Quit. Get a bad grade. Think they aren’t good at math. How is homework fair??? — Jay Wamsted (@JayWamsted) March 24, 2022

As we delve into this discussion, we explore various facets of why reducing or even eliminating homework could be beneficial. We consider the research, weigh the pros and cons, and examine alternative approaches to traditional homework that can enhance learning without overburdening students.

Once you’ve finished this article, you’ll know:

Insights from Teachers and Education Industry Experts →
7 Reasons Why Students Should Not Have Homework →
Opposing Views on Homework Practices →
Exploring Alternatives to Homework →

Insights from Teachers and Education Industry Experts: Diverse Perspectives on Homework

In the ongoing conversation about the role and impact of homework in education, the perspectives of those directly involved in the teaching process are invaluable. Teachers and education industry experts bring a wealth of experience and insights from the front lines of learning. Their viewpoints, shaped by years of interaction with students and a deep understanding of educational methodologies, offer a critical lens through which we can evaluate the effectiveness and necessity of homework in our current educational paradigm.

Check out this video featuring Courtney White, a high school language arts teacher who gained widespread attention for her explanation of why she chooses not to assign homework.

Here are the insights and opinions from various experts in the educational field on this topic:

“I teach 1st grade. I had parents ask for homework. I explained that I don’t give homework. Home time is family time. Time to play, cook, explore and spend time together. I do send books home, but there is no requirement or checklist for reading them. Read them, enjoy them, and return them when your child is ready for more. I explained that as a parent myself, I know they are busy—and what a waste of energy it is to sit and force their kids to do work at home—when they could use that time to form relationships and build a loving home. Something kids need more than a few math problems a week.” — Colleen S. , 1st grade teacher

“The lasting educational value of homework at that age is not proven. A kid says the times tables [at school] because he studied the times tables last night. But over a long period of time, a kid who is drilled on the times tables at school, rather than as homework, will also memorize their times tables. We are worried about young children and their social emotional learning. And that has to do with physical activity, it has to do with playing with peers, it has to do with family time. All of those are very important and can be removed by too much homework.” — David Bloomfield , education professor at Brooklyn College and the City University of New York graduate center

“Homework in primary school has an effect of around zero. In high school it’s larger. (…) Which is why we need to get it right. Not why we need to get rid of it. It’s one of those lower hanging fruit that we should be looking in our primary schools to say, ‘Is it really making a difference?’” — John Hattie , professor

”Many kids are working as many hours as their overscheduled parents and it is taking a toll – psychologically and in many other ways too. We see kids getting up hours before school starts just to get their homework done from the night before… While homework may give kids one more responsibility, it ignores the fact that kids do not need to grow up and become adults at ages 10 or 12. With schools cutting recess time or eliminating playgrounds, kids absorb every single stress there is, only on an even higher level. Their brains and bodies need time to be curious, have fun, be creative and just be a kid.” — Pat Wayman, teacher and CEO of HowtoLearn.com

7 Reasons Why Students Should Not Have Homework

Let’s delve into the reasons against assigning homework to students. Examining these arguments offers important perspectives on the wider educational and developmental consequences of homework practices.

1. Elevated Stress and Health Consequences

The ongoing debate about homework often focuses on its educational value, but a vital aspect that cannot be overlooked is the significant stress and health consequences it brings to students. In the context of American life, where approximately 70% of people report moderate or extreme stress due to various factors like mass shootings, healthcare affordability, discrimination, racism, sexual harassment, climate change, presidential elections, and the need to stay informed, the additional burden of homework further exacerbates this stress, particularly among students.

Key findings and statistics reveal a worrying trend:

Overwhelming Student Stress: A staggering 72% of students report being often or always stressed over schoolwork, with a concerning 82% experiencing physical symptoms due to this stress.
Serious Health Issues: Symptoms linked to homework stress include sleep deprivation, headaches, exhaustion, weight loss, and stomach problems.
Sleep Deprivation: Despite the National Sleep Foundation recommending 8.5 to 9.25 hours of sleep for healthy adolescent development, students average just 6.80 hours of sleep on school nights. About 68% of students stated that schoolwork often or always prevented them from getting enough sleep, which is critical for their physical and mental health.
Turning to Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms: Alarmingly, the pressure from excessive homework has led some students to turn to alcohol and drugs as a way to cope with stress.

This data paints a concerning picture. Students, already navigating a world filled with various stressors, find themselves further burdened by homework demands. The direct correlation between excessive homework and health issues indicates a need for reevaluation. The goal should be to ensure that homework if assigned, adds value to students’ learning experiences without compromising their health and well-being.

By addressing the issue of homework-related stress and health consequences, we can take a significant step toward creating a more nurturing and effective educational environment. This environment would not only prioritize academic achievement but also the overall well-being and happiness of students, preparing them for a balanced and healthy life both inside and outside the classroom.

