homework for next class

Smart Classroom Management

A Simple, Effective Homework Plan For Teachers: Part 1

So for the next two weeks I’m going to outline a homework plan–four strategies this week, four the next–aimed at making homework a simple yet effective process.

Let’s get started.

Homework Strategies 1-4

The key to homework success is to eliminate all the obstacles—and excuses—that get in the way of students getting it done.

Add leverage and some delicately placed peer pressure to the mix, and not getting homework back from every student will be a rare occurrence.

Here is how to do it.

1. Assign what students already know.

Most teachers struggle with homework because they misunderstand the narrow purpose of homework, which is to practice what has already been learned. Meaning, you should only assign homework your students fully understand and are able to do by themselves.

Therefore, the skills needed to complete the evening’s homework must be thoroughly taught during the school day. If your students can’t prove to you that they’re able to do the work without assistance, then you shouldn’t assign it.

It isn’t fair to your students—or their parents—to have to sit at the dinner table trying to figure out what you should have taught them during the day.

2. Don’t involve parents.

Homework is an agreement between you and your students. Parents shouldn’t be involved. If parents want to sit with their child while he or she does the homework, great. But it shouldn’t be an expectation or a requirement of them. Otherwise, you hand students a ready-made excuse for not doing it.

You should tell parents at back-to-school night, “I got it covered. If ever your child doesn’t understand the homework, it’s on me. Just send me a note and I’ll take care of it.”

Holding yourself accountable is not only a reminder that your lessons need to be spot on, but parents will love you for it and be more likely to make sure homework gets done every night. And for negligent parents? It’s best for their children in particular to make homework a teacher/student-only agreement.

3. Review and then ask one important question.

Set aside a few minutes before the end of the school day to review the assigned homework. Have your students pull out the work, allow them to ask final clarifying questions, and have them check to make sure they have the materials they need.

And then ask one important question: “Is there anyone, for any reason, who will not be able to turn in their homework in the morning? I want to know now rather than find out about it in the morning.”

There are two reasons for this question.

First, the more leverage you have with students, and the more they admire and respect you , the more they’ll hate disappointing you. This alone can be a powerful incentive for students to complete homework.

Second, it’s important to eliminate every excuse so that the only answer students can give for not doing it is that they just didn’t care. This sets up the confrontation strategy you’ll be using the next morning.

4. Confront students on the spot.

One of your key routines should be entering the classroom in the morning.

As part of this routine, ask your students to place their homework in the top left-hand (or right-hand) corner of their desk before beginning a daily independent assignment—reading, bellwork , whatever it may be.

During the next five to ten minutes, walk around the room and check homework–don’t collect it. Have a copy of the answers (if applicable) with you and glance at every assignment.

You don’t have to check every answer or read every portion of the assignment. Just enough to know that it was completed as expected. If it’s math, I like to pick out three or four problems that represent the main thrust of the lesson from the day before.

It should take just seconds to check most students.

Remember, homework is the practice of something they already know how to do. Therefore, you shouldn’t find more than a small percentage of wrong answers–if any. If you see more than this, then you know your lesson was less than effective, and you’ll have to reteach

If you find an assignment that is incomplete or not completed at all, confront that student on the spot .

Call them on it.

The day before, you presented a first-class lesson and gave your students every opportunity to buzz through their homework confidently that evening. You did your part, but they didn’t do theirs. It’s an affront to the excellence you strive for as a class, and you deserve an explanation.

It doesn’t matter what he or she says in response to your pointed questions, and there is no reason to humiliate or give the student the third degree. What is important is that you make your students accountable to you, to themselves, and to their classmates.

A gentle explanation of why they don’t have their homework is a strong motivator for even the most jaded students to get their homework completed.

The personal leverage you carry–that critical trusting rapport you have with your students–combined with the always lurking peer pressure is a powerful force. Not using it is like teaching with your hands tied behind your back.

Homework Strategies 5-8

Next week we’ll cover the final four homework strategies . They’re critical to getting homework back every day in a way that is painless for you and meaningful for your students.

I hope you’ll tune in.

If you haven’t done so already, please join us. It’s free! Click here and begin receiving classroom management articles like this one in your email box every week.

