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Pros and Cons of making homework optional

Pro Catherine Gagulashvili  calendar manager Not doing anything is so much easier than doing something. By nature, students would rather avoid doing strenuous amounts of homework, simply because it’s less taxing. When given the option to not do homework on a daily basis, the average student may leap at the opportunity to slack off. They would do that without taking into account the fact that being assigned optional homework is one of the most academically potent opportunities a high school student can be offered. Homework should be made optional because it teaches students to be held accountable for their actions. The daily, mandatory assignment of homework is something that should be enforced and practiced throughout elementary and middle school, but should slowly be phased out once a student graduates to high school. Once a student enters high school, he or she should be prepared to let go of the culture that comforted and guided them through elementary and middle school; it’s time to grow up. Simply put, making homework optional further prepares students on the path of expectations in college and in life. Optional homework should be viewed as an opportunity to pace oneself and to practice what needs to be practiced. If a student excels in a subject without needing extra practice, why force him or her to do that extra homework for the sake of simply going through the motions? If a student has clearly mastered an academic skill or an ability, it is pointless and counterproductive to force him or her to overpractice. By making homework a mandatory assignment, teachers force their students to waste their time on something that might be redundant. Assigning optional homework allows the student to better his or her time management skills. Considering that the average high school student receives 3.5 hours of homework per day , the opportunity to receive optional homework allows students to properly prioritize their work and maximize their time. It allows for flexibility in a student’s life. For students who balance six to seven academic classes and have a sport, having optional homework allows them to spread out their assignments over a longer period of time. If taken advantage of properly , optional homework forces the student to budget his or her time, allocating the right amount of study time for each assignment. In addition, it allows the student to work at his or her own pace. The assignment of optional homework has been used on Beverly’s campus. Geometry and IAT teacher Dustin Mathias assigns optional homework, or as he calls them, “suggested problems” in his classroom. He has found that suggested problems give students more options, teach them how to be responsible and force them to “be honest with themselves and what they need to do.” By no means is one to assume that every student will do his or her homework if it isn’t mandatory. The goal is to have students realize that they have to do the work even if no one is watching. College professors don’t check to see if each student did the reading: they give a final.  High school has a more hands-on approach to learning, but as students transition to being upperclassmen, they need to realize that they are required to dedicate a certain amount of time and energy to a class, regardless if it’s in the form of doing their homework, studying, taking notes or paying attention in class. The average student may view optional homework as an opportunity to slack off, completely disregarding the fact that by doing so, they are setting themselves up for failure. After graduating high school, the student will likely fail to realize that tasks need to be completed not because they need someone else’s approval, but because otherwise failure will await them at every turn. Not doing any homework and failing a test is the equivalent of not doing work at the job and getting fired. No one should have to consistently tell one to do his or her job; one should know one’s responsibility to accomplish goals independently in a satisfactory and timely manner. While both mandatory and optional homework assignments have their pros and cons, some find that mandatory homework does more harm than good. C hild education, parenting and human behavior expert Alfie Kohn finds that “There [is] simply no compelling data to justify the practice of making kids work what amounts to a second shift when they get home from a full day of school.” While Kohn takes it to the extreme opinion by stating “no homework should be the norm,” he brings up the valid point that the assignment of  mandatory homework forces a student to spend his or her entire day focused on academics. Some students will not thrive in an atmosphere that forces them to be held accountable for their actions. But hopefully, if they are forced to deal with the real world consequences for long enough, they will come to realize what their voluntary obligations are. If every class continues to assign homework that is checked on a daily basis, students will not be prepared for college and for life. Assigning optional homework is the stepping-stone through which students learn to be held accountable for their decisions, work and actions. Con Sam Bernstein staff writer Homework needs to be mandatory. It is a fact that students do better after completing homework at home. It’s a fact that students do better when homework is mandatory. There is no reason at all to make homework optional. Not giving credit to those that complete homework nightly is also unfair. With admission into college getting more and more competitive, students need every point they can get. Completing assignments and not getting points for them is absurd and only hurts students chances of getting into the college. Homework points can be the difference between a B and an A for some students, and it hurts students  It’s simply wasting students’ time that they could be spending completing assignments that count for points in other classes. If a kid is willing to put in the work to get an A, teachers should reward them. “The school needs to think about everybody, and if homework was not mandatory, some students who are doing below average would do worse if they had an option to do even less,” sophomore Colin Newberry said. This is school. In real life you’ll lose credibility for not completing tasks. School should be a model of what real life is and what real life will be, as it is a developmental place. Teens need to know responsibility, and having a responsibility to complete homework teaches young minds how to have jobs in the future. Homework is the most basic form of this responsibility. Homework is graded for a reason. Students work hard to complete daily assignments and deserve credit for doing so. Not getting credit for homework is like waiting a table and not getting a tip. If a student is willing to put work into your class, they deserve credit. It’s also a way to give credit for efforts in a class. Students that don’t happen to be good test takers should have another way to make up points lost. “I wouldn’t do the homework without an incentive such as a grade,” freshman Eva Levin said. Other students could attest to that. “If there’s no mandatory studying or homework to be done, then most won’t care about it because is doesn’t affect their grade whether or not they do it,” freshman Nathan Naghi said. Cutting corners is human nature. “I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it,” Bill Gates said.  If optional homework has to be cut for students to spend an extra hour on other studying, they’ll do it. By not doing homework, there’s no way to assess how your knowledge of the subject is growing. Sitting in a class for 53 minutes cannot possibly give you enough understanding of a subject to take anything away from it. Homework fundamentally exists to remind students what they learned in class by providing practice problems similar to those on future assessments. By not helping students out in this regard, teachers are setting students up for failure. By encouraging students with points, both students and teachers can spend less time on review and on more time exploring new concepts. “Homework is designed specifically to complement the lessons taught by teachers during class. Sometimes the lessons lack in class, forcing students to essentially teach themselves at home, further reiterating the cruciality of homework,” junior Ethan Manaster said. Not every student has the diligence to sit at a desk and study at their own will. Students do, however, have the diligence to complete homework for points. And by encouraging students through rewards, they’ll learn from the homework they’re forced to do. By teaching students the rewards of being dedicated at getting better  with challenges in life, they’re better prepared to go off into the job force and make a true impact. Students could absolutely be hard working and do their own studying at their own pace. Nobody is getting anywhere by blindly distrusting students. But by giving students guidance in their studying, you’re doing them a solid. Teachers have been to college and are professionally trained to work with young minds. They know what to assign you and how to assign it. They know what’s on their tests and they know how much practice needs to happen outside of class to reach your highest potential on those said tests. Teachers aren’t just there to provide Kahoot codes and to yell at you for sliding into Sarahahs in class. Their purpose is to guide you. By not enabling teachers to guide students, you’re taking away from the purpose of a teacher’s’ job; to teach. By restricting the work teachers can get their students to do, you’re diminishing from the amount of content teachers can teach in a semester. Teachers can go faster when nearly everyone in the class is completing homework. By making homework optional, teachers can not reach their maximum potential with classes. Students, teachers and everyone in between cannot function at their highest potential without assigning mandatory homework.