2. Inequitable Impact and Socioeconomic Disparities

In the discourse surrounding educational equity, homework emerges as a factor exacerbating socioeconomic disparities, particularly affecting students from lower-income families and those with less supportive home environments. While homework is often justified as a means to raise academic standards and promote equity, its real-world impact tells a different story.

The inequitable burden of homework becomes starkly evident when considering the resources required to complete it, especially in the digital age. Homework today often necessitates a computer and internet access – resources not readily available to all students. This digital divide significantly disadvantages students from lower-income backgrounds, deepening the chasm between them and their more affluent peers.

Key points highlighting the disparities:

Digital Inequity: Many students lack access to necessary technology for homework, with low-income families disproportionately affected.
Impact of COVID-19: The pandemic exacerbated these disparities as education shifted online, revealing the extent of the digital divide.
Educational Outcomes Tied to Income: A critical indicator of college success is linked more to family income levels than to rigorous academic preparation. Research indicates that while 77% of students from high-income families graduate from highly competitive colleges, only 9% from low-income families achieve the same . This disparity suggests that the pressure of heavy homework loads, rather than leveling the playing field, may actually hinder the chances of success for less affluent students.

Moreover, the approach to homework varies significantly across different types of schools. While some rigorous private and preparatory schools in both marginalized and affluent communities assign extreme levels of homework, many progressive schools focusing on holistic learning and self-actualization opt for no homework, yet achieve similar levels of college and career success. This contrast raises questions about the efficacy and necessity of heavy homework loads in achieving educational outcomes.

The issue of homework and its inequitable impact is not just an academic concern; it is a reflection of broader societal inequalities. By continuing practices that disproportionately burden students from less privileged backgrounds, the educational system inadvertently perpetuates the very disparities it seeks to overcome.

3. Negative Impact on Family Dynamics

Homework, a staple of the educational system, is often perceived as a necessary tool for academic reinforcement. However, its impact extends beyond the realm of academics, significantly affecting family dynamics. The negative repercussions of homework on the home environment have become increasingly evident, revealing a troubling pattern that can lead to conflict, mental health issues, and domestic friction.

A study conducted in 2015 involving 1,100 parents sheds light on the strain homework places on family relationships. The findings are telling:

Increased Likelihood of Conflicts: Families where parents did not have a college degree were 200% more likely to experience fights over homework.
Misinterpretations and Misunderstandings: Parents often misinterpret their children’s difficulties with homework as a lack of attention in school, leading to feelings of frustration and mistrust on both sides.
Discriminatory Impact: The research concluded that the current approach to homework disproportionately affects children whose parents have lower educational backgrounds, speak English as a second language, or belong to lower-income groups.

The issue is not confined to specific demographics but is a widespread concern. Samantha Hulsman, a teacher featured in Education Week Teacher , shared her personal experience with the toll that homework can take on family time. She observed that a seemingly simple 30-minute assignment could escalate into a three-hour ordeal, causing stress and strife between parents and children. Hulsman’s insights challenge the traditional mindset about homework, highlighting a shift towards the need for skills such as collaboration and problem-solving over rote memorization of facts.

The need of the hour is to reassess the role and amount of homework assigned to students. It’s imperative to find a balance that facilitates learning and growth without compromising the well-being of the family unit. Such a reassessment would not only aid in reducing domestic conflicts but also contribute to a more supportive and nurturing environment for children’s overall development.

4. Consumption of Free Time

In recent years, a growing chorus of voices has raised concerns about the excessive burden of homework on students, emphasizing how it consumes their free time and impedes their overall well-being. The issue is not just the quantity of homework, but its encroachment on time that could be used for personal growth, relaxation, and family bonding.

Authors Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish , in their book “The Case Against Homework,” offer an insightful window into the lives of families grappling with the demands of excessive homework. They share stories from numerous interviews conducted in the mid-2000s, highlighting the universal struggle faced by families across different demographics. A poignant account from a parent in Menlo Park, California, describes nightly sessions extending until 11 p.m., filled with stress and frustration, leading to a soured attitude towards school in both the child and the parent. This narrative is not isolated, as about one-third of the families interviewed expressed feeling crushed by the overwhelming workload.

Key points of concern:

Excessive Time Commitment: Students, on average, spend over 6 hours in school each day, and homework adds significantly to this time, leaving little room for other activities.
Impact on Extracurricular Activities: Homework infringes upon time for sports, music, art, and other enriching experiences, which are as crucial as academic courses.
Stifling Creativity and Self-Discovery: The constant pressure of homework limits opportunities for students to explore their interests and learn new skills independently.

The National Education Association (NEA) and the National PTA (NPTA) recommend a “10 minutes of homework per grade level” standard, suggesting a more balanced approach. However, the reality often far exceeds this guideline, particularly for older students. The impact of this overreach is profound, affecting not just academic performance but also students’ attitudes toward school, their self-confidence, social skills, and overall quality of life.