21 thoughts on “A Simple, Effective Homework Plan For Teachers: Part 1”

Good stuff, Michael. A lot of teachers I train and coach are surprised (and skeptical) at first when I make the same point you make about NOT involving parents. But it’s right on based on my experience as a teacher, instructional coach, and administrator the past 17 years. More important, it’s validated by Martin Haberman’s 40 years of research on what separates “star” teachers from “quitter/failure” teachers ( http://www.habermanfoundation.org/Book.aspx?sm=c1 )

I love the articles about “homework”. in the past I feel that it is difficuty for collecting homework. I will try your plan next year.

I think you’ll be happy with it, Sendy!

How do you confront students who do not have their homework completed?

You state in your book to let consequences do their job and to never confront students, only tell them the rule broken and consequence.

I want to make sure I do not go against that rule, but also hold students accountable for not completing their work. What should I say to them?

They are two different things. Homework is not part of your classroom management plan.

Hi Michael,

I’m a first-year middle school teacher at a private school with very small class sizes (eight to fourteen students per class). While I love this homework policy, I feel discouraged about confronting middle schoolers publicly regarding incomplete homework. My motive would never be to humiliate my students, yet I can name a few who would go home thinking their lives were over if I did confront them in front of their peers. Do you have any ideas of how to best go about incomplete homework confrontation with middle school students?

The idea isn’t in any way to humiliate students, but to hold them accountable for doing their homework. Parts one and two represent my best recommendation.:)

I believe that Homework is a vital part of students learning.

I’m still a student–in a classroom management class. So I have no experience with this, but I’m having to plan a procedure for my class. What about teacher sitting at desk and calling student one at a time to bring folder while everyone is doing bellwork or whatever their procedure is? That way 1) it would be a long walk for the ones who didn’t do the work :), and 2) it would be more private. What are your thoughts on that? Thanks. 🙂

I’m not sure I understand your question. Would you mind emailing me with more detail? I’m happy to help.

I think what you talked about is great. How do you feel about flipping a lesson? My school is pretty big on it, though I haven’t done it yet. Basically, for homework, the teacher assigns a video or some other kind of media of brand new instruction. Students teach themselves and take a mini quiz at the end to show they understand the new topic. Then the next day in the classroom, the teacher reinforces the lesson and the class period is spent practicing with the teacher present for clarification. I haven’t tried it yet because as a first year teacher I haven’t had enough time to make or find instructional videos and quizzes, and because I’m afraid half of my students will not do their homework and the next day in class I will have to waste the time of the students who did their homework and just reteach what the video taught.

Anyway, this year, I’m trying the “Oops, I forgot my homework” form for students to fill out every time they forget their homework. It keeps them accountable and helps me keep better track of who is missing what. Once they complete it, I cut off the bottom portion of the form and staple it to their assignment. I keep the top copy for my records and for parent/teacher conferences.

Here is an instant digital download of the form. It’s editable in case you need different fields.

Thanks again for your blog. I love the balance you strike between rapport and respect.

Your site is a godsend for a newbie teacher! Thank you for your clear, step-by-step, approach!

I G+ your articles to my PLN all the time.

You’re welcome, TeachNich! And thank you for sharing the articles.

Hi Michael, I’m going into my first year and some people have told me to try and get parents involved as much as I can – even home visits and things like that. But my gut says that negligent parents cannot be influenced by me. Still, do you see any value in having parents initial their student’s planner every night so they stay up to date on homework assignments? I could also write them notes.

Personally, no. I’ll write about this in the future, but when you hold parents accountable for what are student responsibilities, you lighten their load and miss an opportunity to improve independence.

I am teaching at a school where students constantly don’t take work home. I rarely give homework in math but when I do it is usually something small and I still have to chase at least 7 kids down to get their homework. My way of holding them accountable is to record a homework completion grade as part of their overall grade. Is this wrong to do? Do you believe homework should never be graded for a grade and just be for practice?

No, I think marking a completion grade is a good idea.

