Get Students to Turn in Math Homework With this Simple Trick
There has been a lot of debate over whether or not to assign homework, how much to assign, etc. For those of you that do assign some sort of homework, this post is for you! How can you get your middle school students to turn in their math homework on time? In about my third year teaching, I began to get frustrated with the number of students that were not turning in homework consistently, which led me to start thinking about what I could do to help motivate my students to turn in their work!
Collect the Homework data for each class period
After walking around at the beginning of each class period and marking off whether each student had their homework complete, I started to keep track of what percentage of students in each class were getting their homework done on time. The idea came to me that I should really be showing my students this data.
Create a visual representation or graph to track the homework
Students like seeing visual representations, and even more so when it is related to what they are doing! I spent some time creating this chart to record their percentages for each assignment. Yes, it did take about an hour or so of work to create... but once finished and laminated, I could easily track, erase, and reuse the chart over and over again!
One quarter's worth of assignments typically fits on the chart, before erasing and starting fresh at the start of each quarter. Separating each class by color really helped with the competition between classes. Every class wanted to be the class with the highest percentage!
How did tracking the homework impact the class?
Of course, starting to track the homework data didn't eliminate ALL missing work. However, it did get students thinking about their work completion and excited about the idea of possibly reaching 100% as a class! In my opinion, every extra little bit of motivation helps. Not to mention, it brought up some great discussions about how to find each percentage and how to graph the data.
Find task cards that can be assigned as homework problems
Many districts have a curriculum with options for homework, however if you are looking for options for material to assign as homework, I have several sets of task cards available that could be used for this purpose. Each task card includes 2-5 problems for a specific concept. Each bundle includes approximately 90 different topics. These task cards can be a good option for homework that doesn't include an overwhelming number of problems for each concept!
Have you tried this idea for tracking homework in your classroom? I'd love to see pictures, so feel free to tag me on social media! :)