Furthermore, the intense homework routine’s effectiveness is doubtful, as it can overwhelm students and detract from the joy of learning. Effective learning builds on prior knowledge in an engaging way, but excessive homework in a home setting may be irrelevant and uninteresting. The key challenge is balancing homework to enhance learning without overburdening students, allowing time for holistic growth and activities beyond academics. It’s crucial to reassess homework policies to support well-rounded development.

5. Challenges for Students with Learning Disabilities

Homework, a standard educational tool, poses unique challenges for students with learning disabilities, often leading to a frustrating and disheartening experience. These challenges go beyond the typical struggles faced by most students and can significantly impede their educational progress and emotional well-being.

Child psychologist Kenneth Barish’s insights in Psychology Today shed light on the complex relationship between homework and students with learning disabilities:

Homework as a Painful Endeavor: For students with learning disabilities, completing homework can be likened to “running with a sprained ankle.” It’s a task that, while doable, is fraught with difficulty and discomfort.
Misconceptions about Laziness: Often, children who struggle with homework are perceived as lazy. However, Barish emphasizes that these students are more likely to be frustrated, discouraged, or anxious rather than unmotivated.
Limited Improvement in School Performance: The battles over homework rarely translate into significant improvement in school for these children, challenging the conventional notion of homework as universally beneficial.

These points highlight the need for a tailored approach to homework for students with learning disabilities. It’s crucial to recognize that the traditional homework model may not be the most effective or appropriate method for facilitating their learning. Instead, alternative strategies that accommodate their unique needs and learning styles should be considered.

In conclusion, the conventional homework paradigm needs reevaluation, particularly concerning students with learning disabilities. By understanding and addressing their unique challenges, educators can create a more inclusive and supportive educational environment. This approach not only aids in their academic growth but also nurtures their confidence and overall development, ensuring that they receive an equitable and empathetic educational experience.

6. Critique of Underlying Assumptions about Learning

The longstanding belief in the educational sphere that more homework automatically translates to more learning is increasingly being challenged. Critics argue that this assumption is not only flawed but also unsupported by solid evidence, questioning the efficacy of homework as an effective learning tool.

Alfie Kohn , a prominent critic of homework, aptly compares students to vending machines in this context, suggesting that the expectation of inserting an assignment and automatically getting out of learning is misguided. Kohn goes further, labeling homework as the “greatest single extinguisher of children’s curiosity.” This critique highlights a fundamental issue: the potential of homework to stifle the natural inquisitiveness and love for learning in children.

The lack of concrete evidence supporting the effectiveness of homework is evident in various studies:

Marginal Effectiveness of Homework: A study involving 28,051 high school seniors found that the effectiveness of homework was marginal, and in some cases, it was counterproductive, leading to more academic problems than solutions.
No Correlation with Academic Achievement: Research in “ National Differences, Global Similarities ” showed no correlation between homework and academic achievement in elementary students, and any positive correlation in middle or high school diminished with increasing homework loads.
Increased Academic Pressure: The Teachers College Record published findings that homework adds to academic pressure and societal stress, exacerbating performance gaps between students from different socioeconomic backgrounds.

These findings bring to light several critical points:

Quality Over Quantity: According to a recent article in Monitor on Psychology , experts concur that the quality of homework assignments, along with the quality of instruction, student motivation, and inherent ability, is more crucial for academic success than the quantity of homework.
Counterproductive Nature of Excessive Homework: Excessive homework can lead to more academic challenges, particularly for students already facing pressures from other aspects of their lives.
Societal Stress and Performance Gaps: Homework can intensify societal stress and widen the academic performance divide.

The emerging consensus from these studies suggests that the traditional approach to homework needs rethinking. Rather than focusing on the quantity of assignments, educators should consider the quality and relevance of homework, ensuring it truly contributes to learning and development. This reassessment is crucial for fostering an educational environment that nurtures curiosity and a love for learning, rather than extinguishing it.

7. Issues with Homework Enforcement, Reliability, and Temptation to Cheat

In the academic realm, the enforcement of homework is a subject of ongoing debate, primarily due to its implications on student integrity and the true value of assignments. The challenges associated with homework enforcement often lead to unintended yet significant issues, such as cheating, copying, and a general undermining of educational values.

Key points highlighting enforcement challenges:

Difficulty in Enforcing Completion: Ensuring that students complete their homework can be a complex task, and not completing homework does not always correlate with poor grades.
Reliability of Homework Practice: The reliability of homework as a practice tool is undermined when students, either out of desperation or lack of understanding, choose shortcuts over genuine learning. This approach can lead to the opposite of the intended effect, especially when assignments are not well-aligned with the students’ learning levels or interests.
Temptation to Cheat: The issue of cheating is particularly troubling. According to a report by The Chronicle of Higher Education , under the pressure of at-home assignments, many students turn to copying others’ work, plagiarizing, or using creative technological “hacks.” This tendency not only questions the integrity of the learning process but also reflects the extreme stress that homework can induce.
Parental Involvement in Completion: As noted in The American Journal of Family Therapy , this raises concerns about the authenticity of the work submitted. When parents complete assignments for their children, it not only deprives the students of the opportunity to learn but also distorts the purpose of homework as a learning aid.

