I used to teach third grade at an extended day school which gave quite a bit of homework. Our school had kids coming from all across the city, some went to after school, and even if they went home on the bus, they likely didn’t get home until 4:30–5:00 at the earliest, so I could imagine how stressful HW was in the limited amount of hours they had at home.

I rearranged the schedule so the last 20–30 minutes of the day were free-choice. It was amazing — it incentivized kids to get their work done in class, because if they didn’t they wouldn’t get to make a choice at the end of the day. I no longer had to keep kids from recess as a behavioral incentive/to make up work…because no matter what happened during the day, I wanted them all to get outside to run around.

One of the choices at the end of the day was that they could get started on their homework. On a typical day, at least 60% of the class made this choice, sometimes more. They were smart, they knew it was best to get it done early so they wouldn’t have to worry about it later.

The admins at my school made me stop because they said homework was for home. A decision I strongly disagreed with, but despite my explanation, they wouldn’t budge. It really had to do with the fact that they didn’t have enrichment during after school…it was one hour of silently doing your HW/reading, another hour of playing on the playground. My kids would go to afterschool having most of their HW completed, which put a wrench in their bare-bones after school program. Definitely a bummer.

Despite the fact that the school day was long (7:15–4:00), it was hard to even find time check all of their HW. Most teachers would just check for completeness, not bothering to notice what the students got wrong. Others would choose one problem a day, and review with the students who missed the one problem. If that’s the case…just give them one problem….

I agree that all I wanted for my students was for them to have a book they loved to read and read at home at some point during the evening, everything else should have been covered during the school day. Or completed at free choice ;-)