books and homework

5 Books on Homework (and Helping with Homework!)

The Berenstain Bears and the Homework Hassle

Paperback $5.99

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By Stan Berenstain , Jan Berenstain

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The Berenstain Bears and the Homework Hassle ,  by Stan and Jan Berenstain In this classic Berenstain Bear book, even grizzlies have homework hassles! This is a perfect bedtime read to share after you’ve finished your homework for the day. This book is especially good for anyone who doesn’t want to do their homework like Brother bear (ie all of us at one time or another), and it’s a much needed reminder of why it’s better to take responsibility and get the job done.

Homework for Grown-ups: Everything You Learned at School and Promptly Forgot

Hardcover $19.99

By E. Foley , B. Coates

Homework for Grownups: Everything You Learned at School and Promptly Forgot ,  by E. Foley and B. Coates Sometimes I can’t remember where I put my keys, so there’s no way I’m remembering half of what I learned in school. This book is a great resource for any parent who needs a refresher in math, English, science, history, or any other subject you haven’t had to dust off in the last few years. So the next time your child asks you what an isosceles triangle is, you’ll be able to answer with confidence! And with each chapter ending in a quiz, you’ll really feel like you’re back in the classroom!

Peanut Butter and Homework Sandwiches

Hardcover $15.91 $16.99

By Lisa Broadie Cook Illustrator Jack E. Davis

Peanut Butter and Homework Sandwiches ,  by Lisa Broadie Cook You’ve probably heard the centuries-old excuse, “the dog ate my homework,” knowing that it was just another way of saying “oops I forgot to do my homework!” But in this cute picture book, that actually happened to poor Martin MacGregor! If your kid is having a hard week at school, or feeling unprepared for class, this is a good book to pick up to show how down-and-out Martin manages to turn everything around!

The Parent Backpack for Kindergarten through Grade 5: How to Support Your Child's Education, End Homework Meltdowns, and Build Parent-Teacher Connections

Paperback $17.00

By ML Nichols

The Parent Backpack for Kindergarten through Grade 5: How to Support Your Child’s Education, End Homework Meltdowns, and Build Parent-Teacher Connections ,  by ML Nichols Learn practical how-to strategies for helping with your child’s homework and put a stop to homework-induced meltdowns in the process. This all-encompassing book goes way beyond just how to handle homework. It’s written by the head of a parent education group, so you’ll also get great tips on everything from emailing your child’s teacher to how to deal with bullying. Basically everything an elementary school parent needs to know!

Please Help Me With My Homework - English

Paperback $10.97

By Susan Gingras Fitzell M.Ed

Please Help Me With My Homework: Strategies for Parents and Caregivers ,  by Susan Fitzell Doing homework can actually be fun?! Well Susan Fitzell thinks so, and she wrote a book to prove it! What parent or caregiver couldn’t use a few more strategies for helping with homework? This uber-informative book provides great strategies as well as a ton of other tools and exercises to discover exactly how your child tackles homework best. What books about homework and helping with homework do you recommend?

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Tutorials in Introductory Physics

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ISBN : 9780130970695

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Rethinking Homework for This Year—and Beyond

A schoolwide effort to reduce homework has led to a renewed focus on ensuring that all work assigned really aids students’ learning.

I used to pride myself on my high expectations, including my firm commitment to accountability for regular homework completion among my students. But the trauma of Covid-19 has prompted me to both reflect and adapt. Now when I think about the purpose and practice of homework, two key concepts guide me: depth over breadth, and student well-being.

Homework has long been the subject of intense debate, and there’s no easy answer with respect to its value. Teachers assign homework for any number of reasons: It’s traditional to do so, it makes students practice their skills and solidify learning, it offers the opportunity for formative assessment, and it creates good study habits and discipline. Then there’s the issue of pace. Throughout my career, I’ve assigned homework largely because there just isn’t enough time to get everything done in class.

A Different Approach

Since classes have gone online, the school where I teach has made a conscious effort as a teaching community to reduce, refine, and distill our curriculum. We have applied guiding questions like: What is most important? What is most transferable? What is most relevant? Refocusing on what matters most has inevitably made us rethink homework.

We have approached both asking and answering these questions through a science of learning lens. In Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning , the authors maintain that deep learning is slow learning. Deep learning requires time for retrieval, practice, feedback, reflection, and revisiting content; ultimately it requires struggle, and there is no struggle without time.

As someone who has mastered the curriculum mapping style of “get it done to move on to get that next thing done,” using an approach of “slow down and reduce” has been quite a shift for me. However, the shift has been necessary: What matters most is what’s best for my students, as opposed to my own plans or mandates imposed by others.

Listening to Students

To implement this shift, my high school English department has reduced content and texts both in terms of the amount of units and the content within each unit. We’re more flexible with dates and deadlines. We spend our energy planning the current unit instead of the year’s units. In true partnership with my students, I’m constantly checking in with them via Google forms, Zoom chats, conferences, and Padlet activities. In these check-ins, I specifically ask students how they’re managing the workload for my class and their other classes. I ask them how much homework they’re doing. And I adjust what I do and expect based on what they tell me. For example, when I find out a week is heavy with work in other classes, I make sure to allot more time during class for my tasks. At times I have even delayed or altered one of my assignments.

To be completely transparent, the “old” me is sheepish in admitting that I’ve so dramatically changed my thinking with respect to homework. However, both my students and I have reaped numerous benefits. I’m now laser-focused when designing every minute of my lessons to maximize teaching and learning. Every decision I make is now scrutinized through the lens of absolute worth for my students’ growth: If it doesn’t make the cut, it’s cut. I also take into account what is most relevant to my students.

For example, our 10th-grade English team has redesigned a unit that explores current manifestations of systemic oppression. This unit is new in approach and longer in duration than it was pre-Covid, and it has resulted in some of the deepest and hardest learning, as well as the richest conversations, that I have seen among students in my career. Part of this improved quality comes from the frequent and intentional pauses that I instruct students to take in order to reflect on the content and on the arc of their own learning. The reduction in content that we need to get through in online learning has given me more time to assign reflective prompts, and to let students process their thoughts, whether that’s at the end of a lesson as an exit slip or as an assignment.

Joining Forces to Be Consistent

There’s no doubt this reduction in homework has been a team effort. Within the English department, we have all agreed to allot reading time during class; across each grade level, we’re monitoring the amount of homework our students have collectively; and across the whole high school, we have adopted a framework to help us think through assigning homework.

Within that framework, teachers at the school agree that the best option is for students to complete all work during class. The next best option is for students to finish uncompleted class work at home as a homework assignment of less than 30 minutes. The last option—the one we try to avoid as much as possible—is for students to be assigned and complete new work at home (still less than 30 minutes). I set a maximum time limit for students’ homework tasks (e.g., 30 minutes) and make that clear at the top of every assignment.

This schoolwide approach has increased my humility as a teacher. In the past, I tended to think my subject was more important than everyone else’s, which gave me license to assign more homework. But now I view my students’ experience more holistically: All of their classes and the associated work must be considered, and respected.

As always, I ground this new pedagogical approach not just in what’s best for students’ academic learning, but also what’s best for them socially and emotionally. 2020 has been traumatic for educators, parents, and students. There is no doubt the level of trauma varies greatly ; however, one can’t argue with the fact that homework typically means more screen time when students are already spending most of the day on their devices. They need to rest their eyes. They need to not be sitting at their desks. They need physical activity. They need time to do nothing at all.

Eliminating or reducing homework is a social and emotional intervention, which brings me to the greatest benefit of reducing the homework load: Students are more invested in their relationship with me now that they have less homework. When students trust me to take their time seriously, when they trust me to listen to them and adjust accordingly, when they trust me to care for them... they trust more in general.

And what a beautiful world of learning can be built on trust.

