Parents Guidance On Assignments Can Help Kids Achieve Better Results

he parent's relationship with the school and their kids boils down to the homework assigned.

In Indian families, the pressure of completing the homework is so much on the kids that the parents lose their calm and end up being frustrated when children do not comply. Many Indian children are beaten up and yelled at if they show any resistance to finishing their homework. Many children learn to treat their homework as a chore and they find different ways to finish their work but they are not involved in it.

Why Children are not enthusiastic about the homework assigned?

The other day I heard my niece say, “ I have to complete my 55 pages of writing”, she was actually assigned to copy the definitions of all the shapes from her book to her notebook. I don’t understand, how did it even make sense. So basically to keep children busy the schools and parents are working in collaboration to occupy them with some mundane tasks. The kids are not looking forward to the assignments as there is nothing that excites them about it.

According to Carole Ames of Michigan State University, it isn’t “quantitative changes in behavior” — such as requiring students to spend more hours in front of books or worksheets — that help children learn better. Rather, it’s “qualitative changes in the ways students view themselves in relation to the task, engage in the process of learning, and then respond to the learning activities and situation.“

How can parents help?

As published in The Guardian, five out of six parents struggle to help their pre-adolescent children with their homework. According to psychologist Janine Bempechat, “Parents don’t actually have to help with homework completion in order for kids to do well. They can help in other ways — by helping children organize a study space, providing snacks, being there as a support, helping children work in groups with siblings or friends.”

Sometimes parents can get overly involved and start micromanaging the tasks and almost end up doing the task assigned to their children themselves, which is not going to help the kids anyways. Forcing kids can not help either, instead planning ahead can help establish a routine.

Parents can help in finding a good spot for doing the assignments at home with good lighting and less disturbance. Some conversation around what happened in the classroom can be a good way to loop in the kids, COVID has got parents involved in the school and the assignments in a big way. Parents are clicking pictures, and uploading their kid's work, This has helped them get involved.

Quality Homework matters

According to developmental psychologist Janine Bempechat, “ Homework is Complicated”. Burdening students with many pages of writing is not going to help. Homework needs to be engaging and assigned work that is relevant to them. Copying the materials from one book to another cannot interest kids, it can only end up being a chore. Homework is a connection between the home and the school, it bridges the gap. The students will be much more involved if they find that connection in both the places and relate to the things that we're told in the classroom as well as at their homes.

Homework should be assigned well, keeping in mind:

• the purpose and the value of the assignment given
• such that students can carry out the work independently
• the time the kids will need to invest keeping in mind weekends and holidays
• considering the diversity of students and their backgrounds- does the assignment require students to use technology and availability of help at home
• timely and actionable feedback given by teachers

Conclusion:

Having completed the homework is not the marker for achievement, it is only giving the sense of having finished a task that was assigned. There are different schools of thought on whether homework helps remember the concepts taught in class, or helps children develop a practice to extend the school hours at home. As William Barnwell wrote. “Drill does not develop meanings. Repetition does not lead to understandings.”

Some kids take pride in completing the task assigned mindlessly, repeating certain exercises without making sense of what it really means and there is no opportunity to explore or question in such cases. Students become experts in concealing what they do not know, the idea is just to get it done with. The repetitive tasks assigned aren’t of any use for those who don’t understand what they’re doing.

As the psychologist, Ellen Langer has shown, “When we drill ourselves in a certain skill so that it becomes second nature,” we may come to perform that skill “mindlessly,” locking us into patterns and procedures that are less than ideal.

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