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• Catherine Gagulashvili
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• sam bernstein

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Emma • Feb 26, 2023 at 12:02 pm

Five days a week for almost nine months, students spend almost their entire day at school learning concepts and doing tedious work. Even after school, they go home and do even more work. According to College Homework Help, in the year 1905, homework was invented as a punishment for kids. Yet for some reason, it is now assigned almost every night. Homework can be boring, unnecessary, and sometimes just busy work for most students. Therefore, optional homework should be implemented in order to provide the extra practice for those who want it, without penalizing those who do not.

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Teachers Collaboration & Professional Growth

The Great Homework Debate: To Give or Not to Give

I’ve been teaching in the elementary classroom for 18+ years. Over that course of time, I have assigned homework in many different ways . I have given homework that is due the next day, due at the end of the week, or the following week. I have given short-term projects, choice boards, you name it. I’ve had the same students complete the homework and the same students not complete homework. I’ve had some parents want (actually demand) homework, while other parents would rather not have homework added to their already full plate. As a result, I have been considering the idea of not assigning homework at all.

One thing I have learned about my students and their families is that not every home looks the same. Not all family members have the same schedule. Some students don’t have families at home to support them. Some students are watching other siblings. Some students are hungry and tired when they get home. And before you know it, the afternoon turns into evening, and then into the night, and it’s time for bed.

To be quite honest, I don’t find much value in homework, and neither do many of my students. Hear me out. I find the school day to be long and tiresome for many students. Some students work long and hard during the day. The ones that don’t will not go home and complete homework. Many kids receive support in school and need the same support at home in order to complete the homework. Some parents work late and are tired themselves. They may not be able to offer the support that their child(ren) needs.