Choose Your Test

Sat / act prep online guides and tips, how to do homework: 15 expert tips and tricks.

Coursework/GPA

Everyone struggles with homework sometimes, but if getting your homework done has become a chronic issue for you, then you may need a little extra help. That’s why we’ve written this article all about how to do homework. Once you’re finished reading it, you’ll know how to do homework (and have tons of new ways to motivate yourself to do homework)!

We’ve broken this article down into a few major sections. You’ll find:

• A diagnostic test to help you figure out why you’re struggling with homework
• A discussion of the four major homework problems students face, along with expert tips for addressing them
• A bonus section with tips for how to do homework fast

By the end of this article, you’ll be prepared to tackle whatever homework assignments your teachers throw at you .

So let’s get started!

How to Do Homework: Figure Out Your Struggles 

Sometimes it feels like everything is standing between you and getting your homework done. But the truth is, most people only have one or two major roadblocks that are keeping them from getting their homework done well and on time. 

The best way to figure out how to get motivated to do homework starts with pinpointing the issues that are affecting your ability to get your assignments done. That’s why we’ve developed a short quiz to help you identify the areas where you’re struggling. 

Take the quiz below and record your answers on your phone or on a scrap piece of paper. Keep in mind there are no wrong answers! 

1. You’ve just been assigned an essay in your English class that’s due at the end of the week. What’s the first thing you do?

A. Keep it in mind, even though you won’t start it until the day before it’s due  B. Open up your planner. You’ve got to figure out when you’ll write your paper since you have band practice, a speech tournament, and your little sister’s dance recital this week, too.  C. Groan out loud. Another essay? You could barely get yourself to write the last one!  D. Start thinking about your essay topic, which makes you think about your art project that’s due the same day, which reminds you that your favorite artist might have just posted to Instagram...so you better check your feed right now. 

2. Your mom asked you to pick up your room before she gets home from work. You’ve just gotten home from school. You decide you’ll tackle your chores: 

A. Five minutes before your mom walks through the front door. As long as it gets done, who cares when you start?  B. As soon as you get home from your shift at the local grocery store.  C. After you give yourself a 15-minute pep talk about how you need to get to work.  D. You won’t get it done. Between texts from your friends, trying to watch your favorite Netflix show, and playing with your dog, you just lost track of time! 

3. You’ve signed up to wash dogs at the Humane Society to help earn money for your senior class trip. You: 

A. Show up ten minutes late. You put off leaving your house until the last minute, then got stuck in unexpected traffic on the way to the shelter.  B. Have to call and cancel at the last minute. You forgot you’d already agreed to babysit your cousin and bake cupcakes for tomorrow’s bake sale.  C. Actually arrive fifteen minutes early with extra brushes and bandanas you picked up at the store. You’re passionate about animals, so you’re excited to help out! D. Show up on time, but only get three dogs washed. You couldn’t help it: you just kept getting distracted by how cute they were!

4. You have an hour of downtime, so you decide you’re going to watch an episode of The Great British Baking Show. You: 

A. Scroll through your social media feeds for twenty minutes before hitting play, which means you’re not able to finish the whole episode. Ugh! You really wanted to see who was sent home!  B. Watch fifteen minutes until you remember you’re supposed to pick up your sister from band practice before heading to your part-time job. No GBBO for you!  C. You finish one episode, then decide to watch another even though you’ve got SAT studying to do. It’s just more fun to watch people make scones.  D. Start the episode, but only catch bits and pieces of it because you’re reading Twitter, cleaning out your backpack, and eating a snack at the same time.

5. Your teacher asks you to stay after class because you’ve missed turning in two homework assignments in a row. When she asks you what’s wrong, you say: 

A. You planned to do your assignments during lunch, but you ran out of time. You decided it would be better to turn in nothing at all than submit unfinished work.  B. You really wanted to get the assignments done, but between your extracurriculars, family commitments, and your part-time job, your homework fell through the cracks.  C. You have a hard time psyching yourself to tackle the assignments. You just can’t seem to find the motivation to work on them once you get home.  D. You tried to do them, but you had a hard time focusing. By the time you realized you hadn’t gotten anything done, it was already time to turn them in. 

Like we said earlier, there are no right or wrong answers to this quiz (though your results will be better if you answered as honestly as possible). Here’s how your answers break down: 

• If your answers were mostly As, then your biggest struggle with doing homework is procrastination. 
• If your answers were mostly Bs, then your biggest struggle with doing homework is time management. 
• If your answers were mostly Cs, then your biggest struggle with doing homework is motivation. 
• If your answers were mostly Ds, then your biggest struggle with doing homework is getting distracted. 

Now that you’ve identified why you’re having a hard time getting your homework done, we can help you figure out how to fix it! Scroll down to find your core problem area to learn more about how you can start to address it. 

And one more thing: you’re really struggling with homework, it’s a good idea to read through every section below. You may find some additional tips that will help make homework less intimidating. 

How to Do Homework When You’re a Procrastinator  

Merriam Webster defines “procrastinate” as “to put off intentionally and habitually.” In other words, procrastination is when you choose to do something at the last minute on a regular basis. If you’ve ever found yourself pulling an all-nighter, trying to finish an assignment between periods, or sprinting to turn in a paper minutes before a deadline, you’ve experienced the effects of procrastination. 

If you’re a chronic procrastinator, you’re in good company. In fact, one study found that 70% to 95% of undergraduate students procrastinate when it comes to doing their homework. Unfortunately, procrastination can negatively impact your grades. Researchers have found that procrastination can lower your grade on an assignment by as much as five points ...which might not sound serious until you realize that can mean the difference between a B- and a C+. 

Procrastination can also negatively affect your health by increasing your stress levels , which can lead to other health conditions like insomnia, a weakened immune system, and even heart conditions. Getting a handle on procrastination can not only improve your grades, it can make you feel better, too! 

The big thing to understand about procrastination is that it’s not the result of laziness. Laziness is defined as being “disinclined to activity or exertion.” In other words, being lazy is all about doing nothing. But a s this Psychology Today article explains , procrastinators don’t put things off because they don’t want to work. Instead, procrastinators tend to postpone tasks they don’t want to do in favor of tasks that they perceive as either more important or more fun. Put another way, procrastinators want to do things...as long as it’s not their homework! 

3 Tips f or Conquering Procrastination 

Because putting off doing homework is a common problem, there are lots of good tactics for addressing procrastination. Keep reading for our three expert tips that will get your homework habits back on track in no time. 

#1: Create a Reward System

Like we mentioned earlier, procrastination happens when you prioritize other activities over getting your homework done. Many times, this happens because homework...well, just isn’t enjoyable. But you can add some fun back into the process by rewarding yourself for getting your work done. 

Here’s what we mean: let’s say you decide that every time you get your homework done before the day it’s due, you’ll give yourself a point. For every five points you earn, you’ll treat yourself to your favorite dessert: a chocolate cupcake! Now you have an extra (delicious!) incentive to motivate you to leave procrastination in the dust. 

If you’re not into cupcakes, don’t worry. Your reward can be anything that motivates you . Maybe it’s hanging out with your best friend or an extra ten minutes of video game time. As long as you’re choosing something that makes homework worth doing, you’ll be successful. 

#2: Have a Homework Accountability Partner 

If you’re having trouble getting yourself to start your homework ahead of time, it may be a good idea to call in reinforcements . Find a friend or classmate you can trust and explain to them that you’re trying to change your homework habits. Ask them if they’d be willing to text you to make sure you’re doing your homework and check in with you once a week to see if you’re meeting your anti-procrastination goals. 

Sharing your goals can make them feel more real, and an accountability partner can help hold you responsible for your decisions. For example, let’s say you’re tempted to put off your science lab write-up until the morning before it’s due. But you know that your accountability partner is going to text you about it tomorrow...and you don’t want to fess up that you haven’t started your assignment. A homework accountability partner can give you the extra support and incentive you need to keep your homework habits on track. 