I’ve been teaching since 2014 and we need to take special care when assigning homework. If the homework assignment is too hard, is perceived as busy work, or takes too long to complete, students might tune out and resist doing it. Never send home any assignment that students cannot do. Homework should be an extension of what students have learned in class. To ensure that homework is clear and appropriate, consider the following tips for assigning homework:

Assign homework in small units. Explain the assignment clearly. Establish a routine at the beginning of the year for how homework will be assigned. Remind students of due dates periodically. And Make sure students and parents have information regarding the policy on missed and late assignments, extra credit, and available adaptations. Establish a set routine at the beginning of the year.

Thanks Nancie L Beckett

Dear Michael,

I love your approach! Do you have any ideas for homework collection for lower grades? K-3 are not so ready for independent work first thing in the morning, so I do not necessarily have time to check then; but it is vitally important to me to teach the integrity of completing work on time.

Also, I used to want parents involved in homework but my thinking has really changed, and your comments confirm it!

Hi Meredith,

I’ll be sure and write about this topic in an upcoming article (or work it into an article). 🙂

Overall, this article provides valuable insights and strategies for teachers to implement in their classrooms. I look forward to reading Part 2 and learning more about how to make homework a simple and effective process. Thanks

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Privacy Policy

14 Effective Opening and Closing Routines for Teachers

Stimulate thinking at the beginning of class, and check for understanding at the end of it with these engaging opening and closing activities.

Your content has been saved!

The bookends of a class—the first few moments, and the wrap up at the end—can transform all the material addressed in the middle.

Good openers introduce new concepts to students in ways that evoke wonder and extend engagement for the duration of the class period, while good closers provide students with opportunities to review and consolidate recently learned material.

But effectively drawing students into a lesson at the start of class, or checking for understanding and correcting misunderstandings at the end of class, requires more than simple “do nows” or reminding students of homework assignments as they pack their bags. 

While you don’t have to use any of the following activities every day—some days a simple warm-up activity suffices—strategically mixing them into your week at crucial junctures can work wonders, according to teachers. 

Classroom Openers

1. Rapid review: Have students quickly huddle with a classmate, summarize their learning from the previous class, and then present it to the larger group. High school world history teacher Henry Seton recommends previewing a question—such as “what are John Locke’s views on private property?”—to get students going, and give them 90 seconds to turn and talk before each pair presents to the larger group. The activity is a quick way to get students warmed up, to practice retrieval, and to give you a view into what they recall from the previous day’s lesson. 

2. Bait and switch: Help kids confront—and debunk—common misconceptions about the topics they’re learning with a fun quiz activity used by education professor Curtis Chandler. For a lesson about oceans, for example, Chandler says misconceptions might include statements like “all oceans have the same salinity,” or “nothing lives in anoxic mud.” Give students a quick true/false quiz with these seemingly plausible, but incorrect statements. Unpacking the real answers after the quiz, Chandler says, is an effective way to preview the day’s lesson, and help students take on potentially tricky content without realizing it. 

3. Informational hooks: These can be any type of short, targeted media or text related to the topic at hand: YouTube videos, clips from a podcast, news headlines, or photos, for example. The idea is that the material, presented without context, will “hook” students attention , but not distract from the lesson, Chandler writes. 

Rebecca Alber, an instructor at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education suggests finding a provocative quote about one of the subjects of your study—a historical figure in history class, a scientist in science class, an author in English class, for example—and asking students to write responses to prompts such as: “What is the meaning of this statement?” or “How can you connect this statement to something happening in the world at the time it was said?” If the quote is sufficiently meaty, you can follow up with a five minute debate leveraging their thinking. 

4. Vocabulary splashes: Provide students with key vocabulary terms for the unit they’re studying—you can mix terms from previous classes with new terms they’re about to encounter—along with brief definitions, and have students sort the words in any way that makes sense to them . 

Before you lead a discussion about the terms, students can turn and talk for a few minutes, or meet with a small group and discuss their sorting rationales and compare and contrast their respective methods. The activity, Chandler writes , allows teachers to preview “the most crucial” vocabulary terms they’ll need to know, and also helps students establish connections between terms that will prove useful down the line. 

5. Low stakes quizzes (and pre-quizzes): Quizzes and practice tests help students gauge their understanding of recently learned material, and identify areas of strength and areas where they need to grow. To use quizzes effectively as openers, research suggests it’s better to keep them low-stakes (or no-stakes!). This will reduce anxiety and allow students to focus on recalling information. 