As a busy mom of two boys, I know when I leave work, I have many personal responsibilities I need to tend to. I need to pick up my own boys from aftercare, get them home, fed, and bathed. They want to unwind and play. They don’t want to do homework. I don’t want to do homework with them. It can be a battle. They’re tired. I’m tired. It gets ugly. I try to teach my children that there needs to be a balance between home and school, work and play. Some nights homework just doesn’t fit into our busy schedule.

To Give or Not To Give Homework: That is the Question

I reached out to teachers on Instagram and put out a story poll asking if elementary teachers give homework. 34% of teachers responded yes to giving homework, while 66% responded no. Then I received a ton of DMs from teachers sharing some great options for homework.

• Unfinished classwork
• Do something nice for someone else and don’t tell them it was you, and ask an adult in your life what their favorite song is and ask them to either play it or sing it to you.
• Life skills (good for special education)
• Non-academic choice boards (go for a walk with your family, play a board game, help with 2 chores, etc)
• Optional academic or practice choice boards

So, I made the decision to at least start the year off with an optiona l homework choice board. It’s nothing fancy. It does reinforce learned concepts and skills from our daily lessons and curriculum, like a math practice page and or activities to practice word study (spelling and vocabulary), reading, and some extensions in science and social studies. I like the idea of optional homework because it gives families flexibility. It gives the parents and students who want or need homework an opportunity to complete homework while allowing families who would rather not have homework to forgo it or pick and choose which nights work best to complete homework.

I do offer an incentive, some kind of positive reinforcement, to those students who complete homework. In my school, we reward students with “buzz bucks” for students to cash in to receive rewards/prizes. I write a little note to go along with the bucks too.

“Leo, I noticed you crushed the math homework this week. That must have taken time and effort but it shows in your work. Keep it up!” ~Mrs. Weis

My students love this acknowledgment and praise. They save my little notes, too. Now that’s meaningful! I have seen at least half my class hand in homework so far each week, which I think is a win. There’s no moaning and groaning about it and the parents seem happy, too.

In my years of experience, I find that participative leadership, instead of authoritarian leadership, works. Participative leadership empowers and involves students and parents in some decision-making processes, like homework. This has proven to increase engagement and participation. H omework shouldn’t cause stress for students and parents, especially elementary students who may not be independent at home. Homework should reinforce skills and provide meaningful practice.

So, i f you’d like to try something different this year with homework, you can grab a copy of my homework choice boards that you can edit to the grade and subjects you teach. You can make multiple choice boards to differentiate and meet the needs of your students.

Since using these optional homework choice boards, I have customized the choices on the board. I’ve added more specific tasks that relate to our daily work and curriculum, such as response prompts to the novel we are reading, links to practice sites for math (Prodigy, Dreambox, etc), videos for additional support, specific science and social studies concepts to extend learning about what we are learning in class, etc.

Not down for optional homework? You can choose Homework Bingo. Students must complete a box each night, 4 boxes horizontally, vertically, or diagonally for the week. Working on a long-term project? You can assign one small part of the project each night. Smaller tasks are more manageable and help students with time management and accountability for meeting project deadlines.

Grab the FREE editable Homework Choice Boards here .

What are your thoughts on giving homework in the elementary classroom? I’d love to hear them.

Thanks for reading.

If you like it, then pin it!

Christine Weis is a passionate educator, classroom management coach, wife, and mom of two busy boys. She enjoys teaching, writing, and creating resources for teachers.

February 14, 2024 at 3:18 pm

You can’t give a prize to students for doing something that they must do.

November 15, 2021 at 10:03 pm

What a great blog to read. Such an important topic you’ve shared with us. Thanks for the share!

November 11, 2021 at 11:48 pm

I think that I’m against homework because kids being in school all day and then having homework is hard. I think it needs to stop!

November 11, 2021 at 10:36 pm

A good balance is so important. Quality family time I think allows for kids to do their best in all aspects of their lives.

November 11, 2021 at 8:02 pm

I love this idea! When my kids were younger they always had a ton of homework. And both were competitive athletes at a young age. So this would have been very welcome!

November 11, 2021 at 10:21 am

In elementary school, my daughter had homework for a week as far as I remember. This way, the kids learned to organize themselves and spread their chores over a couple of days – or do it panic-stricken the day before the deadline 😀 It really prepared them for high school and all the following institutions.