#3: Create Your Own Due Dates 

If you’re a life-long procrastinator, you might find that changing the habit is harder than you expected. In that case, you might try using procrastination to your advantage! If you just can’t seem to stop doing your work at the last minute, try setting your own due dates for assignments that range from a day to a week before the assignment is actually due. 

Here’s what we mean. Let’s say you have a math worksheet that’s been assigned on Tuesday and is due on Friday. In your planner, you can write down the due date as Thursday instead. You may still put off your homework assignment until the last minute...but in this case, the “last minute” is a day before the assignment’s real due date . This little hack can trick your procrastination-addicted brain into planning ahead! 

If you feel like Kevin Hart in this meme, then our tips for doing homework when you're busy are for you. 

How to Do Homework When You’re too Busy

If you’re aiming to go to a top-tier college , you’re going to have a full plate. Because college admissions is getting more competitive, it’s important that you’re maintaining your grades , studying hard for your standardized tests , and participating in extracurriculars so your application stands out. A packed schedule can get even more hectic once you add family obligations or a part-time job to the mix. 

If you feel like you’re being pulled in a million directions at once, you’re not alone. Recent research has found that stress—and more severe stress-related conditions like anxiety and depression— are a major problem for high school students . In fact, one study from the American Psychological Association found that during the school year, students’ stress levels are higher than those of the adults around them. 

For students, homework is a major contributor to their overall stress levels . Many high schoolers have multiple hours of homework every night , and figuring out how to fit it into an already-packed schedule can seem impossible. 

3 Tips for Fitting Homework Into Your Busy Schedule

While it might feel like you have literally no time left in your schedule, there are still ways to make sure you’re able to get your homework done and meet your other commitments. Here are our expert homework tips for even the busiest of students. 

#1: Make a Prioritized To-Do List 

You probably already have a to-do list to keep yourself on track. The next step is to prioritize the items on your to-do list so you can see what items need your attention right away. 

Here’s how it works: at the beginning of each day, sit down and make a list of all the items you need to get done before you go to bed. This includes your homework, but it should also take into account any practices, chores, events, or job shifts you may have. Once you get everything listed out, it’s time to prioritize them using the labels A, B, and C. Here’s what those labels mean:

• A Tasks : tasks that have to get done—like showing up at work or turning in an assignment—get an A. 
• B Tasks : these are tasks that you would like to get done by the end of the day but aren’t as time sensitive. For example, studying for a test you have next week could be a B-level task. It’s still important, but it doesn’t have to be done right away.
• C Tasks: these are tasks that aren’t very important and/or have no real consequences if you don’t get them done immediately. For instance, if you’re hoping to clean out your closet but it’s not an assigned chore from your parents, you could label that to-do item with a C.

Prioritizing your to-do list helps you visualize which items need your immediate attention, and which items you can leave for later. A prioritized to-do list ensures that you’re spending your time efficiently and effectively, which helps you make room in your schedule for homework. So even though you might really want to start making decorations for Homecoming (a B task), you’ll know that finishing your reading log (an A task) is more important. 

#2: Use a Planner With Time Labels

Your planner is probably packed with notes, events, and assignments already. (And if you’re not using a planner, it’s time to start!) But planners can do more for you than just remind you when an assignment is due. If you’re using a planner with time labels, it can help you visualize how you need to spend your day.

A planner with time labels breaks your day down into chunks, and you assign tasks to each chunk of time. For example, you can make a note of your class schedule with assignments, block out time to study, and make sure you know when you need to be at practice. Once you know which tasks take priority, you can add them to any empty spaces in your day. 

Planning out how you spend your time not only helps you use it wisely, it can help you feel less overwhelmed, too . We’re big fans of planners that include a task list ( like this one ) or have room for notes ( like this one ). 

#3: Set Reminders on Your Phone 

If you need a little extra nudge to make sure you’re getting your homework done on time, it’s a good idea to set some reminders on your phone. You don’t need a fancy app, either. You can use your alarm app to have it go off at specific times throughout the day to remind you to do your homework. This works especially well if you have a set homework time scheduled. So if you’ve decided you’re doing homework at 6:00 pm, you can set an alarm to remind you to bust out your books and get to work. 

If you use your phone as your planner, you may have the option to add alerts, emails, or notifications to scheduled events . Many calendar apps, including the one that comes with your phone, have built-in reminders that you can customize to meet your needs. So if you block off time to do your homework from 4:30 to 6:00 pm, you can set a reminder that will pop up on your phone when it’s time to get started. 

This dog isn't judging your lack of motivation...but your teacher might. Keep reading for tips to help you motivate yourself to do your homework.

How to Do Homework When You’re Unmotivated 

At first glance, it may seem like procrastination and being unmotivated are the same thing. After all, both of these issues usually result in you putting off your homework until the very last minute. 

But there’s one key difference: many procrastinators are working, they’re just prioritizing work differently. They know they’re going to start their homework...they’re just going to do it later. 

Conversely, people who are unmotivated to do homework just can’t find the willpower to tackle their assignments. Procrastinators know they’ll at least attempt the homework at the last minute, whereas people who are unmotivated struggle with convincing themselves to do it at a ll. For procrastinators, the stress comes from the inevitable time crunch. For unmotivated people, the stress comes from trying to convince themselves to do something they don’t want to do in the first place. 

Here are some common reasons students are unmotivated in doing homework : 

• Assignments are too easy, too hard, or seemingly pointless 
• Students aren’t interested in (or passionate about) the subject matter
• Students are intimidated by the work and/or feels like they don’t understand the assignment 
• Homework isn’t fun, and students would rather spend their time on things that they enjoy 

To sum it up: people who lack motivation to do their homework are more likely to not do it at all, or to spend more time worrying about doing their homework than...well, actually doing it.

3 Tips for How to Get Motivated to Do Homework

The key to getting homework done when you’re unmotivated is to figure out what does motivate you, then apply those things to homework. It sounds tricky...but it’s pretty simple once you get the hang of it! Here are our three expert tips for motivating yourself to do your homework. 

#1: Use Incremental Incentives

When you’re not motivated, it’s important to give yourself small rewards to stay focused on finishing the task at hand. The trick is to keep the incentives small and to reward yourself often. For example, maybe you’re reading a good book in your free time. For every ten minutes you spend on your homework, you get to read five pages of your book. Like we mentioned earlier, make sure you’re choosing a reward that works for you! 

So why does this technique work? Using small rewards more often allows you to experience small wins for getting your work done. Every time you make it to one of your tiny reward points, you get to celebrate your success, which gives your brain a boost of dopamine . Dopamine helps you stay motivated and also creates a feeling of satisfaction when you complete your homework !  

#2: Form a Homework Group 

If you’re having trouble motivating yourself, it’s okay to turn to others for support. Creating a homework group can help with this. Bring together a group of your friends or classmates, and pick one time a week where you meet and work on homework together. You don’t have to be in the same class, or even taking the same subjects— the goal is to encourage one another to start (and finish!) your assignments. 

Another added benefit of a homework group is that you can help one another if you’re struggling to understand the material covered in your classes. This is especially helpful if your lack of motivation comes from being intimidated by your assignments. Asking your friends for help may feel less scary than talking to your teacher...and once you get a handle on the material, your homework may become less frightening, too. 

#3: Change Up Your Environment 

If you find that you’re totally unmotivated, it may help if you find a new place to do your homework. For example, if you’ve been struggling to get your homework done at home, try spending an extra hour in the library after school instead. The change of scenery can limit your distractions and give you the energy you need to get your work done. 