Although it sounds odd to test students on material before they’ve learned it, research shows that pretesting students is surprisingly effective. According to the 2021 study, students who took a pretest outperformed peers who studied more traditionally by 49 percent on a follow-up test. Researchers concluded the mistakes students make on pretests prove useful in motivating them to “search for the correct answers” when they actually encounter the new material.

6. Brain dumps: Giving students just a minute or two to write down everything they know—or think they know—about a specific topic or question you’re about to teach is a simple, flexible tool to test their knowledge. You can also use this approach to create longer term retention of material they’ve recently learned. To make group work out of it, ask students to compare their work and identify gaps, similarities, and differences, for example. 

Classroom Closers 

1. Rate the learning or lesson: This is a great way to audit your lessons in real-time, Alber suggests . Ask students to rate—on a scale of 1 to 10—how well they understood the lesson that day. If their rating is 6 or above, for example, you might ask them to jot down three key things they learned. If it’s low, have them briefly explain what they needed, such as a simpler explanation of the concept, a better understanding of key terms, or more practice questions. Collecting the ratings and sorting them can give you a better sense of the clarity of your lesson, and also whether you need to reteach the concept.  

2. Two-dollar summary: Tell students to imagine that each of their words are worth 10 cents and ask them to write a concise, two-dollar summary of the lesson they just learned, Reading Rockets suggests. To make things more challenging, Todd Finley, professor of English Education at East Carolina University, recommends asking students to include key terms related to the material or to write the summary in a way that would be simple enough for a first grader to understand . This activity asks them to retrieve material, pushes them to distill their learning, and requires them to decompose and simplify complex ideas and concepts.

3. Clear or cloudy: Ask students to identify what is clear about what they’ve learned (what they understand) and what is cloudy (what they’re having trouble understanding). You can use this Teachers Pay Teachers simple “Clear or Cloudy” handout to record responses. 4. Measure (or signal) your knowledge: A human bar graph is an interesting closing activity. According to Literacy Minnesota, you can create your graph by labeling points along a line drawn on the floor or across a wall that show different levels of mastery: I’m confused , I mostly get it , I totally understand . Ask students to stand where they feel most comfortable. An educator on Twitter created a simpler version using a picture of a traffic light they affixed on the door. Before students leave the room, have them write their names on three sticky notes and leave one thing they learned on the green light, one thing they’re still thinking about on the yellow light, and one thing they still don’t understand on the red light. Collecting the responses can help you better understand what topics need revisiting. 

5. Create news “headlines” or “six-word summaries”: Ask students to summarize what they’ve learned that day into a short, snappy news headline , suggests Teach Starter . Students can work in pairs, or the activity can be done amongst the whole class: Collect suggestions, write them on the board, and discuss which one works best. For a different spin on this, educator Sarah Frisby Cook recommends limiting students to a “six-word summary” of the most important idea or concept they learned that day. On Facebook , Cook told Edutopia that because students are limited in word choice, “they really have to think about what is most crucial to say.” 

6. Rock, paper, scissors: Educator Shannon Kenyon transforms this familiar game into an effective opportunity for students to reflect on what they’re learning. Using this downloadable version of her worksheet , students can identify the hardest to understand part of the lesson in the “rock” section, the main idea of what they’ve learned in the “paper” section, and note some of the less important details that they learned today that might be worth discarding in the “scissors” section. 

7. Quiz the next class: This one will probably take you a good chunk of time, and might be deployed as you end a unit. Regardless, research suggests that asking students to generate good questions about what they’re learning can promote deeper engagement with the content—and better retention, too. Educator Nikki Cobb-Struzynski puts these findings into practice by asking students to come up with quiz questions—and multiple choice answers—to give to peers in other sections of her class studying the same material. To make the quizzes easy to share, students can create them using free platforms like Kahoot! 

8. Make your classroom a beach: Write reflective questions on a beach ball using dry erase markers. They might include: “What is one thing you learned during today’s lesson?” or “What was challenging about today’s lesson?” As the ball bounces around the room, educator Eman Bekheet suggests coming up with a way to decide which question students have to answer out loud—such as the question their pointer finger is touching, or the first question they can clearly read. The responses can help generate further discussion about the day’s lesson.