HOMEWORK HELP FOR KIDS

2016 “ There is no evidence that any amount of homework improves the academic performance of elementary students .”

This statement, by homework research guru Harris Cooper, of Duke University, is startling to hear, no matter which side of the homework debate you're on. Can it be true that the hours of lost playtime, power struggles and tears are all for naught? That millions of families go through a nightly ritual that doesn't help? Homework is such an accepted practice, it's hard for most adults to even question its value.

When you look at the facts, however, here's what you find: Homework has benefits, but its benefits are age dependent.

For elementary-aged children, research suggests that studying in class gets superior learning results, while extra schoolwork at home is just . . . extra work. Even in middle school, the relationship between homework and academic success is minimal at best. By the time kids reach high school, homework provides academic benefit, but only in moderation. More than two hours per night is the limit. After that amount, the benefits taper off. “The research is very clear,” agrees Etta Kralovec, education professor at the University of Arizona. “There's no benefit at the elementary school level.”

3/25/14 Does Homework Help...Not Really Help?

Math and Reading Homework Help for Kids

Homework Help, Tutoring, Testing and Parenting Advice Your guide to math, reading, homework help, tutoring and earning a high school diploma. A Better Way to Teach Math

What they found surprised them. Most measurable forms of parental involvement seem to yield few academic dividends for kids, or even to backfire --
regardless of a parent's race, class, or level of education Dana Goldstein, a contributor to The Atlantic and fellow at The Nation Institute, unpacks a new study that found parental involvement in school and homework doesn't always improve kids' academic achievement. The study tracked almost 30 years of data, and found that only a few habits (out of the 63 it tracked) led to higher test scores: reading aloud to young children and talking about college to teenagers. The mostly useless stuff? Meeting with teachers, helping teenagers pick out high school classes, volunteering at school, observing classes and even homework help. see Don't Help Your Kids With Their Homework

SO WHAT WORKS?

Parents should talk more about post-high school plans !

If there is a single pillar of unchallenged, conventional wisdom in education theory, it's that parental involvement is the key to a child's success in school. The effects of parental involvement in schooling, write Robinson and Harris in The Broken Compass, are mostly inconsequential — sometimes even negative.

Parents - Are you helping your kid do their homework or are you doing the homework for your child? STOP!

If your child is savvy enough to be reading this page then they can look for help on the net. If they are looking for information to answer questions from the teacher then they are going to be using the computer for research. If they are doing research then the parent can help them out by showing them where to look for the information. Start by showing them that there are different kinds of search engines for particular kinds of information and there are actual real live librarians online that can also help you.

how to remember

Memorization
Technique

The technique we'll be learning is called the memory palace , and is also known as the method of loci (for the latin word locus meaning place) and also the mind palace . Learn how to apply this technique to learning new languages. Sounds good, doesn't it?

Lists are just an ordered array of knowledge! What you study for a history exam is a list of ordered dates accompanied by facts and causes (sub-lists). When you learn a new recipe, it is a list. A telephone number is a list of numbers. A poem is a list of phrases.

Building and filling your first Memory Palace:
MEMORY TECHNIQUES
HOW TO LEARN AND REMEMBER EVERYTHING

Anti Homework Movement

Race To
No Where

Anti-homework movement has been reignited in recent months by the documentary “Race to Nowhere,” about burned-out students caught in a pressure-cooker educational system.

“There is simply no proof that most homework as we know it improves school performance,” said Vicki Abeles, the filmmaker and a mother of three from California. “And by expecting kids to work a 'second shift' in what should be their downtime, the presence of schoolwork at home is negatively affecting the health of our young people and the quality of family time.” nytimes.com/2011/06/16/education/16homework.html?_r=1

New Recruit in Homework Revolt: More Schools Districts Cutting Back http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/education/16homework.html

Homework wars have divided communities for over a century. In the 1950s, the Sputnik launching ushered in heavier workloads for American students in the race to keep up with the Soviet Union. The 1983 report "A Nation at Risk" and, more recently, the testing pressures of the No Child Left Behind law, also resulted in more homework for children at younger ages. Research has long suggested that homework in small doses can reinforce basic skills and help young children develop study habits, but that there are diminishing returns, said Harris Cooper, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University. The 10-minute guideline has generally been shown to be effective, Dr. Cooper said, adding that over all, "there is a minimal relationship between how much homework young kids do and how well they test."
"It's been a fairly rote, thoughtless process for a long time, and schools are starting to realize this is a problem," said Cathy J. Vatterott, an associate education professor at the University of Missouri at St. Louis and author of "Rethinking Homework."
Ms. Cushlanis, a secretary for the Galloway school district, complained to her boss, Annette C. Giaquinto, the superintendent. It turned out that the district, which serves 3,500 kindergarten through eighth-grade students, was already re-evaluating its homework practices. The school board will vote this summer on a proposal to limit weeknight homework to 10 minutes for each year of school--20 minutes for second graders, and so forth--and ban assignments on weekends, holidays and school vacations. Galloway, a mostly middle-class community northwest of Atlantic City, is part of a wave of districts across the nation trying to remake homework amid concerns that high-stakes testing and competition for college have fueled a nightly grind that is stressing out children and depriving them of play and rest, yet doing little to raise achievement, particularly in elementary grades.
Such efforts have drawn criticism from some teachers and some parents who counter that students must study more, not less, if they are to succeed. Even so, the anti-homework movement has been reignited in recent months by the documentary "Race to Nowhere," about burned-out students caught in a pressure-cooker educational system.
"There is simply no proof that most homework as we know it improves school performance," said Vicki Abeles, the filmmaker and a mother of three from California. "And by expecting kids to work a 'second shift' in what should be their downtime, the presence of schoolwork at home is negatively affecting the health of our young people and the quality of family time."

So teachers at Mango Elementary School in Fontana, Calif., are replacing homework with "goal work" that is specific to individual student's needs and that can be completed in class or at home at his or her own pace. The Pleasanton School District, north of San Jose, Calif., is proposing this month to cut homework times by nearly half and prohibit weekend assignments in elementary grades because, as one administrator said, "parents want their kids back."

Ridgewood High School in New Jersey introduced a homework-free winter break in December. Schools in Bleckley County, Ga., have instituted "no homework nights" throughout the year. The Brooklyn School of Inquiry, a gifted and talented program, has made homework optional. "I think people confuse homework with rigor," said Donna Taylor, the Brooklyn School's principal, who views homework for children under 11 as primarily benefiting parents by helping them feel connected to the classroom.

The homework revolution has also spread north to Toronto, which in 2008 banned homework for kindergartners and for older children on school holidays, and to the Philippines, where the education department recently opposed weekend assignments so that students can "enjoy their childhood."

RESOURCES

Homeworkspot.com is free for science, math, technology to life skills and foreign languages organized into great appropriate categories.

High School Ace is a web directory of free educational resources for teens http://highschoolace.com/ace/ace.cfm

tutor.com offes you 10 minutes for free then you have to pay for it, tutoring available for you over the web if you are over 13 it's open 24/7 with around your schedule.

WebMath will try to help you solve the math problem
http://www.webmath.com/

In Homework Wars, Student Wins a Battle: More Time to Unwind on Vacation New York Times, 7.4.4
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/nyregion/04education.html
On Education By JOSEPH BERGER
Slight and bookish, looking more like Harry Potter than Voldemort, 15 year old Sean Gordon-Loebl has accomplished what more menacing students can only fantasize about: He convinced Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, one of the nations most competitive (cynics might say cutthroat), to put limits on homework. It needed to restrict homework during vacations. He pointed out what seemed obvious that long vacation projects ruin the chance to recharge, catch up on sleep and spend time with family and friends.
The principal, agreeing that vacations are down time and should not be used to heap on homework, responded by suggesting to teachers that brushing up on Shakespeare would be a fine spring-break assignment; writing an entire play would not.Stuyvesant which uses a rough guideline of a half-hour of homework per night for each course many children come from immigrant homes where their parents do not speak English and work two jobs. But Stuyvesant, a selective public school, is a rarefied world where students are being groomed for top colleges, so homework rules may be tailored differently.Like curriculum in the culture wars, homework is a stand-in for other issues the demands we make of children in an ever more competitive global village.Administrators facing the gun-to-the-head approach of the federal No Child Left Behind and college admissions keep loading on homework-heavy Advanced Placement courses. The Case Against Homework, The End of Homework and The Homework Myth, which corroborate the argument of homeworks detractors. From the principal of Oak Knoll Elementary School in Menlo Park, Calif., declaring that one hour a night is more than enough for 9- and 10-year-olds. Large amounts of homework stifle motivation, diminish a childs love of learning, turn reading into a chore, negatively affect the quality of family time, diminish creativity, and turn learning into drudgery, the principal, David Ackerman, wrote. Those who would virtually banish homework lose track of a reality pointed out by Eric Grossman, Stuyvesants assistant principal for English who has seniors read long novels like Moby Dick. Thats not something we can do in school in 40-minute chunks each day and discuss, he said. One of the overarching goals in our department is to have students become lifelong independent readers. Like most education fashions, the homework load has fluctuated, rising with Sputnik and 1983s A Nation at Risk report and dropping during an era of relative indulgence like the 60s. At the moment, most parents seem satisfied, according to an Associated Press-AOL
poll conducted by Knowledge Networks from Jan. 13 to 23, 2006. It showed that 57 percent of parents felt children were assigned the right amount of homework; only 19 percent said they had too much and 23 percent said too little. Harris Cooper, chairman of the education program at Duke University, who has studied the research on homeworks effectiveness, said nightly practice makes sense for foreign languages or mathematics because it solidifies confidence. The research, he said, also suggests that homework improves scores on end-of-year tests. Dr. Cooper likes the 10-minute rule: increase the amount by 10 minutes per grade so that a third grader is doing 30 minutes, a fourth grader 40 minutes. He likes assignments students are curious to do rather than doing them because of external rewards or punishment and affectionately cited one his wife, a teacher, gives. She hands first graders disposable cameras to photograph household objects that look like letters a folded pair of glasses that resembles the letter B, for example.