If you’re stuck doing homework at home, you can still use this tip. For instance, maybe you’ve always done your homework sitting on your bed. Try relocating somewhere else, like your kitchen table, for a few weeks. You may find that setting up a new “homework spot” in your house gives you a motivational lift and helps you get your work done. 

Social media can be a huge problem when it comes to doing homework. We have advice for helping you unplug and regain focus.

How to Do Homework When You’re Easily Distracted

We live in an always-on world, and there are tons of things clamoring for our attention. From friends and family to pop culture and social media, it seems like there’s always something (or someone!) distracting us from the things we need to do.

The 24/7 world we live in has affected our ability to focus on tasks for prolonged periods of time. Research has shown that over the past decade, an average person’s attention span has gone from 12 seconds to eight seconds . And when we do lose focus, i t takes people a long time to get back on task . One study found that it can take as long as 23 minutes to get back to work once we’ve been distracte d. No wonder it can take hours to get your homework done! 

3 Tips to Improve Your Focus

If you have a hard time focusing when you’re doing your homework, it’s a good idea to try and eliminate as many distractions as possible. Here are three expert tips for blocking out the noise so you can focus on getting your homework done. 

#1: Create a Distraction-Free Environment

Pick a place where you’ll do your homework every day, and make it as distraction-free as possible. Try to find a location where there won’t be tons of noise, and limit your access to screens while you’re doing your homework. Put together a focus-oriented playlist (or choose one on your favorite streaming service), and put your headphones on while you work. 

You may find that other people, like your friends and family, are your biggest distraction. If that’s the case, try setting up some homework boundaries. Let them know when you’ll be working on homework every day, and ask them if they’ll help you keep a quiet environment. They’ll be happy to lend a hand! 

#2: Limit Your Access to Technology 

We know, we know...this tip isn’t fun, but it does work. For homework that doesn’t require a computer, like handouts or worksheets, it’s best to put all your technology away . Turn off your television, put your phone and laptop in your backpack, and silence notifications on any wearable tech you may be sporting. If you listen to music while you work, that’s fine...but make sure you have a playlist set up so you’re not shuffling through songs once you get started on your homework. 

If your homework requires your laptop or tablet, it can be harder to limit your access to distractions. But it’s not impossible! T here are apps you can download that will block certain websites while you’re working so that you’re not tempted to scroll through Twitter or check your Facebook feed. Silence notifications and text messages on your computer, and don’t open your email account unless you absolutely have to. And if you don’t need access to the internet to complete your assignments, turn off your WiFi. Cutting out the online chatter is a great way to make sure you’re getting your homework done. 

#3: Set a Timer (the Pomodoro Technique)

Have you ever heard of the Pomodoro technique ? It’s a productivity hack that uses a timer to help you focus!

Here’s how it works: first, set a timer for 25 minutes. This is going to be your work time. During this 25 minutes, all you can do is work on whatever homework assignment you have in front of you. No email, no text messaging, no phone calls—just homework. When that timer goes off, you get to take a 5 minute break. Every time you go through one of these cycles, it’s called a “pomodoro.” For every four pomodoros you complete, you can take a longer break of 15 to 30 minutes.

The pomodoro technique works through a combination of boundary setting and rewards. First, it gives you a finite amount of time to focus, so you know that you only have to work really hard for 25 minutes. Once you’ve done that, you’re rewarded with a short break where you can do whatever you want. Additionally, tracking how many pomodoros you complete can help you see how long you’re really working on your homework. (Once you start using our focus tips, you may find it doesn’t take as long as you thought!)

Two Bonus Tips for How to Do Homework Fast

Even if you’re doing everything right, there will be times when you just need to get your homework done as fast as possible. (Why do teachers always have projects due in the same week? The world may never know.)

The problem with speeding through homework is that it’s easy to make mistakes. While turning in an assignment is always better than not submitting anything at all, you want to make sure that you’re not compromising quality for speed. Simply put, the goal is to get your homework done quickly and still make a good grade on the assignment! 

Here are our two bonus tips for getting a decent grade on your homework assignments , even when you’re in a time crunch. 

#1: Do the Easy Parts First 

This is especially true if you’re working on a handout with multiple questions. Before you start working on the assignment, read through all the questions and problems. As you do, make a mark beside the questions you think are “easy” to answer . 

Once you’ve finished going through the whole assignment, you can answer these questions first. Getting the easy questions out of the way as quickly as possible lets you spend more time on the trickier portions of your homework, which will maximize your assignment grade. 

(Quick note: this is also a good strategy to use on timed assignments and tests, like the SAT and the ACT !) 

#2: Pay Attention in Class 

Homework gets a lot easier when you’re actively learning the material. Teachers aren’t giving you homework because they’re mean or trying to ruin your weekend... it’s because they want you to really understand the course material. Homework is designed to reinforce what you’re already learning in class so you’ll be ready to tackle harder concepts later.

When you pay attention in class, ask questions, and take good notes, you’re absorbing the information you’ll need to succeed on your homework assignments. (You’re stuck in class anyway, so you might as well make the most of it!) Not only will paying attention in class make your homework less confusing, it will also help it go much faster, too.

What’s Next?

If you’re looking to improve your productivity beyond homework, a good place to begin is with time management. After all, we only have so much time in a day...so it’s important to get the most out of it! To get you started, check out this list of the 12 best time management techniques that you can start using today.

You may have read this article because homework struggles have been affecting your GPA. Now that you’re on the path to homework success, it’s time to start being proactive about raising your grades. This article teaches you everything you need to know about raising your GPA so you can

Now you know how to get motivated to do homework...but what about your study habits? Studying is just as critical to getting good grades, and ultimately getting into a good college . We can teach you how to study bette r in high school. (We’ve also got tons of resources to help you study for your ACT and SAT exams , too!)

These recommendations are based solely on our knowledge and experience. If you purchase an item through one of our links, PrepScholar may receive a commission.

Ashley Sufflé Robinson has a Ph.D. in 19th Century English Literature. As a content writer for PrepScholar, Ashley is passionate about giving college-bound students the in-depth information they need to get into the school of their dreams.

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Does Homework Really Help Students Learn?

A conversation with a Wheelock researcher, a BU student, and a fourth-grade teacher

“Quality homework is engaging and relevant to kids’ lives,” says Wheelock’s Janine Bempechat. “It gives them autonomy and engages them in the community and with their families. In some subjects, like math, worksheets can be very helpful. It has to do with the value of practicing over and over.” Photo by iStock/Glenn Cook Photography

Do your homework.

If only it were that simple.

Educators have debated the merits of homework since the late 19th century. In recent years, amid concerns of some parents and teachers that children are being stressed out by too much homework, things have only gotten more fraught.

“Homework is complicated,” says developmental psychologist Janine Bempechat, a Wheelock College of Education & Human Development clinical professor. The author of the essay “ The Case for (Quality) Homework—Why It Improves Learning and How Parents Can Help ” in the winter 2019 issue of Education Next , Bempechat has studied how the debate about homework is influencing teacher preparation, parent and student beliefs about learning, and school policies.

She worries especially about socioeconomically disadvantaged students from low-performing schools who, according to research by Bempechat and others, get little or no homework.

BU Today  sat down with Bempechat and Erin Bruce (Wheelock’17,’18), a new fourth-grade teacher at a suburban Boston school, and future teacher freshman Emma Ardizzone (Wheelock) to talk about what quality homework looks like, how it can help children learn, and how schools can equip teachers to design it, evaluate it, and facilitate parents’ role in it.

BU Today: Parents and educators who are against homework in elementary school say there is no research definitively linking it to academic performance for kids in the early grades. You’ve said that they’re missing the point.

Bempechat : I think teachers assign homework in elementary school as a way to help kids develop skills they’ll need when they’re older—to begin to instill a sense of responsibility and to learn planning and organizational skills. That’s what I think is the greatest value of homework—in cultivating beliefs about learning and skills associated with academic success. If we greatly reduce or eliminate homework in elementary school, we deprive kids and parents of opportunities to instill these important learning habits and skills.

