Homework

Homework--every elementary school student's worst nightmare! Homework in my opinion, can be a great reinforcement tool to help the students refresh and better understand the material that was taught in the classroom. However, when your student leaves your classroom, you can never truely know whether it was your student or his or her parent who has done the work. For this simple reason I believe that homework should be given as a tool for the student, and as a way to see who has done or not done the homework you've assigned, on the other hand, I don't believe that homework should be used as an assessment tool because you don't see your student do the homework in front of you so you can't be sure it was s/he who did it.

As a teacher I would definitely reinforce giving homework to my students because I do feel that it is a necessity to teaching students. Even as a college student I receive homework assignments daily from my professors, but as an elementary and high school student I never saw the point of homework until I wanted to be a teacher. Now, with most of my education classes behind me I see the importance of homework in the classroom and the effect it has on students. Homework, if both teacher and student do it right, should always have a positive effect on a students academic performance. A teacher should never assign something for homework just to give homework. Homework should be given to reinforce what was learned already in the classroom.

Teacher Expectations

Homework and teacher expectations in my opinion, go hand in hand. As a teacher, it is inevitable that we will be giving homework to our students, and as a teacher, one of our expectations will be that our students will complete and hand in the homework we assign to them. As an elementary school student, I sometimes thought homework was nonsense and a way for the teacher to give you things to do at home so that you didn't have to waste time in class doing it, but now that I'm on the other side of that situation now, I feel that homework is a necessity in any classroom. In my opinion homework helps the teacher and the student both. It helps the teacher to assess and see if her expectations are met by her students and it helps the students refresh what they have learned in the classroom, in addition, it will show the student whether or not he or she has fully grasped the concepts of what was taught.

Teachers always have high expectations of their students, and in my opinion, that is a characteristic of a good and effective teacher. As a teacher you expect your students to respect you and the rules of your classroom, you expect them to learn certain things throughout the year, you expect them to complete assignments that you have given them to enforce what they have learned (this includes homework), and you expect your students to respect themselves, their fellow classmates, and the policies of the school. I've only listed a few of the many expectations teachers have for their students, in my opinion these expectations are goals you would like to see your students reach, and if by the end of the year they have met all of your expectations, then they should be prepared, or atleast on their way to advancing to the next grade level.