In conclusion, the challenges of homework enforcement present a complex problem that requires careful consideration. The focus should shift towards creating meaningful, manageable, and quality-driven assignments that encourage genuine learning and integrity, rather than overwhelming students and prompting counterproductive behaviors.

Addressing Opposing Views on Homework Practices

While opinions on homework policies are diverse, understanding different viewpoints is crucial. In the following sections, we will examine common arguments supporting homework assignments, along with counterarguments that offer alternative perspectives on this educational practice.

1. Improvement of Academic Performance

Homework is commonly perceived as a means to enhance academic performance, with the belief that it directly contributes to better grades and test scores. This view posits that through homework, students reinforce what they learn in class, leading to improved understanding and retention, which ultimately translates into higher academic achievement.

However, the question of why students should not have homework becomes pertinent when considering the complex relationship between homework and academic performance. Studies have indicated that excessive homework doesn’t necessarily equate to higher grades or test scores. Instead, too much homework can backfire, leading to stress and fatigue that adversely affect a student’s performance. Reuters highlights an intriguing correlation suggesting that physical activity may be more conducive to academic success than additional homework, underscoring the importance of a holistic approach to education that prioritizes both physical and mental well-being for enhanced academic outcomes.

2. Reinforcement of Learning

Homework is traditionally viewed as a tool to reinforce classroom learning, enabling students to practice and retain material. However, research suggests its effectiveness is ambiguous. In instances where homework is well-aligned with students’ abilities and classroom teachings, it can indeed be beneficial. Particularly for younger students , excessive homework can cause burnout and a loss of interest in learning, counteracting its intended purpose.

Furthermore, when homework surpasses a student’s capability, it may induce frustration and confusion rather than aid in learning. This challenges the notion that more homework invariably leads to better understanding and retention of educational content.

3. Development of Time Management Skills

Homework is often considered a crucial tool in helping students develop important life skills such as time management and organization. The idea is that by regularly completing assignments, students learn to allocate their time efficiently and organize their tasks effectively, skills that are invaluable in both academic and personal life.

However, the impact of homework on developing these skills is not always positive. For younger students, especially, an overwhelming amount of homework can be more of a hindrance than a help. Instead of fostering time management and organizational skills, an excessive workload often leads to stress and anxiety . These negative effects can impede the learning process and make it difficult for students to manage their time and tasks effectively, contradicting the original purpose of homework.

4. Preparation for Future Academic Challenges

Homework is often touted as a preparatory tool for future academic challenges that students will encounter in higher education and their professional lives. The argument is that by tackling homework, students build a foundation of knowledge and skills necessary for success in more advanced studies and in the workforce, fostering a sense of readiness and confidence.

Contrarily, an excessive homework load, especially from a young age, can have the opposite effect . It can instill a negative attitude towards education, dampening students’ enthusiasm and willingness to embrace future academic challenges. Overburdening students with homework risks disengagement and loss of interest, thereby defeating the purpose of preparing them for future challenges. Striking a balance in the amount and complexity of homework is crucial to maintaining student engagement and fostering a positive attitude towards ongoing learning.

5. Parental Involvement in Education

Homework often acts as a vital link connecting parents to their child’s educational journey, offering insights into the school’s curriculum and their child’s learning process. This involvement is key in fostering a supportive home environment and encouraging a collaborative relationship between parents and the school. When parents understand and engage with what their children are learning, it can significantly enhance the educational experience for the child.

However, the line between involvement and over-involvement is thin. When parents excessively intervene by completing their child’s homework, it can have adverse effects . Such actions not only diminish the educational value of homework but also rob children of the opportunity to develop problem-solving skills and independence. This over-involvement, coupled with disparities in parental ability to assist due to variations in time, knowledge, or resources, may lead to unequal educational outcomes, underlining the importance of a balanced approach to parental participation in homework.

Exploring Alternatives to Homework and Finding a Middle Ground

In the ongoing debate about the role of homework in education, it’s essential to consider viable alternatives and strategies to minimize its burden. While completely eliminating homework may not be feasible for all educators, there are several effective methods to reduce its impact and offer more engaging, student-friendly approaches to learning.

Alternatives to Traditional Homework

Project-Based Learning: This method focuses on hands-on, long-term projects where students explore real-world problems. It encourages creativity, critical thinking, and collaborative skills, offering a more engaging and practical learning experience than traditional homework. For creative ideas on school projects, especially related to the solar system, be sure to explore our dedicated article on solar system projects .
Flipped Classrooms: Here, students are introduced to new content through videos or reading materials at home and then use class time for interactive activities. This approach allows for more personalized and active learning during school hours.
Reading for Pleasure: Encouraging students to read books of their choice can foster a love for reading and improve literacy skills without the pressure of traditional homework assignments. This approach is exemplified by Marion County, Florida , where public schools implemented a no-homework policy for elementary students. Instead, they are encouraged to read nightly for 20 minutes . Superintendent Heidi Maier’s decision was influenced by research showing that while homework offers minimal benefit to young students, regular reading significantly boosts their learning. For book recommendations tailored to middle school students, take a look at our specially curated article .