We do know that beginning in late middle school, and continuing through high school, there is a strong and positive correlation between homework completion and academic success.

That’s what I think is the greatest value of homework—in cultivating beliefs about learning and skills associated with academic success.

You talk about the importance of quality homework. What is that?

Quality homework is engaging and relevant to kids’ lives. It gives them autonomy and engages them in the community and with their families. In some subjects, like math, worksheets can be very helpful. It has to do with the value of practicing over and over.

What are your concerns about homework and low-income children?

The argument that some people make—that homework “punishes the poor” because lower-income parents may not be as well-equipped as affluent parents to help their children with homework—is very troubling to me. There are no parents who don’t care about their children’s learning. 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.

Isn’t the discussion about getting rid of homework happening mostly in affluent communities?

Yes, and the stories we hear of kids being stressed out from too much homework—four or five hours of homework a night—are real. That’s problematic for physical and mental health and overall well-being. But the research shows that higher-income students get a lot more homework than lower-income kids.

Teachers may not have as high expectations for lower-income children. Schools should bear responsibility for providing supports for kids to be able to get their homework done—after-school clubs, community support, peer group support. It does kids a disservice when our expectations are lower for them.

The conversation around homework is to some extent a social class and social justice issue. If we eliminate homework for all children because affluent children have too much, we’re really doing a disservice to low-income children. They need the challenge, and every student can rise to the challenge with enough supports in place.

What did you learn by studying how education schools are preparing future teachers to handle homework?

My colleague, Margarita Jimenez-Silva, at the University of California, Davis, School of Education, and I interviewed faculty members at education schools, as well as supervising teachers, to find out how students are being prepared. And it seemed that they weren’t. There didn’t seem to be any readings on the research, or conversations on what high-quality homework is and how to design it.

Erin, what kind of training did you get in handling homework?

Bruce : I had phenomenal professors at Wheelock, but homework just didn’t come up. I did lots of student teaching. I’ve been in classrooms where the teachers didn’t assign any homework, and I’ve been in rooms where they assigned hours of homework a night. But I never even considered homework as something that was my decision. I just thought it was something I’d pull out of a book and it’d be done.

I started giving homework on the first night of school this year. My first assignment was to go home and draw a picture of the room where you do your homework. I want to know if it’s at a table and if there are chairs around it and if mom’s cooking dinner while you’re doing homework.

The second night I asked them to talk to a grown-up about how are you going to be able to get your homework done during the week. The kids really enjoyed it. There’s a running joke that I’m teaching life skills.

Friday nights, I read all my kids’ responses to me on their homework from the week and it’s wonderful. They pour their hearts out. It’s like we’re having a conversation on my couch Friday night.

It matters to know that the teacher cares about you and that what you think matters to the teacher. Homework is a vehicle to connect home and school…for parents to know teachers are welcoming to them and their families.

Bempechat : I can’t imagine that most new teachers would have the intuition Erin had in designing homework the way she did.

Ardizzone : Conversations with kids about homework, feeling you’re being listened to—that’s such a big part of wanting to do homework….I grew up in Westchester County. It was a pretty demanding school district. My junior year English teacher—I loved her—she would give us feedback, have meetings with all of us. She’d say, “If you have any questions, if you have anything you want to talk about, you can talk to me, here are my office hours.” It felt like she actually cared.

Bempechat : It matters to know that the teacher cares about you and that what you think matters to the teacher. Homework is a vehicle to connect home and school…for parents to know teachers are welcoming to them and their families.

Ardizzone : But can’t it lead to parents being overbearing and too involved in their children’s lives as students?

Bempechat : There’s good help and there’s bad help. The bad help is what you’re describing—when parents hover inappropriately, when they micromanage, when they see their children confused and struggling and tell them what to do.

Good help is when parents recognize there’s a struggle going on and instead ask informative questions: “Where do you think you went wrong?” They give hints, or pointers, rather than saying, “You missed this,” or “You didn’t read that.”

Bruce : I hope something comes of this. I hope BU or Wheelock can think of some way to make this a more pressing issue. As a first-year teacher, it was not something I even thought about on the first day of school—until a kid raised his hand and said, “Do we have homework?” It would have been wonderful if I’d had a plan from day one.

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Senior Contributing Editor

Sara Rimer A journalist for more than three decades, Sara Rimer worked at the Miami Herald , Washington Post and, for 26 years, the New York Times , where she was the New England bureau chief, and a national reporter covering education, aging, immigration, and other social justice issues. Her stories on the death penalty’s inequities were nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and cited in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision outlawing the execution of people with intellectual disabilities. Her journalism honors include Columbia University’s Meyer Berger award for in-depth human interest reporting. She holds a BA degree in American Studies from the University of Michigan. Profile

She can be reached at [email protected] .

Comments & Discussion

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There are 81 comments on Does Homework Really Help Students Learn?

Insightful! The values about homework in elementary schools are well aligned with my intuition as a parent.

when i finish my work i do my homework and i sometimes forget what to do because i did not get enough sleep

same omg it does not help me it is stressful and if I have it in more than one class I hate it.

Same I think my parent wants to help me but, she doesn’t care if I get bad grades so I just try my best and my grades are great.

I think that last question about Good help from parents is not know to all parents, we do as our parents did or how we best think it can be done, so maybe coaching parents or giving them resources on how to help with homework would be very beneficial for the parent on how to help and for the teacher to have consistency and improve homework results, and of course for the child. I do see how homework helps reaffirm the knowledge obtained in the classroom, I also have the ability to see progress and it is a time I share with my kids

The answer to the headline question is a no-brainer – a more pressing problem is why there is a difference in how students from different cultures succeed. Perfect example is the student population at BU – why is there a majority population of Asian students and only about 3% black students at BU? In fact at some universities there are law suits by Asians to stop discrimination and quotas against admitting Asian students because the real truth is that as a group they are demonstrating better qualifications for admittance, while at the same time there are quotas and reduced requirements for black students to boost their portion of the student population because as a group they do more poorly in meeting admissions standards – and it is not about the Benjamins. The real problem is that in our PC society no one has the gazuntas to explore this issue as it may reveal that all people are not created equal after all. Or is it just environmental cultural differences??????

I get you have a concern about the issue but that is not even what the point of this article is about. If you have an issue please take this to the site we have and only post your opinion about the actual topic

This is not at all what the article is talking about.

This literally has nothing to do with the article brought up. You should really take your opinions somewhere else before you speak about something that doesn’t make sense.

we have the same name

so they have the same name what of it?

lol you tell her

totally agree

What does that have to do with homework, that is not what the article talks about AT ALL.

Yes, I think homework plays an important role in the development of student life. Through homework, students have to face challenges on a daily basis and they try to solve them quickly.I am an intense online tutor at 24x7homeworkhelp and I give homework to my students at that level in which they handle it easily.

More than two-thirds of students said they used alcohol and drugs, primarily marijuana, to cope with stress.

You know what’s funny? I got this assignment to write an argument for homework about homework and this article was really helpful and understandable, and I also agree with this article’s point of view.

I also got the same task as you! I was looking for some good resources and I found this! I really found this article useful and easy to understand, just like you! ^^

i think that homework is the best thing that a child can have on the school because it help them with their thinking and memory.

I am a child myself and i think homework is a terrific pass time because i can’t play video games during the week. It also helps me set goals.