November 11, 2021 at 8:42 am

I love your perspective. My kids are now in middle school and some teachers say they will never give homework while others do. But it seems no matter what, they always have schoolwork to do at home. They are exhausted when they come home.. and the thought of doing more for school on some nights is so rough. I would love to see more teachers join in on your approach.

November 11, 2021 at 6:56 am

It’s really interesting to hear your take on this. I am really pleased that my daughter doesn’t really get homework – just her timetables, spelling and reading book which takes minimal time after school. I feel like they already do so much at school already and it’s a long day – they need time to just be after school.

November 11, 2021 at 6:55 am

I enjoyed the article from top to bottom. Thanks for sharing such amazing ways of doing homework

November 11, 2021 at 6:49 am

I loved the homework choice boards. thanks for the free download!

November 11, 2021 at 5:28 am

Homework… The word alone is enough to bring on a huge yawn for kids. But hey! they need to do it. Doing homework teaches them a lot of things and one of it is being responsible.

November 11, 2021 at 12:42 am

This is such a really great and informative post. I’ve got a lot of things that I learned from this. Thank you so much, I’m gonna share this to my friend who has a son who is elementary. I really enjoy reading this!

November 10, 2021 at 4:10 pm

I enjoyed this reading. Never thought about the subject really. Just took it all for granted. My older started school this year and even though she does all her homework, there are days that we have a battle at home. It would be great to have a choice… And I belive she would rather do it if she didnt have to…

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Making Homework Optional

By RACHEL HIRSCHHEIMER

Third Place, Feature-Local — Long Island Press  High School Journalism Awards 2016

Recently there has been increased discussion about homework in the Jericho School District after Jericho Middle School Principal Dr. Donald Gately offered the idea of optional homework to the Middle School faculty. The term “optional homework” refers to a practice by which teachers assign homework and students are given the option to complete it or not after considering the usefulness of the homework assignment to their learning.

Fifth grade teacher Scott Bedley inspired Dr. Gately to try to suggest an “optional homework” policy throughout Jericho Middle School. Bedley and Gately have conversed about the benefits of optional homework. Bedley discovered that optional homework has dramatically increased the level of student engagement in his classroom. His policy is what it sounds like. Students in Bedley’s classroom have the choice to either complete or not complete homework. The assignments he distributes enhance the amount of material learned at home because students can explore the topic freely without being nervous that they’re going to lose points for getting something wrong. Bedley’s optional homework allows students to choose how they would like to learn information. Therefore, according to Bedley, students in his California classroom know more material coming into class than they would have without the homework being optional. Stanford researcher Denise Pope found that too much homework has a detrimental effect on students. Pope said, “The findings address how current homework practices in privileged, high-performing schools sustain students’ advantage in competitive climates yet hinder learning, full engagement and well-being.” Pope discovered that many homework assignments are typically counterproductive and excessive. Too much homework leads to “greater stress, reduction in health and less time for friends, family and extracurricular pursuits.” The Stanford researcher saw that in high-performing schools like Jericho, students with excessive amounts of homework to complete end up spending most of their time alone which hinders a student’s social development.

Dr. Gately hopes to address such findings in part by making homework optional. “I want to make the assignments more meaningful. I especially want us to stop keeping score.” For instance, if a math teacher assigned a student 20 word problems for homework and the child only completed 17 problems, the student shouldn’t get penalized.  Gately doesn’t see the correlation between deducting points from homework and learning. He stated, “What does that have to do with learning? It has nothing to do with learning.”

Gately has spoken with some middle school students about such a policy.  Seventh grader Matthew R. said, “If the assignments were key to a test, I would do my homework.” Jericho Middle School student Jonathan C. agrees with R.  He stated, “If the homework was going to help me for a test, then I would do my homework.”

Jericho High School students have similar views. Freshman Deborah M. feels homework isn’t a beneficial practice for learning. “I feel as though I have better things to do, and believe that test prep is a more effective way of learning,” she said.  Deborah claimed that instead of doing repetitive homework, she would much rather take practice regents to prepare for final examinations. Sophomore Adrianna M. thinks optional homework would be an excellent policy for Jericho. She said, “I think homework should be optional because I don’t think students have enough time in their day to do it all.”

Gately isn’t looking to eliminate homework completely.  He feels that he has found a compromise between “a lot of homework and no homework.”  He believes teachers should be assigning homework that has meaning and value, minus the point system.

Jericho High School Assistant Principal Dr. Dagoberto Artiles is excited about Dr. Gately’s ideas regarding optional homework.