Ideas for Minimizing Homework

Limiting Homework Quantity: Adhering to guidelines like the “ 10-minute rule ” (10 minutes of homework per grade level per night) can help ensure that homework does not become overwhelming.
Quality Over Quantity: Focus on assigning meaningful homework that is directly relevant to what is being taught in class, ensuring it adds value to students’ learning.
Homework Menus: Offering students a choice of assignments can cater to diverse learning styles and interests, making homework more engaging and personalized.
Integrating Technology: Utilizing educational apps and online platforms can make homework more interactive and enjoyable, while also providing immediate feedback to students. To gain deeper insights into the role of technology in learning environments, explore our articles discussing the benefits of incorporating technology in classrooms and a comprehensive list of educational VR apps . These resources will provide you with valuable information on how technology can enhance the educational experience.

For teachers who are not ready to fully eliminate homework, these strategies offer a compromise, ensuring that homework supports rather than hinders student learning. By focusing on quality, relevance, and student engagement, educators can transform homework from a chore into a meaningful component of education that genuinely contributes to students’ academic growth and personal development. In this way, we can move towards a more balanced and student-centric approach to learning, both in and out of the classroom.

Useful Resources

Is homework a good idea or not? by BBC
The Great Homework Debate: What’s Getting Lost in the Hype
Alternative Homework Ideas

The evidence and arguments presented in the discussion of why students should not have homework call for a significant shift in homework practices. It’s time for educators and policymakers to rethink and reformulate homework strategies, focusing on enhancing the quality, relevance, and balance of assignments. By doing so, we can create a more equitable, effective, and student-friendly educational environment that fosters learning, well-being, and holistic development.

“Here’s what an education expert says about that viral ‘no-homework’ policy”, Insider
“John Hattie on BBC Radio 4: Homework in primary school has an effect of zero”, Visible Learning
HowtoLearn.com
“Time Spent On Homework Statistics [Fresh Research]”, Gitnux
“Stress in America”, American Psychological Association (APA)
“Homework hurts high-achieving students, study says”, The Washington Post
“National Sleep Foundation’s updated sleep duration recommendations: final report”, National Library of Medicine
“A multi-method exploratory study of stress, coping, and substance use among high school youth in private schools”, Frontiers
“The Digital Revolution is Leaving Poorer Kids Behind”, Statista
“The digital divide has left millions of school kids behind”, CNET
“The Digital Divide: What It Is, and What’s Being Done to Close It”, Investopedia
“COVID-19 exposed the digital divide. Here’s how we can close it”, World Economic Forum
“PBS NewsHour: Biggest Predictor of College Success is Family Income”, America’s Promise Alliance
“Homework and Family Stress: With Consideration of Parents’ Self Confidence, Educational Level, and Cultural Background”, Taylor & Francis Online
“What Do You Mean My Kid Doesn’t Have Homework?”, EducationWeek
“Excerpt From The Case Against Homework”, Penguin Random House Canada
“How much homework is too much?”, neaToday
“The Nation’s Report Card: A First Look: 2013 Mathematics and Reading”, National Center for Education Statistics
“Battles Over Homework: Advice For Parents”, Psychology Today
“How Homework Is Destroying Teens’ Health”, The Lion’s Roar
“ Breaking the Homework Habit”, Education World
“Testing a model of school learning: Direct and indirect effects on academic achievement”, ScienceDirect
“National Differences, Global Similarities: World Culture and the Future of Schooling”, Stanford University Press
“When school goes home: Some problems in the organization of homework”, APA PsycNet
“Is homework a necessary evil?”, APA PsycNet
“Epidemic of copying homework catalyzed by technology”, Redwood Bark
“High-Tech Cheating Abounds, and Professors Bear Some Blame”, The Chronicle of Higher Education
“Homework and Family Stress: With Consideration of Parents’ Self Confidence, Educational Level, and Cultural Background”, ResearchGate
“Kids who get moving may also get better grades”, Reuters
“Does Homework Improve Academic Achievement? A Synthesis of Research, 1987–2003”, SageJournals
“Is it time to get rid of homework?”, USAToday
“Stanford research shows pitfalls of homework”, Stanford
“Florida school district bans homework, replaces it with daily reading”, USAToday
“Encouraging Students to Read: Tips for High School Teachers”, wgu.edu
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Why We Should Give Students a Homework Break Over the Holidays

Illustration of a person riding a bicycle into a forest

I have so many fond memories from holiday seasons growing up: the smell of delicious food being made by my Mexican and Filipino families, warm light on the faces of my relatives, and lots of laughter. As I got older, though, things changed—mostly because I had so much homework to do.