Homework is not harmful ,but it will if there is too much

I feel like, from a minors point of view that we shouldn’t get homework. Not only is the homework stressful, but it takes us away from relaxing and being social. For example, me and my friends was supposed to hang at the mall last week but we had to postpone it since we all had some sort of work to do. Our minds shouldn’t be focused on finishing an assignment that in realty, doesn’t matter. I completely understand that we should have homework. I have to write a paper on the unimportance of homework so thanks.

homework isn’t that bad

Are you a student? if not then i don’t really think you know how much and how severe todays homework really is

i am a student and i do not enjoy homework because i practice my sport 4 out of the five days we have school for 4 hours and that’s not even counting the commute time or the fact i still have to shower and eat dinner when i get home. its draining!

i totally agree with you. these people are such boomers

why just why

they do make a really good point, i think that there should be a limit though. hours and hours of homework can be really stressful, and the extra work isn’t making a difference to our learning, but i do believe homework should be optional and extra credit. that would make it for students to not have the leaning stress of a assignment and if you have a low grade you you can catch up.

Studies show that homework improves student achievement in terms of improved grades, test results, and the likelihood to attend college. Research published in the High School Journal indicates that students who spent between 31 and 90 minutes each day on homework “scored about 40 points higher on the SAT-Mathematics subtest than their peers, who reported spending no time on homework each day, on average.” On both standardized tests and grades, students in classes that were assigned homework outperformed 69% of students who didn’t have homework. A majority of studies on homework’s impact – 64% in one meta-study and 72% in another – showed that take home assignments were effective at improving academic achievement. Research by the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) concluded that increased homework led to better GPAs and higher probability of college attendance for high school boys. In fact, boys who attended college did more than three hours of additional homework per week in high school.

So how are your measuring student achievement? That’s the real question. The argument that doing homework is simply a tool for teaching responsibility isn’t enough for me. We can teach responsibility in a number of ways. Also the poor argument that parents don’t need to help with homework, and that students can do it on their own, is wishful thinking at best. It completely ignores neurodiverse students. Students in poverty aren’t magically going to find a space to do homework, a friend’s or siblings to help them do it, and snacks to eat. I feel like the author of this piece has never set foot in a classroom of students.

THIS. This article is pathetic coming from a university. So intellectually dishonest, refusing to address the havoc of capitalism and poverty plays on academic success in life. How can they in one sentence use poor kids in an argument and never once address that poor children have access to damn near 0 of the resources affluent kids have? Draw me a picture and let’s talk about feelings lmao what a joke is that gonna put food in their belly so they can have the calories to burn in order to use their brain to study? What about quiet their 7 other siblings that they share a single bedroom with for hours? Is it gonna force the single mom to magically be at home and at work at the same time to cook food while you study and be there to throw an encouraging word?

Also the “parents don’t need to be a parent and be able to guide their kid at all academically they just need to exist in the next room” is wild. Its one thing if a parent straight up is not equipped but to say kids can just figured it out is…. wow coming from an educator What’s next the teacher doesn’t need to teach cause the kid can just follow the packet and figure it out?

Well then get a tutor right? Oh wait you are poor only affluent kids can afford a tutor for their hours of homework a day were they on average have none of the worries a poor child does. Does this address that poor children are more likely to also suffer abuse and mental illness? Like mentioned what about kids that can’t learn or comprehend the forced standardized way? Just let em fail? These children regularly are not in “special education”(some of those are a joke in their own and full of neglect and abuse) programs cause most aren’t even acknowledged as having disabilities or disorders.

But yes all and all those pesky poor kids just aren’t being worked hard enough lol pretty sure poor children’s existence just in childhood is more work, stress, and responsibility alone than an affluent child’s entire life cycle. Love they never once talked about the quality of education in the classroom being so bad between the poor and affluent it can qualify as segregation, just basically blamed poor people for being lazy, good job capitalism for failing us once again!

why the hell?

you should feel bad for saying this, this article can be helpful for people who has to write a essay about it

This is more of a political rant than it is about homework

I know a teacher who has told his students their homework is to find something they are interested in, pursue it and then come share what they learn. The student responses are quite compelling. One girl taught herself German so she could talk to her grandfather. One boy did a research project on Nelson Mandela because the teacher had mentioned him in class. Another boy, a both on the autism spectrum, fixed his family’s computer. The list goes on. This is fourth grade. I think students are highly motivated to learn, when we step aside and encourage them.

The whole point of homework is to give the students a chance to use the material that they have been presented with in class. If they never have the opportunity to use that information, and discover that it is actually useful, it will be in one ear and out the other. As a science teacher, it is critical that the students are challenged to use the material they have been presented with, which gives them the opportunity to actually think about it rather than regurgitate “facts”. Well designed homework forces the student to think conceptually, as opposed to regurgitation, which is never a pretty sight

Wonderful discussion. and yes, homework helps in learning and building skills in students.

not true it just causes kids to stress

Homework can be both beneficial and unuseful, if you will. There are students who are gifted in all subjects in school and ones with disabilities. Why should the students who are gifted get the lucky break, whereas the people who have disabilities suffer? The people who were born with this “gift” go through school with ease whereas people with disabilities struggle with the work given to them. I speak from experience because I am one of those students: the ones with disabilities. Homework doesn’t benefit “us”, it only tears us down and put us in an abyss of confusion and stress and hopelessness because we can’t learn as fast as others. Or we can’t handle the amount of work given whereas the gifted students go through it with ease. It just brings us down and makes us feel lost; because no mater what, it feels like we are destined to fail. It feels like we weren’t “cut out” for success.

homework does help

here is the thing though, if a child is shoved in the face with a whole ton of homework that isn’t really even considered homework it is assignments, it’s not helpful. the teacher should make homework more of a fun learning experience rather than something that is dreaded

This article was wonderful, I am going to ask my teachers about extra, or at all giving homework.

I agree. Especially when you have homework before an exam. Which is distasteful as you’ll need that time to study. It doesn’t make any sense, nor does us doing homework really matters as It’s just facts thrown at us.

Homework is too severe and is just too much for students, schools need to decrease the amount of homework. When teachers assign homework they forget that the students have other classes that give them the same amount of homework each day. Students need to work on social skills and life skills.

I disagree.

Beyond achievement, proponents of homework argue that it can have many other beneficial effects. They claim it can help students develop good study habits so they are ready to grow as their cognitive capacities mature. It can help students recognize that learning can occur at home as well as at school. Homework can foster independent learning and responsible character traits. And it can give parents an opportunity to see what’s going on at school and let them express positive attitudes toward achievement.

Homework is helpful because homework helps us by teaching us how to learn a specific topic.

As a student myself, I can say that I have almost never gotten the full 9 hours of recommended sleep time, because of homework. (Now I’m writing an essay on it in the middle of the night D=)

I am a 10 year old kid doing a report about “Is homework good or bad” for homework before i was going to do homework is bad but the sources from this site changed my mind!

Homeowkr is god for stusenrs

I agree with hunter because homework can be so stressful especially with this whole covid thing no one has time for homework and every one just wants to get back to there normal lives it is especially stressful when you go on a 2 week vaca 3 weeks into the new school year and and then less then a week after you come back from the vaca you are out for over a month because of covid and you have no way to get the assignment done and turned in

As great as homework is said to be in the is article, I feel like the viewpoint of the students was left out. Every where I go on the internet researching about this topic it almost always has interviews from teachers, professors, and the like. However isn’t that a little biased? Of course teachers are going to be for homework, they’re not the ones that have to stay up past midnight completing the homework from not just one class, but all of them. I just feel like this site is one-sided and you should include what the students of today think of spending four hours every night completing 6-8 classes worth of work.

Are we talking about homework or practice? Those are two very different things and can result in different outcomes.

Homework is a graded assignment. I do not know of research showing the benefits of graded assignments going home.

Practice; however, can be extremely beneficial, especially if there is some sort of feedback (not a grade but feedback). That feedback can come from the teacher, another student or even an automated grading program.

