Jocelyn Rowe's List: motivation

• Secondly, Darling-Hammond & Olivia (2006) reports that students did not feel that the assignment was meaningful, and they did not understand how the work related to the lesson of the day.
• Students prefer that the teacher show how the homework has an impact on current subject matter and connect homework assignments to current lessons. This way, the students feel a sense of self-satisfaction, knowing that the completion of their homework assignment is applicable to their class activities.
• Pasi (2006) reports that students may not complete homework assignments which they feel are boring and routine; for example, repetitious worksheets and handouts. Teachers should make the homework relevant, but interesting and appealing to the students' learning style. Pasi also recommended that teachers consider incorporating project-based assignments in an effort to increase homework completion.
• However, educators may need to help students to see and know that their homework assignments are meaningful and that it is not just "busy work".

• * Make sure that students understand how to do the work and understand the directions. 

   

  * Make sure the homework is relevant to the lesson. 

   

  * Return homework the next day with feedback. 

   

  * Allow students to start on homework assignments in class and monitor their ability to proceed. 

   

  * Provide students with options for homework assignments. 

   

  * Schedule subject-specific homework on certain days. 

   

  * Be mindful of how much clock time assigned homework might require to be completed from the student's perspective. 

   

  * Provide a variety of types of assignments for students. 

   

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• Deliberate practice has an express purpose and is tailored to the individual; yet too often, students said, teachers issued the same homework to all without making its purpose clear. Deliberate practice involves attention, and any repetition requires focus. Yet students reported that they could do much of their homework without thinking, repeating things by rote without knowing what they meant.
• Above all, students believed homework should match skills they needed to work on individually.
• Without feedback, homework did not seem like deliberate practice:
• Unless a teacher intervened, practicing something wrong could be worse than making no effort at all
• Evaluating homework for diagnostic purposes makes a lot of sense, these teenagers agreed, but grading homework defeats its learning purpose. It isn't fair to make learners worry about getting a low grade on a task they're attempting for the first time.
• Even worse, students perceived that grading homework fosters dishonest or cynical behavior from both teachers and students:
• Many interviewees said that rather than judging individual homework, schools should devise ways to help kids get the practice they needed, such as an academic support period during the day.
• By assigning less homework, but gearing it toward deeper understanding, he proposed, teachers and students could have it both ways:
• Homework wouldn't ask them to try something they weren't ready for—after all, if they practiced wrong at the start, bad habits could take a long time to undo. Instead, it would add value to lessons through what we decided to call the "four Rs" of deliberate practice: readiness, repetition, review, and revision. Students shared examples of homework that hit one of these Rs.

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  Through out-of-school activities they cared about, students already had experience revising their work. If something wasn't coming out right in a knitting or building project, they were used to going back and trying again. When her teacher made the class revise an essay, Christina said, she thought of it in the same way:

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• A classroom filled with student posters may suggest that students have engaged in meaningful learning. But it is the process of students' learning and the depth of their cognitive engagement— rather than the resulting product—that distinguishes projects from busywork.
• First, students must perceive the work as personally meaningful, as a task that matters and that they want to do well. Second, a meaningful project fulfills an educational purpose. Well-designed and well-implemented project-based learning is meaningful in both ways.
• In contrast, announcing a project by distributing a packet of papers is likely to turn students off; it looks like a prelude to busywork.
• Many students find schoolwork meaningless because they don't perceive a need to know what they're being taught. They are unmotivated by a teacher's suggestion that they should learn something because they'll need it later in life, for the next course, or simply because "it's going to be on the test." With a compelling student project, the reason for learning relevant material becomes clear: I need to know this to meet the challenge I've accepted.
• A good driving question captures the heart of the project in clear, compelling language, which gives students a sense of purpose and challenge. The question should be provocative, open-ended, complex, and linked to the core of what you want students to learn.
• A project without a driving question is like an essay without a thesis. Without a thesis statement, a reader might be able to pick out the main point a writer is trying to make; but with a thesis statement, the main point is unmistakable.
• In terms of making a project feel meaningful to students, the more voice and choice, the better. However, teachers should design projects with the extent of student choice that fits their own style and students.
• A project should give students opportunities to build such 21st century skills as collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and the use of technology, which will serve them well in the workplace and life.
• Students find project work more meaningful if they conduct real inquiry, which does not mean finding information in books or websites and pasting it onto a poster.
• Students need to learn that most people's first attempts don't result in high quality and that revision is a frequent feature of real-world work.
• Schoolwork is more meaningful when it's not done only for the teacher or the test. When students present their work to a real audience, they care more about its quality.

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