Two educators tell how and why after-school assignments can be rewarding and fun for kids. (Editor)

Home assignments can provide opportunities to use human and physical resources not available at school, to individualize instruction, and to involve students in community activities. (Author)

Article based on interviews with several elementary school teachers.

Homework, like grandmother's spring tonic, is a useless and hated ritual that is continued only because everyone seems to expect it. The best way to make homework enriching and personal is to prepare idea cards for each study unit, allowing each student to select a suitable project. (SJL)

The author lists the reasons for assigning homework in secondary classes and analyzes the reasons students give for avoiding it. This article is reprinted from the Council for Basic Education, Vol. 23, No. 1, September, 1978. (SJL)

The authors give advice to teachers on correctly presenting assignments by discussing these questions: What information should an instructional assignment convey? What criteria should be considered in phrasing an instructional assignment? And what means can be used to clarify an assignment? (Author/SJL)

Methods for encouraging thoughtful use of encyclopedias in elementary school report writing are suggested. (LH)

A poet relates her personal writing problems, which she resolved by completing some of the assignments she had used in her classes. (RL)

Discusses how parents can harness computer power to help children learn. Suggestions include: bookmark homework helpers on the Internet, take advantage of playtime to reinforce learning, create a monthly calendar, create a tidy work computer directory system, take advantage of parental progress reports built into software products, outline…

Explores the modern history of homework, beginning with its origins in eighteenth-century England. Discusses early educational reformers' resistance to homework. Reports that former Soviet space advances spurred a U.S. reexamination of homework through the 1960s and 1970s. Examines the contemporary view of homework as an inexpensive means of…

When surveying parents on six types of involvement, the Family Center at Johns Hopkins University found that respondents were uninterested in regular school visits or participation in decision making but eager to help their children at home. In response, two researchers developed TIPS (Teachers Involve Parents in Schoolwork), an interactive…

A comparison was made of student evaluations of teacher effectiveness following two approaches: classes with no homework (n=110) and classes with daily homework (n=170). Grades were higher and student evaluations of teacher effectiveness were greater in classes with daily homework assignments. (JOW)

Presents a method to make precalculus college freshmen accountable to the class for doing at least some of their assigned homework problems by making each student an expert on one or more of the assignments. (ASK)

In one section of a graduate course (n=26), the instructor gave enthusiastic verbal praise 27% of the time for homework logs and administered no verbal praise in the other (n=28). The praise group had higher average scores, studied longer per lesson, and had higher motivation. (Contains 51 references.) (SK)