As a former band director, I assigned daily practice. I never once thought it would be appropriate for me to require the students to turn in a recording of their practice for me to grade. Instead, I had in-class assignments/assessments that were graded and directly related to the practice assigned.

I would really like to read articles on “homework” that truly distinguish between the two.

oof i feel bad good luck!

thank you guys for the artical because I have to finish an assingment. yes i did cite it but just thanks

thx for the article guys.

Homework is good

I think homework is helpful AND harmful. Sometimes u can’t get sleep bc of homework but it helps u practice for school too so idk.

I agree with this Article. And does anyone know when this was published. I would like to know.

It was published FEb 19, 2019.

Studies have shown that homework improved student achievement in terms of improved grades, test results, and the likelihood to attend college.

i think homework can help kids but at the same time not help kids

This article is so out of touch with majority of homes it would be laughable if it wasn’t so incredibly sad.

There is no value to homework all it does is add stress to already stressed homes. Parents or adults magically having the time or energy to shepherd kids through homework is dome sort of 1950’s fantasy.

What lala land do these teachers live in?

Homework gives noting to the kid

Homework is Bad

homework is bad.

why do kids even have homework?

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The Homework Myth

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First published August 21, 2006

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10+ Homeschool Workbooks for Easy Review

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Homeschool workbooks can be a great educational resource. They are generally pretty reasonably priced and can cover a good bit of material.

The trend right now, especially during the COVID-19 crisis, seems to be putting kids in front of a screen for lessons. That system works really well for some kids.

However, some families find that too much screen time, even educational screen time, causes more problems than it solves . This is especially true among elementary age kiddos. I always noticed a decline in behavior in my own kids after a screen heavy day.

Homeschool workbooks allow you to teach or review grade-level-appropriate material with your kids.

When choosing homeschool workbooks keep a few considerations in mind:

• Do you want one workbook to cover multiple subjects?
• Do you want new teaching or just review?
• Are colorful pages important to you?
• Will the workbook be used as a full curriculum or as a supplement?

The Best Homeschool Workbooks

Table of Contents

General homeschool workbooks, math workbooks, language arts workbooks, tips for homeschool workbooks.

General homeschool workbooks cover all of the core academic subjects for a grade level in one workbook. Usually this type of workbook will review math, language arts, science, and social studies.

• Brain Quest

Brain Quest workbooks are available for preschool – sixth grade. The workbooks contain about 300 pages. Each level covers:

• Language arts skills
• Social Studies

The pages are bright and colorful, but not distracting. The directions are clear and concise. Once kids are able to read they will likely not need much help from parents.

• Workman Publishing (Author)
• English (Publication Language)
• 320 Pages – 05/09/2023 (Publication Date) – Workman Publishing Company (Publisher)

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2. Comprehensive Curriculum of Basic Skills

The Comprehensive Curriculum of Basic Skills workbooks are enormous – over 500 pages! There is a workbook for preschool – sixth grade. Each level includes:

The pages each contain colorful illustrations, but the main background of each page is white.

The directions are clear, however there is quite a bit of text on each page. Some kids might love this, but others might be distracted by having multiple lessons on the same page.

• 544 Pages – 03/17/2016 (Publication Date) – Thinking Kids (Publisher)

3. Summer Bridge Activities

Summer Bridge Activities workbooks are intended to be used during summer break, but there isn’t really any reason they can’t be used at any time during the year.

These workbooks are for grades preschool – sixth grade.

Each level covers:

The review lessons are grouped by days. For example, the first few pages have ‘Day 1’ written in the top corner. Those activities are all meant to be done on the same day.

This format is good if you are looking for a general review, but might be frustrating if you are looking for more targeted lessons.

• This book helps prevent summer learning loss in just 15 minutes a day
• Children will review skills from the previous school year and preview skills for the next grade
• Includes language arts, math, and science activities

4. Evan Moor Daily Fundamentals

At around 200 pages, the Evan Moor Daily Fundamentals workbooks are on the smaller side for general homeschool workbooks. These workbooks are available for first – sixth grade.

The lessons are broken into 5 lessons a week (Monday – Friday), 30 weeks a year. Most students will only need to spend about 15 minutes a day to complete their daily review.

The pages are completely text based, with no illustrations or color.

• The daily lessons progress in difficulty as students move through Day 1 to Day 5, and the weekly units progress in difficulty throughout the year.
• Evan-Moor Educational Publishers (Author)

5. Smart Practice Workbook

Smart Practice Workbooks are available for kindergarten – fifth grade. The workbooks all contain about 320 pages.

The pages are colorful with clear directions.

• Practice makes perfect with these workbooks
• More than 300 skill building practice pages
• Includes ready to use flash cards for extra skills practice

Math workbooks provide extra practice solely on math topics. Some books contain all of the typical math concepts for a grade level, but others are broken down by skill.

IXL is known for their quality online homeschool program, but now they have printed math workbooks available too!

IXL math workbooks come in two versions – full grade level (called ultimate) and specific skills. They are available for first – fifth grade.

The pages are colorful, but not in a distracting way.

• Learning, IXL (Author)
• 112 Pages – 01/10/2019 (Publication Date) – IXL Learning, Inc. (Publisher)

7. TinkerActive Math

TinkerActive math workbooks teach grade level appropriate skills first on paper and then by tinkering. Kids will engineer projects using household items after practicing skills on paper. This lets kids apply what they learned to real life.

TinkerActive math is available for preschool – second grade.

• Krasner, Justin (Author)
• 128 Pages – 05/14/2019 (Publication Date) – Odd Dot (Publisher)

8. Critical Thinking Mathematical Reasoning

The Mathematical Reasoning workbooks are intended to be a full math curriculum, however you can use it however works best for your family.

This math workbook curriculum follows a spiral approach. This can work really well to review concepts, but can also make it tough to master new material if the foundation isn’t in place.

Mathematical Reasoning workbooks are available for preschool – ninth grade.

• Linda Brumbaugh (Author)
• 352 Pages – 03/30/2012 (Publication Date) – The Critical Thinking Co.™ (Publisher)

9. Math Lessons for a Living Education

Math Lessons for a Living Education is technically a full homeschool math curriculum, however it can certainly be used as a homeschool workbook.

The lessons are intended to be done one a day for a total of 180 days. Each lesson takes 15 – 30 minutes to complete.

These workbooks are available for kindergarten – sixth grade. Students can take a placement test if they are not sure which level is best.

• O’dell, Angela (Author)
• 343 Pages – 04/07/2016 (Publication Date) – Master Books (Publisher)

10. Scholastic Reading Comprehension

The Scholastic Reading Comprehension workbooks are focused solely on reading comprehension. In each lesson students read a few sentences (or paragraphs, depending on the grade level) and then answer comprehension questions.

The workbooks are available for first – fifth grade.

• Scholastic Teaching Resources (Author)
• 48 Pages – 02/01/2022 (Publication Date) – Scholastic Teaching Resources (Publisher)

11. TinkerActive English Language Arts

The TinkerActive English Language Arts books combine review worksheets with hands-on projects. First kids read a lesson and focus on the language arts skill. Then they complete a project that relates to what they read.

For example, if they read and answered a selection about birds, they might make a bird feeder. All of the projects use common household supplies.

TinkerActive English Language Arts workbooks are available for preschool – second grade.

• Butler, Megan Hewes (Author)
• 128 Pages – 12/31/2019 (Publication Date) – Odd Dot (Publisher)

12. EP Language Arts

EP Language Arts is part of the popular online homeschool curriculum Easy Peasy All in One Homeschool. This language arts homeschool workbook makes it easy to take the learning off-line.

There are 180 language arts lessons, one for each day of the school year. However, you can certainly use this workbook even if you are not interested in a full curriculum. It can be used for review purposes.

If you do want to use EP Language Arts as a full language arts curriculum you will need the Teacher’s Guide .