Instead of joking with our relatives at the holidays, my brother and I would often sequester ourselves at the edge of the room, thick textbooks open and pens in our hands. Sometimes, we’d miss events altogether. When we did attend, the ramifications could be intense. During one spring break, I chose to go to an Easter party with my family. But by midnight, I was stress-weeping because I had so much work to do by the next day.

As a teacher, I now understand the temptation to give work over school breaks. There never seems to be enough time to do the projects or read the texts I’d like to with my kids, and asking students to work or read during breaks eases that crunch. I also worry that my students will lose some of their learning in the weeks they are gone.

Recently, though, my school created a new homework policy that, among other things, encourages us to avoid giving students work over extended school breaks. Our administration cited studies that raise questions about the benefits of hefty doses of homework.

I worried about how this new plan would affect my curriculum pacing, and about what my students might “lose.” But I realized that my concerns were really about my desires, not what was best for my students.

The new policy led me to re-evaluate my assignments and timing, and I ended up being able to make adjustments so my kids could complete necessary projects without working when they should be recharging. I’d worried about my students’ learning, but recent research challenges our long-held belief that students’ learning “slides” significantly over long breaks.

Taking the stress of homework out of my students’ holiday breaks is important. They deserve an opportunity to relax and rejuvenate as much as I do—particularly if they are overscheduled to begin with. Young or old, we all need rejuvenation time. In addition, more studies are demonstrating the benefits of down time for students. Having unstructured time recharges them, but also allows their brains to build connections that strengthen and improve their executive functioning.

We need to be mindful of other factors that complicate homework assignments over holiday breaks. We don’t always know what our students’ lives are like outside our classrooms. Do they struggle with access to the resources necessary to complete assignments? Do they have stressful home situations?

Here are a few ways we can send our students off on a positive note when they leave us for holiday breaks. I’m trying them myself this winter!

Provide activities that support students reconnecting with themselves, their loved ones, or their community.

While we want to avoid giving mandatory work to students, we can offer opportunities and ideas for learning-friendly activities they can do during their break. Maybe that’s an optional/extra credit project that asks students to interview a family or community member (though we should also provide time after break for those who couldn’t work over break). Or maybe we can offer students some ideas about how they could use their time to take care of themselves or their communities. We could provide reflection questions once they’re back from break, to help them find meaning in the experience. Encouraging students to use their time to volunteer or take care of themselves allows us to help our kids grow not just as students, but as people.

Offer opportunities to find a new passion, set goals, or reflect.

While some students may travel or connect with family, some of our kids may have a lot of free time over their break. We can encourage them to use the time to set goals for the year, dream big and draw or write their five-year plan (remind them this is for fun and plans will change!), or reflect on their year or life so far. We can also encourage students to discover something they’re passionate about, or use the time to pursue something they love.

Deepen your relationships with students and allow them to open up to you.

Sometimes, our kids are simply not given the space to dive deeply into something that lets them tell us who they are. Give students a project that allows them to explore their identity or have them write a story about their lives. This will not only provide some critical thinking, reading, or writing enrichment, but more importantly will provide valuable insight into our students’ lives and help us build deeper connections with our students. We can return the favor by completing the project ourselves or writing a story and sharing it with them.

After the break, see what stuck with students.

Instead of returning from break with the mindset of what was “lost,” give students a chance to share everything they remember from the last unit. Instead of assuming they all had a great time they want to share, welcome kids back with an opportunity to celebrate the experiences that stuck with them from their breaks. Help students generate a class-created study guide so they can review what they learned before the break. This gives them space to support one another and remind each other what they learned, as well as gives us an opportunity to praise students for what they’ve retained. It also provides important feedback for us on what stuck over the break and what we need to reteach.

Ultimately, our students look to us not just for academic growth, but to support their growth as human beings as well. Taking away homework stress over break may cause us to change our short-term plans, but providing them with opportunities and resources instead can have some long-term benefits that can change their self-perception and their lives more than a packet of homework ever could.

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Student Opinion

Should We Get Rid of Homework?

Some educators are pushing to get rid of homework. Would that be a good thing?

By Jeremy Engle and Michael Gonchar

Do you like doing homework? Do you think it has benefited you educationally?

Has homework ever helped you practice a difficult skill — in math, for example — until you mastered it? Has it helped you learn new concepts in history or science? Has it helped to teach you life skills, such as independence and responsibility? Or, have you had a more negative experience with homework? Does it stress you out, numb your brain from busywork or actually make you fall behind in your classes?

Should we get rid of homework?