In fact, he feels that since Jericho is such a prestigious district, this is an excellent place to try a new policy. He said, “This is the perfect place where the school can become a laboratory.  We can reinvent education, reinvent the way people learn, and then send it out and share it with others.”

Jericho High School Principal Joan Rosenberg believes that homework is meant for the student to review what has occurred in class. She said, “I don’t know that saying homework is optional overall will change the system that dramatically.” Rosenberg believes that depending on the student, optional homework could relieve some stress.  However, making homework optional could be too extreme when trying to reduce the amount of homework. Rosenberg stated, “If it’s quality homework and not necessarily quantity homework, then there are ways of lessening the load.”

Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction Barbara Bauer doesn’t think a district-wide policy of optional homework is realistic.  “I think individual teachers giving options for certain activities or certain performance tasks is a possible way to go.”

The District’s homework policy currently states, “The Board of Education acknowledges the educational value of homework as an adjunct to and extension of the instructional program of the schools. For the purposes of this policy, ‘homework’ shall refer to those assignments to be prepared by the student outside of the school or independently while in attendance at school.” On occasion, the Board will review polices that need to be revised, but Mrs.  Bauer doesn’t feel a need to change the homework policy in Jericho.  Bauer stated, “As you can see it’s pretty general, and I really don’t see a need to change the policy as it stands now.”

If optional homework was implemented throughout the school district, some high school teachers would question its effectiveness. High school math teacher, Suzanne Jacobsen is against an optional homework policy. “I am not in favor of it. Part of your learning process is to do homework. You’re not going to meet with much success if you don’t practice.”

Science teacher Timothy Strout believes that homework acts as a reinforcement and can be used as feedback for students. “Homework is important to see what you have done wrong,” he said.  When asked if he would be open to making his homework optional if he had the choice, he immediately replied, “No, I wouldn’t do that. If I’m going to assign it and I’m going to have you spend the time doing it, making it optional makes it seem unimportant. If nobody is grading it, then what’s the point of doing it?”

The JerEcho invites our readers to weigh in on this issue.  Share your views on optional homework by commenting in the box below.

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Homework is already optional. Every student can opt not to complete it. He or she can determine that a social event, or gaming, or napping, or surfing the net, or reading a Stanford education researcher is more valuable or less stressful than completing an assignment that his or her teacher has deemed necessary for a better understanding of the material taught in class. There are always options. We have the option to consider the proposal an innovative aid to education or another absurd suggestion supported by one researcher who values more time for “friends, family, and extracurricular pursuits” over study or work that might still be conducted with friends and family.

A very interesting and informative article!

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Homework Should Be Optional

SEQUOIA CLARK , reporter | November 5, 2018

Five days a week for almost nine months, students spend almost their entire day at school learning concepts and doing tedious work. Even after school, they go home and do even more work. According to College Homework Help, in the year 1905, homework was invented as a punishment for kids. Yet for some reason, it is now assigned almost every night. Homework can be boring, unnecessary, and sometimes just busy work for most students. Therefore, optional homework should be implemented in order to provide the extra practice for those who want it, without penalizing those who do not. Beside the fact that almost all kids despise it, there is not enough time in the day for students to be expected to complete homework. It is expected of students to complete hours of homework every night, do an extracurricular, maintain a healthy social life, and get at least eight hours of sleep every night. Since this is essentially unattainable for students, they must sacrifice one thing for another. When faced with choosing between spending their time either doing homework or hanging out with friends, students always end up unhappy. If they chose to do homework, students begin to resent all schoolwork simply because they miss out on being with their friends, although if they chose to have fun with their friends, their grade will most likely suffer. Even if students manage to do both of these things, they usually have to stay up late to make sure everything gets done, which according to Craig Canapari M.D. can cause sleep deprivation. Due to this, it is no wonder that according to psychologist Robert Leahy, there has been a steady nationwide increase in the amount of stress caused by schoolwork among high school students. Even if homework was not so time consuming, there is little evidence that regular homework helps students academically, especially if it is just causing students to be stressed and resent schoolwork. In addition, in college there is no weight in daily homework anyway. While homework should be optional, it should not be abolished completely. Even though it has its downsides, some students do need additional practice outside of school. Giving students optional homework, lets them decide what they need. Some students might need a lot of help in a certain class, while others might need none at all. This can also teach students how to manage themselves, and figure out how to know if they need more or less practice for each subject. Several teachers at CHS, have already made homework optional.This is because they already have realized that it is not actually helping students. In addition, abolishing forced homework is favorable for teachers as well. The main benefit for teachers who implement optional homework is grading. Teachers spend hours upon hours grading homework and giving feedback. With optional homework, the need for this is eradicated and teachers can simply post an answer key online. This enables students who still do the homework to find out if they have done it correctly. Over the years, homework has become a regular part of students’ lives, yet no one ever enjoys any part of it. Getting rid of mandatory homework will improve the lives of teachers and students alike. Students will have more time for other things and become less stressed while teachers will not have to go through mountains of papers. Homework is not essential to learning and students should no longer be forced to work on it every night.

