Reply to MCPS elementary, middle school students could get less homework under proposed policy update

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Reply to "MCPS elementary, middle school students could get less homework under proposed policy update - How is this OK?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Worksheets do not create create thinkers. 
Elem kids do not need homework. 
I do feel differently about MS and HS [/quote]

I agree with this, except for math. There’s no way kids are getting good at multiplication and division without practice at home.[/quote]

I like worksheets as its practice.  Kids don't get the basics in school.  [b]MCPS doesn't teach math facts.  They teach dumb strategies.  [/quote][/b]

I’m curious as to how you believe math facts should be taught at the elementary level. Rote memorization is good for things like memorizing formulas, but most young learners will have a greater understanding of computation and content by building their number sense and learning different strategies to use when problem solving. Straight up memorization doesn’t encourage thinking. I could memorize anything when I was in school and that carried me far in math until I got to calculus and needed to do more than just memorize things. If you don’t have a solid understanding of something, you have a hard time applying skills and concepts to a novel problem or situation. [/quote]

Multiplication is not a difficult concept to understand. If you haven’t memorized math facts it takes up working memory a student should be using when solving more challenging problems.

Years ago I taught third grade in a very poor community where the most of the parents didn’t speak English and only spoke Spanish. Math homework was memorizing multiplication. Every day before lunch there was a multiplication test on whatever number the student was working on. So if the student was working on multiplication of 4’s their quiz was on 4’s, another student might be working on 6’s.  I graded the quiz at lunch and if they passed they moved onto the next number and got 100 multiplication problems of that number for homework. If they didn’t pass they stayed working on that problem and got 100 problems of that number. Some kids got the same 100 problems for days and days. Some kids quickly moved through to division then reducing fractions.

All the parents loved this homework. They all knew what was expected and saw the benefit. They had no trouble helping their kids if they wanted to but if they didn’t or couldn’t my students could independently do their homework. By the end of the year every student had thoroughly memorized their multiplication tables except some years I might have one student who had special needs who couldn’t so I modified the work.

So many parents asked me why their older siblings weren’t given the same chance to memorize their times tables and often asked for extra sheets. A parent of twins kept asking the school to move her other child to my class.

Research has shown math homework in elementary school is indeed effective. Not giving students who are poor homework that works on basic skills is the opposite of equity.

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