In “ The Movement to End Homework Is Wrong, ” published in July, the Times Opinion writer Jay Caspian Kang argues that homework may be imperfect, but it still serves an important purpose in school. The essay begins:

Do students really need to do their homework? As a parent and a former teacher, I have been pondering this question for quite a long time. The teacher side of me can acknowledge that there were assignments I gave out to my students that probably had little to no academic value. But I also imagine that some of my students never would have done their basic reading if they hadn’t been trained to complete expected assignments, which would have made the task of teaching an English class nearly impossible. As a parent, I would rather my daughter not get stuck doing the sort of pointless homework I would occasionally assign, but I also think there’s a lot of value in saying, “Hey, a lot of work you’re going to end up doing in your life is pointless, so why not just get used to it?” I certainly am not the only person wondering about the value of homework. Recently, the sociologist Jessica McCrory Calarco and the mathematics education scholars Ilana Horn and Grace Chen published a paper, “ You Need to Be More Responsible: The Myth of Meritocracy and Teachers’ Accounts of Homework Inequalities .” They argued that while there’s some evidence that homework might help students learn, it also exacerbates inequalities and reinforces what they call the “meritocratic” narrative that says kids who do well in school do so because of “individual competence, effort and responsibility.” The authors believe this meritocratic narrative is a myth and that homework — math homework in particular — further entrenches the myth in the minds of teachers and their students. Calarco, Horn and Chen write, “Research has highlighted inequalities in students’ homework production and linked those inequalities to differences in students’ home lives and in the support students’ families can provide.”

Mr. Kang argues:

But there’s a defense of homework that doesn’t really have much to do with class mobility, equality or any sense of reinforcing the notion of meritocracy. It’s one that became quite clear to me when I was a teacher: Kids need to learn how to practice things. Homework, in many cases, is the only ritualized thing they have to do every day. Even if we could perfectly equalize opportunity in school and empower all students not to be encumbered by the weight of their socioeconomic status or ethnicity, I’m not sure what good it would do if the kids didn’t know how to do something relentlessly, over and over again, until they perfected it. Most teachers know that type of progress is very difficult to achieve inside the classroom, regardless of a student’s background, which is why, I imagine, Calarco, Horn and Chen found that most teachers weren’t thinking in a structural inequalities frame. Holistic ideas of education, in which learning is emphasized and students can explore concepts and ideas, are largely for the types of kids who don’t need to worry about class mobility. A defense of rote practice through homework might seem revanchist at this moment, but if we truly believe that schools should teach children lessons that fall outside the meritocracy, I can’t think of one that matters more than the simple satisfaction of mastering something that you were once bad at. That takes homework and the acknowledgment that sometimes a student can get a question wrong and, with proper instruction, eventually get it right.

Students, read the entire article, then tell us:

Should we get rid of homework? Why, or why not?

Is homework an outdated, ineffective or counterproductive tool for learning? Do you agree with the authors of the paper that homework is harmful and worsens inequalities that exist between students’ home circumstances?

Or do you agree with Mr. Kang that homework still has real educational value?

When you get home after school, how much homework will you do? Do you think the amount is appropriate, too much or too little? Is homework, including the projects and writing assignments you do at home, an important part of your learning experience? Or, in your opinion, is it not a good use of time? Explain.

In these letters to the editor , one reader makes a distinction between elementary school and high school:

Homework’s value is unclear for younger students. But by high school and college, homework is absolutely essential for any student who wishes to excel. There simply isn’t time to digest Dostoyevsky if you only ever read him in class.

What do you think? How much does grade level matter when discussing the value of homework?

Is there a way to make homework more effective?

If you were a teacher, would you assign homework? What kind of assignments would you give and why?

Want more writing prompts? You can find all of our questions in our Student Opinion column . Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate them into your classroom.

Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

Jeremy Engle joined The Learning Network as a staff editor in 2018 after spending more than 20 years as a classroom humanities and documentary-making teacher, professional developer and curriculum designer working with students and teachers across the country. More about Jeremy Engle

IMAGES

Top 25 Reasons Why Students Should Have Homework
Professional Summer Homework: Pros And Cons (2022)
Top 21 Reasons Why Should Students Have Homework?
Fresh Summer Homework Ideas
Purpose of Summer Homework?
🏷️ Reasons why you should do your homework. 20 reasons why you should