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The Homework Conundrum

June 1, 2023

The first day of June, when the weather is warming up, might seem like an odd time to write about homework — but there’s a surprising connection you might be able to use on the last day of school.

For years now, homework has been a hot topic in education. Some noble-minded educators consider it counterproductive — an unnecessary stressor that makes kids hate learning without boosting their understanding. Others — similarly noble-minded — believe that the no-homework movement does a terrible disservice to students, depriving of much-needed opportunities for skill consolidation.

As is often the case, both sides have valid points, and neither has a monopoly on the truth. Homework, when implemented wisely, is associated with a host of positive outcomes: it can improve understanding by providing additional opportunities for practice. It can help students improve time-management skills and can help parents gain a deeper understanding of what is being taught in class. On the other hand, homework can take time away from other important activities, and it can increase levels of anxiety. For younger students, it’s not associated with increased learning, and can actually reduce test scores.

But there’s a simple solution — one that makes homework more effective and which addresses all of the concerns around it. It might sound a little crazy at first, but teachers around the country have been using it to great effect for years. Here it is: Make homework optional.

Working Outside the Box

It’s as simple as it sounds. Provide students with opportunities to practice their learning, but instead of mandating completion, simply invite them to participate. This does a couple of things: first — and most importantly — it helps students understand the purpose of homework. It prevents them from seeing it as a punishment or a game; it helps them to envision that additional practice as an opportunity to deepen their understanding.

Relatedly, optional homework makes homework relevant. Because students are able to choose their tasks, they are free to select only those that matter to them. If they understand a concept well already, they don’t have to waste time on rote busywork. If they are struggling or confused, however, they have an opportunity to address that confusion by engaging in tasks that will address it directly.

Optional homework increases buy-in. Since students are free to choose, they take more ownership of the work that they do, as well as of the process of learning. This improves student metacognition; learners need to be more intentional about what they understand and what they don’t… where they need more practice, and where their mastery is secure.

And finally — and perhaps most importantly — optional homework helps teachers become more effective by requiring us to think about what our students will really respond to. It helps us think creatively — to consider ways in which we can make learning engaging enough that students will want to do it. When we focus our attention on that kind of engagement, it helps us to expand ourselves professionally.

Now, what does that have to do with the summer? 

Keep Curiosity Alive

Well, summer is a wonderful time for students. They can relax, enjoy time with their families, and explore the world with their friends. It can — and should — be enjoyable and rejuvenating. But a huge part of that rejuvenation should come from learning. Your students live in a great, big, wonderful world. There’s so much to discover and so much to understand. You can give them homework over the break — homework that they’re under no obligation to complete, but which will help them to live more richly and more fully.

When you give summer homework, you send a powerful message that learning isn’t something that school does to you — it’s an integral part of living a fully flourishing life. Next fall, some of your students might come back having completed none of the assignments, but others might have done one, or two, or three. And if they did it because of your optional homework assignment, you’ll have made the world just a little better place — and that’s what it’s all about.

Summer Homework Ideas:

• Read a book you love.
• Build an awesome fort. 
• Launch something a long distance.
• Create a Rube Goldberg machine.
• Perform a random act of kindness.
• Create your own board game or outdoor sport.
• Find a creature you’ve never seen before.
• Go outdoors to a place you’ve never been.
• Create a recipe for a healthy and delicious summer snack.
• Write a letter to someone incredible.
• Create a craft you’re proud of.
• Pick up litter in an area that needs it.
• Meet someone new.
• Invent your own incredible adventure.

 For more free educational resources, or ideas on how to promote healthy SEL, simply follow this link !

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MEI GCSE mathematics extension materials

The GCSE Mathematics extension materials are aimed at students who are working towards GCSE Mathematics and would benefit from exposure to mathematics beyond the GCSE specifications.

