Thinking back to last year and my first year of teaching, I remember feeling so overwhelmed with the amount of homework I had to look over each week after assigning two things each day! You could never see the bottom of my desk or guided reading table because I was always so behind in checking and giving back homework. Honestly, sometimes I would just secretly throw away some of the less important assignments just because I had no time to get through them all. I sat in my room at the end of the year thinking that their had to be a better way to handle homework that was less work for and less stress for my students and their families that were all so busy with after school activities. Then it hit me, I could give homework at the beginning of the week and make it due at the end of the week!
I spent the summer coming up with my new homework plan. From reflecting on what my previous students struggled with the most, which was retaining skills they had previously learned in other grades or just earlier in the year. I concluded that spiral review homework should be a big part of my weekly homework. I developed my Spiral Review Weekly homework sheets for both Math and Language Arts. Each week my students have four questions for language arts and four for math every day Monday-Thursday. I don't require them complete the questions on the assigned day. They have all week to answer all of the questions and pack is due Friday morning.
The second piece of my weekly homework, is a word study packet. At my school we use Words Their Way, so I have several spelling lists between all of my students. The way I handle word study homework is by giving all of the students the same three assignments to complete with their own spelling lists. I suggest a day that the students should complete each assignment, but they can pick when they want to complete each assignment as long as the packet is turned in Friday morning.
The final piece of my weekly homework is a Reading Log. The students are to read for 20 minutes each night and record what they read. Then the students have a list of questions for fiction and non fiction and they pick one to answer about what they read each night. This log is turned in Friday morning with the rest of the homework.
My Word Study and Spiral Review Homework is available in my store:
I use a Freebie from Third in Hollywood for my Reading Log. It can be found here.
