The Homework Plan 2

The first week of the New Homework Plan was a success!  Students did the homework each night and presented their projects on Friday. I was so proud of them!! Everyone had projects to share (except for two boys who left them at home and will present on Monday) and were very excited to do so!  Before we shared our experiences, the students finished filling in the template rating their work habits and explaining what they learned. I guided the whole process and explained why we were doing each step.  For this first week, I accepted whatever they turned in.  I wanted my students to feel successful and encouraged to continue with the process.  However, they know that as the weeks go on, the expectations will increase as to the quality of the work they bring in.

The presentations also went way better than I could have imagined!  I divided students into small groups of 4-5 kids and each student had to present what they did and what they learned.  After each student presented, he/she had to pass the plan to a friend and the friend gave him/her a score for the work.  The students were very kind to one another.  I heard lots of positive comments and encouraging statements.  When students saw the work that their peers had done, some comments I heard were I'm going to do that next time, I need to add more color to my poster and Your story is really good!

Here is the Homework Plan template I created.  Just click on the file and a link will take you to my store!  The template comes in English and Spanish.

Here are some photos from Friday's presentations:

Here are pictures of the students' plans.  This template was the originial one I made.  The one above is the new version.  I asked students to help me re-design the original but they liked it as-is so we only made a few changes.  If you read Spanish, some of their responses are pretty funny! 

Here are pictures of the actual presentations that students turned in:

The next step is to keep going with this New Homework Plan.  This next week we will all do reading for the homework so I can give students some more direction on what I expect to see.  I have a list of activities they can choose from for their Friday Presentation.  Also we decided, as a class, to mount the homework projects each week on a section of the wall in the hallway called the "Homework Museum."  The students thought that maybe if students around the school saw the projects, they might be inspired to do more homework too!

I will keep you posted on any more excitement around the homework plan.  Soon I hope to have a booklet ready with different homework ideas to inspire students!


Thanks for reading!!