Aims The aims of the materials were:

• To introduce students to new ideas so as to stimulate their interest in the subject.
• To reinforce some of the concepts in GCSE so as to improve students’ understanding of them.
• To highlight how some areas of GCSE are developed at A level so as to encourage students to continue their studies.

Format All of the materials have the following format: *Starts from a topic or idea that is in GCSE Mathematics and features a ‘What you should know’ section.

• A ‘New idea’ that is an extension to GCSE Mathematics.
• A task for students to attempt so they can investigate the idea.
• Ideas for further investigation suggested in a ‘Take it further section’.
• A brief explanation of how this topic is developed at A level.
• All the materials are based on a single sheet of A4 (except for NA 11, SSM 4 and SSM 6) which can be copied and given to students.
• Teachers’ notes, including solutions, are available to all schools who subscribe to the online resources or register free with the Further Mathematics Support Programme.

Suggested uses Some suggestions for ways to use the materials:

• As a whole-class activity when students have finished studying the topic.
• As extra materials to stretch and challenge some of the more able students within a class.
• As a regular, possibly optional, homework task.
• As a basis for study in lunchtime or after-school maths club.

Notes The tasks are not intended to be linear. Students will benefit from the investigations even if they do not ‘complete’ them.

• In each of the three sections the resources are ordered by accessibility; however, it is inevitable that some students will progress further with some tasks than with others.
• The materials are based on interesting mathematical ideas and are not designed to provide extension to every aspect of the GCSE specifications.
• Mathematics
• Activity sheet
• Include Physical Resources

Number/Algebra

MEI GCSE Extension materials for Number/Algebra. Tasks are available on quadratics, surds, interpreting graphs, trial & improvement, functions, indices, simultaneous equations, fractions, inequalities and curves.

The materials are aimed at students who are working towards GCSE Mathematics and would...

Shape, Space and Measure

MEI GCSE Extension materials for shape, space and measure. Tasks are available on trigonometry, circles, Pythagoras’ theorem, loci, and vectors.

The materials are aimed at students who are working towards GCSE...

Handling Data

MEI GCSE Extension materials for handling data (statistics). Tasks are available on the mean from a frequency table, interquartile range and tree diagrams.

The materials are aimed at students who are working towards...

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Fall 2021, Class: Mon, Wed 11:30am-1:00pm, NVIDIA Auditorium

Last year's lecture videos are now available.

The course website will be updated with Fall 2021 details in the coming days.

Description:

While deep learning has achieved remarkable success in supervised and reinforcement learning problems, such as image classification, speech recognition, and game playing, these models are, to a large degree, specialized for the single task they are trained for. This course will cover the setting where there are multiple tasks to be solved, and study how the structure arising from multiple tasks can be leveraged to learn more efficiently or effectively. This includes:

• goal-conditioned reinforcement learning techniques that leverage the structure of the provided goal space to learn many tasks significantly faster
• meta-learning methods that aim to learn efficient learning algorithms that can learn new tasks quickly
• curriculum and lifelong learning, where the problem requires learning a sequence of tasks, leveraging their shared structure to enable knowledge transfer

This is a graduate-level course. By the end of the course, students will be able to understand and implement the state-of-the-art multi-task learning and meta-learning algorithms and be ready to conduct research on these topics.

The course will include in-person lectures (also livestreamed and recorded over zoom), three graded homework assignments, two optional homework assignments, and a course project. The lectures will discuss the fundamentals of topics required for understanding and designing multi-task and meta-learning algorithms in both supervised learning and reinforcement learning domains. The assignments will focus on coding problems that emphasize these fundamentals. Finally, students will present their projects at the poster session at the end of the quarter. course policies.

Prerequisites:

CS 229 or an equivalent introductory machine learning course is required. CS 221 or an equivalent introductory artificial intelligence course is recommended but not required.

Lecture Videos:

If you are looking for publicly-available lecture videos from the Fall 2019 offering, they are here . Materials from the Fall 2019 offering are here and materials from the Fall 2020 offering are here . Lecture videos from this Fall 2021 offering will be processed and made publicly available after the course. For students enrolled in the course, recorded lecture videos will be posted to canvas after each lecture.

Prof. Chelsea Finn

Dr. karol hausman, amelie byun, course coordinator, rafael rafailov, head teaching assistant, dilip arumugam, teaching assistant, archit sharma, course calendar.

Course calendar with details of lectures, TA sessions, and office hours is available here .

Grading and Course Policies

Homeworks (15% each): There are three graded homework assignments (Homeworks 1-3), each worth 15% of the grade. Assignments will require training neural networks in PyTorch. Homework 0 is optional and is worth 2% extra grade. Homework 4 is optional and will either replace one prior homework grade or part of the project grade (whichever is better for grade). All assignments are due on Gradescope at 11:59 pm Pacific Time on the respective due date.

Project (55%): There's a research-level project of your choice. You may form groups of 1-3 students to complete the project, and you are encouraged to start early! Detailed guidelines on the project can be found here .

Late Days : You have 6 total late days across homeworks and project proposal submissions. You may use a maximum of 2 late days for any single assignment. Late days are not allowed for final project report.

Lecture Attendance : While we do not require lecture attendance, students are encouraged to join the live lecture. To accommodate various circumstances, we will be live-streaming the in-person lecture via a zoom link on canvas. Students joining the zoom live stream will be able to ask questions. For those who cannot join the live lectures, lecture recordings will also be available on Canvas shortly following the lecture.

Honor Code : Students are free to form study groups and may discuss homework in groups. However, each student must write down the solutions and code from scratch independently, and without referring to any written notes from the joint session. When debugging code together, you are only allowed to look at the input-output behavior of each other's programs and not the code itself. In other words, each student must understand the solution well enough in order to reconstruct it by him/herself. It is an honor code violation to copy, refer to, or look at written or code solutions from a previous year, including but not limited to: official solutions from a previous year, solutions posted online, and solutions you or someone else may have written up in a previous year. Furthermore, it is an honor code violation to post your assignment solutions online, such as on a public git repo. For more details about honor code, see The Stanford Honor Code and The Stanford Honor Code Pertaining to CS Courses .

Health and Safety Expectation (COVID-19 Protocols)

Following Stanford’s policies, everyone is required to wear a mask indoors, regardless of vaccination status. This includes any in-person lectures or office hour sessions. Some community members may have preferences that go beyond the requirements; it is important that we treat each others' preferences with respect and care. You can find the most current policies on campus masking requirements on the COVID-19 Health Alerts site .

Academic Accommodations

If you need an academic accommodation based on a disability, please register with the Office of Accessible Education (OAE). Professional staff will evaluate your needs, support appropriate and reasonable accommodations, and prepare an Academic Accommodation Letter for faculty. To get started, or to re-initiate services, please visit oae.stanford.edu. If you already have an Academic Accommodation Letter, please send your letter to [email protected]. OAE Letters should be sent to us at the earliest possible opportunity so that the course staff can partner with you and OAE to make the appropriate accommodations.

Note on Financial Aid

All students should retain receipts for books and other course-related expenses, as these may be qualified educational expenses for tax purposes. If you are an undergraduate receiving financial aid, you may be eligible for additional financial aid for required books and course materials if these expenses exceed the aid amount in your award letter. For more information, review your award letter or visit the Student Budget website .

    © Chelsea Finn 2021

• Optional Homework Tasks

Optional Homework Tasks April 2024

• Optional Homework Tasks April 2024.docx

Unfortunately not the ones with chocolate chips.

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Wednesday 20 September 2023

Y1 and y2: optional homework tasks.

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Homework tasks The Romans

Subject: History

Age range: 7-11

Resource type: Worksheet/Activity

Last updated

3 February 2015

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LESSON PLAN FOR ENGLISH TEACHERS

A history of teenagers.

Level: Upper-intermediate (B2-C1)

Type of English: English for Teenagers

Tags: society and change people and places colloquialisms and slang describing pictures and photos life stages developing an argument 16-18 years old 18+ years old Article based Video talk

Publication date: 01/22/2023

The topic of this lesson is a history of teenagers. Students will learn vocabulary from a reading and video on the topic. The video shows teenagers in the 1950s and students will have to guess the slang terms used and will have the opportunity to discuss the slang they use these days. The final activity is a debate on whether teens have it easier or harder these days. Finally, there are two optional homework tasks - to talk to someone older about their lives as teens and to find some examples of old slang.

by J. S. Fox

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COURSE PLANS

This comprehensive course plan covers the full range of language needs – listening, role play, vocabulary development.

Worksheets in English for Teenagers (16-18) course plan

Type of English: English for Teenagers Level: Upper-intermediate (B2-C1)

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