VIDEO

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COMMENTS

Should kids get summer homework?
Some parents argue summer homework is nothing more than bland busywork that saps the joy and spontaneity from summer. So says Sara Bennett, founder of StopHomework.com. "Even if there is a summer slide, I don't think homework is the solution," Bennett says. "Kids don't have enough downtime during the school year.
Should Schools Assign Summer Homework? Educators Weigh In
While "play" was a popular response to the question of what type of work kids should be assigned in the summer, some educators suggested that students of all ages read during break to stay ...
Should Students Have Summer Work?
Summer work allows students to develop discipline, time management skills, and a sense of responsibility. By setting goals, adhering to deadlines, and completing assignments, students cultivate essential qualities beneficial for future academic and professional endeavors. One way to develop such skills is by creating a time management calendar ...
Should Schools Give Summer Homework?
Children learn best when instruction is continuous. A long summer vacation in which students do no schoolwork disrupts the rhythm of learning, leads to forgetting, and requires time be spent reviewing old material when students return to school in the fall. Summer homework can help prevent this. Studies show that, on average, achievement test ...
The Crush of Summer Homework
Homework should help to reinforce content or materials that teachers have taught or covered in class. But in many cases today, homework has been reduced to busy work that posseses minimal value in developing deeper understanding. That said, assigning summer homework is a good idea in theory.
Should Schools Give Summer Homework?
Doing homework over the summer helps kids continue to learn between school years. It can also help students feel more confident as they enter the next grade. They'll be prepared and have the skills they need to understand assignments. Homework could be a better solution than summer school too. I went to summer school after first grade and ...
Does homework still have value? A Johns Hopkins education expert weighs
The necessity of homework has been a subject of debate since at least as far back as the 1890s, according to Joyce L. Epstein, co-director of the Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships at Johns Hopkins University. "It's always been the case that parents, kids—and sometimes teachers, too—wonder if this is just busy work ...
Key Lessons: What Research Says About the Value of Homework
Too much homework may diminish its effectiveness. While research on the optimum amount of time students should spend on homework is limited, there are indications that for high school students, 1½ to 2½ hours per night is optimum. Middle school students appear to benefit from smaller amounts (less than 1 hour per night).
Lesson Plan: Should Schools Give Summer Homework?
3. Core Skill Practice. Project or distribute Analyzing Authors' Claims and have students use the activity to analyze and evaluate each author's arguments. Analyze Cooper's view. (Cooper argues in favor of schools assigning summer homework. He says that a long summer vacation without schoolwork leads to forgetting and results in teachers ...
Summer Homework: A How-To Guide for Parents and Kids
Make sure to do this before July 4th so the summer doesn't get away from you, and use your list of books that you picked out. Then, when you get your books back home…. Step 4: Sit down with them and make a plan. Don't assume your child will gleefully run up to his room and begin flipping the pages.
The pros and cons of schools ditching a long summer break
For many American students and their families, summer is sacrosanct, a nice long break from school to recharge and refresh. But students in about 4 percent of public schools attend on a year-round ...
Should Kids Get Homework?
Too much, however, is harmful. And homework has a greater positive effect on students in secondary school (grades 7-12) than those in elementary. "Every child should be doing homework, but the ...
Why is Homework Important?
Homework is an opportunity to learn and retain information in an environment where they feel most comfortable, which can help accelerate their development. 5. Using Learning Materials. Throughout a child's education, understanding how to use resources such as libraries and the internet is important. Homework teaches children to actively ...
Should my child work on school skills over the summer or ...
When it comes to certain kinds of knowledge, kids really do have to "use it or lose it.". This is especially true for kids with learning and thinking differences. Summer learning loss can set kids with learning and thinking differences back as much as two to three months. (This is why some students with IEPs or 504 plans may qualify for ...
The Pros and Cons: Should Students Have Homework?
Homework allows for more time to complete the learning process. School hours are not always enough time for students to really understand core concepts, and homework can counter the effects of time shortages, benefiting students in the long run, even if they can't see it in the moment. 6. Homework Reduces Screen Time.
Why homework matters
Homework is the perennial bogeyman of K-12 education. Any given year, you'll find people arguing that students, especially those in elementary school, should have far less homework—or none at all.I have the opposite opinion. The longer I run schools—and it has now been more than sixteen years—the more convinced I am that homework is not only necessary, but a linchpin to effective K ...
The Importance of Summer Homework Explained
Here are some benefits that you should know: Summer homework is a perfect opportunity for students to learn how to work independently. The summer homework helps to prevent students from forgetting what they learned. Students are able to develop time management and problem-solving skills.
How To Finish Summer Homework: 14 Tips That Work
Tip 1: Take A (Quick) Break. It's hard to go from a full year of schoolwork to tackling summer homework right off the bat. Let your child take a week off of homework at the start of the summer. This will give his or her brain a chance to relax and reset, and enjoy taking part in fun summer activities like sports.
Should I give my kids homework over summer break?
6. Keep your expectations reasonable. Families are busier than ever, and many students don't have 12 weeks off. Between day care, all-day camps and other activities, children often are tired at ...
Professional Summer Homework: Pros And Cons (2022)
Yes, and there is a whole list of reasons that back up this stand: It prepares students to achieve higher goals in their academic life. It helps to keep students busy in their academic work. Summer homework helps to advance the research skills of students. It ensures that students stay on track in their academic careers even when schools resume ...
Why Students Should Not Have Homework
Examining these arguments offers important perspectives on the wider educational and developmental consequences of homework practices. 1. Elevated Stress and Health Consequences. According to Gitnux, U.S. high school students who have over 20 hours of homework per week are 27% more likely to encounter health issues.
Why We Should Give Students a Homework Break Over the Holidays
Taking the stress of homework out of my students' holiday breaks is important. They deserve an opportunity to relax and rejuvenate as much as I do—particularly if they are overscheduled to ...
Should We Get Rid of Homework?
Homework, in many cases, is the only ritualized thing they have to do every day. Even if we could perfectly equalize opportunity in school and empower all students not to be encumbered by the ...
How to write a discussion text
Set them the challenge of writing their own discussion piece on a topic using all the techniques outlined by Leah. You could also use the detailed explanation of writing in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd ...