Hi everyone! Let me share some insight into my homework philosophy.
Homework serves a few purposes- the three R's:
Review
Reinforcement
Responsibility
At 2nd grade, homework is a review and reinforcement of what we have already worked on in school. It is not something new and should not be a challenge and is not individualized. It should be fairly quick and easy. If your child has trouble with homework, please let me know. It could be they need more practice on something we're working on in class.
A huge part of second grade homework is learning how to take responsibility for taking something home, completing it, and returning it to school on time. Each day homework is put in the students' mailbox and at dismissal they need to take it out and put it in their bag. If there is no homework in there, they need to tell me. We go over this every day right before they check their mail, so students should know that they are responsible for letting me know if nothing is in there. In the morning their job is to bring their folder in the room, and check it for notes and homework and turn them in. There is so much going on at the beginning of the day and end of the day, and I cannot individually look at each student's folder and put things in and take them out every day so this is a perfect chance for students to develop more independence and responsibility.
Each day I try to double check to make sure that everyone's mailbox has their homework in it. I also usually ask one student at the very end of the day to check that no one forgot their mail or lunchbox; however, occasionally that does not happen and a student forgets their homework or does not have any in their mailbox. Occasionally a student will also not turn in their homework. I like to send a notice home just so you know what happened and keep up the lines of communication.
Everyone forgets at least once and I tell students it is not the end of the world. They might miss a prize ticket or a homeworkopoly turn, but the next day and week we start fresh.
Most of the time, if a student is forgetting homework at the beginning of the year, we work on it and it does improve. If not, you and I can work together to develop an individual plan.
COMING SOON: A blog post about ways to do more challenging math at home with games and other fun activities