Blog 10

Blog 10

Christy Borfitz

            Homework for students should involve practicing the skills that have already been taught in the classroom.  Students shouldn’t be learning a new skill at home but rather practicing one they have already learned and students should be doing the homework independently or with very little help from parents.  In our reading, we learned that students need to practice a skill or process at least 24 times to become 80% proficient and ELLs will need even more practice.  I have found that giving students practice on a skill over time makes them more likely to retain the information.

            Homework will be more meaningful to ELLs if it is adapted to meet their needs and language proficiency.  For example, if a student is at the preproduction stage of learning English, he or she might practice vocabulary words by drawing a picture of the item and labeling the parts using the new vocabulary.  A strategy to use with early production and speech emergence level students is to allow them to hear explanations of the homework by English-dominant students.  At the intermediate and advanced levels, students will benefit from sharing their ideas with English-dominant speakers and using academic English vocabulary. 

            My objective for my students regarding their homework is to allow them to practice the learning that has taken place in the classroom.  For ELL’s especially, I think that they will need to have vocabulary practice incorporated and adapted to meet their needs.  The skills or vocabulary they have learned should be practiced over time to get the best retention results.  Students will also need immediate feedback about their homework from me as the teacher or from other students.  I can use the homework to help further adapt it to meet the needs of the ELL students. 

            A great place to list homework assignments is on a website.  Our school has a link to our websites on the school’s home page.  As long as students have access to the internet they can view their assignments online.  They can send emails to the teachers from the website too.  It can be an effective communication tool for parents as well.  Also, a blog is another way for communication.  For example, if students have a blog they can comment about what they are reading and the teacher can provide immediate feedback online.  Other students can also comment on each other’s blogs providing additional feedback.  The challenge with using technology is that not all students have access to the internet so teachers will have to be aware of this when using technology.