does homework help students learn

does homework help students learn

The Benefits of Homework for Student Learning

1. Introduction

While the act of completing homework has great benefits in terms of developing the student’s capacity to learn, a large number of homework assigned to the students these days has little to do to promote or foster the learning process. The nature and purpose of homework is a topic of constant and continuing debate and discussion among professional educators. Especially now, with the increasing availability and popularity of online educational resources, educators need to re-evaluate both the purpose and the usefulness of homework in the modern world. The article titled “The Benefits of Homework for Student Learning” explores the various benefits of homework. The introduction sets the stage for the discussion. The second section emphasizes how homework can help students develop discipline and responsibility. The third section highlights how homework reinforces concepts taught in the classroom. The fourth section discusses how homework can improve time management skills. Finally, the fifth section focuses on how homework fosters independent learning.

2. Developing Discipline and Responsibility

Rather than allowing students to leave projects and homework assignments incomplete and not handed in by the due date and time, homework can be used to teach students how to set aside immediate gratification and pace themselves, manage their time and meet deadlines. One of the biggest lessons students can learn from homework is to not be afraid to ask for help and that actually seeking help can ultimately lead to success. When a student gets under their desk in school, the teacher helps, the student’s mom might even help, but the teacher can’t follow that student home to continue the instruction. Homework provides students the opportunity to struggle and then discover the appropriate ways to access support and move forward with their learning. Such practice and routine of accountability can serve to develop students’ capacity in managing work and timelines so that eventually students can transition towards self-pace and self-directed learning, a critical skill for success in post-secondary endeavors. Moreover, it promotes parent involvement in student learning and connects families with what students are learning. Through homework, parents are made aware of their child’s strengths and weaknesses and have an opportunity to establish a supportive and nurturing environment where the child can enhance not only the skills they learn at school but also develop the skills that the parents have gained in their lifetime. When children neglect to do their homework, parents receive communication from the teacher and are able to act as mediators. If a child does not understand a concept, the parent, teacher, and student can work together to provide additional support and ultimately reach mastery of the concept. On the other spectrum, if a child is simply being resistant and behavioral, the parents and teacher can work as a united front to hold the child accountable for completing the work. In the end, the principles of developing discipline, independence, time management, and the ability to seek knowledge and utilize available resources can all be found through homework.

3. Reinforcing Classroom Concepts

Homework helps to reinforce learning and develop good study habits. Many teachers use homework as a technique to help children revise what has been learned in the class and with the intention of reinforcing learning and helping the child remember the learning of that day or of the previous day. “Homework is an extension of the work that children are doing in the class,” says the education expert. So, the question is ‘how does homework help learning’? Homework helps children extend their learning by giving them the opportunity to apply certain skills to independent tasks. Homelinks are an important feature of quality homework. According to the expert educationalist Vatterott, homework should not be given so that it becomes a burden to the child as that to the child’s health. On the other hand, the purpose of the homework should be to fix the concepts which had been learned in the class and help children develop confidence, knowledge, and the skills of independent learning. Homework not only helps reinforce concepts but it also helps children and parents manage time and develop self-discipline. Children do not learn to take the responsibility themselves. But through the homework, children begin to understand more deeply the effort, planning, organizing, and self-discipline. When the child engages himself in doing homework, he can learn and practice time management that will help him during all his life. In addition, self-discipline and good habits of organizing time for work and play not only can help achieve better study outcomes but it also will be a benefit to the whole life such as the work in the future, family, and society. Meanwhile, homework also gives children the chance to apply the skills that they have learned in the class. For instance, increased communication between both the teacher and the parents. On the one hand, parents may be more than happy to spend their time and the feeling of being involved in the education of their children. On the other hand, it provides the teacher an opportunity to understand the progress of the student. Both the students and teacher can identify clear strengths and weaknesses over time. “Although the research supports the positive effects of homework as a tool to help children learn, parents need to be involved and should provide limited support and feedback,” says a child expert.

4. Improving Time Management Skills

Homework is assigned in order to help students manage their time. The third benefit of homework is that it helps the student to develop time management skills. What is time management? This is the ability to manage your time well so that you can be more productive and achieve more which means, you plan, you make a schedule, you allocate a time for each work and you stick to the time allocated to a particular task. This is a very rare skill to have which sometimes people say is time management. Homework does really involve a lot of exercises and practice that usually takes its much of our time. When a homework can develop the student’s time management skill because when doing the homework, the time allocated to complete certain work helps students to get into the discipline of completing it in a certain time slot. That means it helps themselves to give some sort of commitment to complete a work within a time frame. Once this stage is managed in doing homework, we will not face difficulty in managing time for other activities such as playing and outing. So, the student knows once they come back from school, what they have to do next because there is a habit created. Each work that they planned should take a particular slot of time. If the student has been skillful enough to manage their time, you know that we have a better chance of success in all we need to do. Because a most difficult work in a study which requires the student to learn how to manage time and self-discipline. The ability to focus on and complete a task builds self-esteem and self-confidence and teaches students about the value of hard work. Students as well as adults learn very quickly how to get through homework so that they can watch TV or engage in other activities. By engaging, student’s alternate activity or it could be that the child just wanted to get the homework done quickly, it is possible that often the homework is rushed or completed in a careless manner and handed in but doing much homework at that short period of time because there was a time set to complete the work. This is why the ability of time management is very important. It teaches a valuable life lesson about the value of planning ahead. By implementing a few simple strategies into the normal homework routine, kids can learn to work more efficiently and effectively which help them complete their work and enjoy their free time.

5. Fostering Independent Learning

We are aware that students cannot learn in school without having the freedom to think for themselves. They don’t want their teachers teaching them to the test or spoon-feeding them information. They can avoid this in later academics if they learn how to learn and they can only do this by practicing learning at home and on their own. Jeffrey, from the “Education in America,” supports the previous point by adding evidence from a study. The study found that students who are given homework which requires them to research and provide an argument are becoming more and more independent. This type of homework helps them to develop critical thinking skills, which are long-term and important skills for everyone. Therefore, homework helps to foster independent learning now and in the future. I was also able to interview my friend’s brother, who is a year 10 student. When I asked him what he thinks are the benefits of homework, his first response was surprising. He stated, “Well, if we can do it by ourselves, why do we need to have a teacher next to us all the time?” This shows that homework not only helps students to develop the ability to learn, but also start to appreciate the need to learn and know what they are learning. When I interviewed my Mathematics teacher, Mr. Tian, he stressed that “homework should never be seen as a way of teachers to discipline their students.” He continued to argue that “quality homework helps the students to make the most of their capabilities.” It is under.