These homeschool workbooks are available for first – seventh grade.

• Rutherford, Tina (Author)
• 211 Pages – 07/10/2017 (Publication Date) – CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (Publisher)

13. DK Workbooks: Language Arts

DK Workbooks: Language Arts helps parents review language arts skills such as grammar, phonics, and punctuation with their children.

The pages are fairly short so they are not overwhelming. There are about 60 pages total.

These workbooks are available for preschool – third grade.

• DK (Author)
• 60 Pages – 02/17/2014 (Publication Date) – DK Children (Publisher)
• Check the work. It doesn’t do any good if a child reviews material incorrectly.
• Be consistent. Consistency builds accuracy and confidence.
• Choose the right level. Homeschool workbooks that are too difficult will only create frustration. You can always race through an easier level to review and then move on to a more difficult level.

Do you use homeschool workbooks?

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Welcome! My name is Jennifer. I am a teacher at heart. Before my children were born I was a public school teacher. Now, I am a homeschooling mom of two.

Hi there, I have a 10 year old boy who is super smart – he can do very complex math problems in his head, but absolutely HATES writing! Any suggestions for a workbook he might enjoy? He enjoys gaming, has a short attention span and likes to be moving…all the time! LOL Hard to get him to focus and get the work done.

Suggestions?

He might enjoy the workbook/journal Revolting Writing by Jennifer Cabrera. I haven’t used this one, but I think my son would like it and our sons sound similar. 🙂

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What a Sixty-Five-Year-Old Book Teaches Us About A.I.

By David Owen

Neural networks have become shockingly good at generating natural-sounding text, on almost any subject. If I were a student, I’d be thrilled—let a chatbot write that five-page paper on Hamlet’s indecision!—but if I were a teacher I’d have mixed feelings. On the one hand, the quality of student essays is about to go through the roof. On the other, what’s the point of asking anyone to write anything anymore? Luckily for us, thoughtful people long ago anticipated the rise of artificial intelligence and wrestled with some of the thornier issues. I’m thinking in particular of Jay Williams and Raymond Abrashkin, two farseeing writers, both now deceased, who, in 1958, published an early examination of this topic. Their book—the third in what was eventually a fifteen-part series—is “ Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine .” I first read it in third or fourth grade, very possibly as a homework assignment.

Danny Dunn, you may recall, is a “stocky and red-haired” elementary schooler. His father is dead, and he and his mother live with Professor Euclid Bullfinch, “a short, plump man with a round bald head,” who teaches at Midston University. Bullfinch “took the place of the father Danny had never known,” the book explains, and Mrs. Dunn supports herself and her son by working as his cook and housekeeper. We aren’t told how Danny’s father died—heart attack? car accident? murder?—and we know next to nothing about sleeping arrangements in the house. (“Now take your fingers out of my cake, Professor Bullfinch,” Mrs. Dunn says in the first book in the series.) But we do know that Bullfinch encourages Danny’s interest in science and lets him fool around in his private laboratory, which occupies “a long, low structure at the rear of the house.”

Danny’s best friend is Joe Pearson, “a thin, sad-looking boy”; his next-door neighbor is Irene Miller, whose father, an astronomer, also teaches at Midston. We can tell right away that Irene knows at least as much about science as Danny does—and way more than Joe, whose main academic interests are literary. As the story begins, Danny is demonstrating a recent invention of his: a piece of wood, suspended by clothesline from a pair of pulleys attached to the ceiling, into which he has inserted two pens. When he writes with either pen, the other creates a duplicate on a second sheet of paper. (This device is called a polygraph; Thomas Jefferson owned several.) “Now I can do our arithmetic homework while you’re doing our English homework,” he tells Joe. “It’ll save us about half an hour for baseball practice.” Joe runs home to get more clothesline, and Danny dreams of bigger things: “If only I could build some kind of a robot to do all our homework for us. . . .”

The boys don’t perceive a moral dilemma, but Irene does. “It—it doesn’t seem exactly honest to me,” she says. Danny disagrees, and cites his landlord: “Professor Bullfinch says that homework doesn’t have much to do with how a kid learns things at school.”

Williams and Abrashkin were all the way out at the cutting edge, technology-wise. In their first book, “ Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity Paint ,” Danny and Bullfinch accidentally invent a liquid that causes anything coated with it to rise off the ground. That book was published in 1956, a year before the Soviets launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1 , but in Chapter 3 we learn that a similar satellite is already orbiting Earth, and is viewable through a telescope in Bullfinch’s lab. Long story short: the American government uses the paint on a spaceship, which accidentally lifts off while Danny, Joe, Bullfinch, and another scientist are inside it, having a look around. During their voyage, Danny completes an assignment that his teacher, Miss Arnold, has given him as punishment for daydreaming about rockets when he was supposed to be paying attention to her: writing “Space flight is a hundred years away” five hundred times.

Some of the scientific innovations portrayed in the Danny Dunn books are so advanced that they are still in the future—time travel, invisibility, smallification—but others have come into existence more or less as Williams and Abrashkin described them. In “ Danny Dunn and the Automatic House ,” published in 1965, Danny persuades the university to build what would nowadays be called a smart home ; it’s equipped with “the newest developments in electronic control systems,” including a voice-activated door lock, a Roomba-like self-propelled vacuum cleaner, and a bathtub that fills itself with water, adds soap, and announces, “Your bath is ready.” Danny’s mother is skeptical: “Once you start trying to save work by putting in machines, you may find you’re spending all your time taking care of the machines and not getting any fun out of your work. This kitchen is my studio—my laboratory, just like your laboratory, Professor. Would you want an automatic laboratory?”

Bullfinch says that he most certainly would not—but in “Homework Machine” we learn that he has built a computer with similar capabilities. It’s a scaled-down version of two mainframes that Williams and Abrashkin saw, during a visit to I.B.M., while they were researching their book. Bullfinch calls it Miniac:

A high panel at the back of the desk was filled with tiny light bulbs. There were a number of flat, square buttons, each with a colored panel above it. And beyond the desk was an oblong, gray metal cabinet, about the size of a large sideboard, with heavy electric cables leading to it.

An important difference between Miniac and the real computers of the nineteen-fifties—and another area in which Williams and Abrashkin were ahead of their time—is that its input medium is spoken English, not punched cards or paper tape. Danny asks Irene to demonstrate. She approaches the microphone and, following Bullfinch’s advice to “speak slowly and clearly so that Miniac can understand you and translate your words into electrical impulses,” says, “Um . . . John buys 20 yards of silk for thirty dollars. How much would 918 yards of silk cost him?” The professor presses a button, lights flash, and the typewriter responds: “$1,377.00.” After a pause, it adds, “And worth it.”

Any qualms that Irene has about getting help with her homework disappear when she discovers how much of it Miss Arnold assigns. One day, Irene asks Danny (at first, by shortwave radio) for help with a grammar exercise, and they meet in Bullfinch’s lab. Minny—as they now refer to the computer—defines “predicate noun” for her, and provides an example: “You are a fool .” Danny is suddenly inspired: “Why can’t we use Minny as a homework machine ?”

Bullfinch, conveniently, has asked Danny to keep an eye on Minny while he attends some important meetings in Washington, D.C. During the next few days, Danny, Irene, and Joe read large stacks of books into the microphone. As Danny explains, mainly to Joe, “Programming is telling the machine exactly what questions you want answered and how you want them answered. In order to do that right, you have to know just what sequences of operation you want the machine to go through.” When they’ve finished, Minny does their math problems for them, then starts on social studies.

“Man!” Joe says. “This is the way to do your homework. This is heaven!”

I hesitate to give away too much of the plot, but (spoiler alert!) two mean boys in their class, one of whom is jealous of Irene’s interest in Danny, watch them through a window and tattle to Miss Arnold. She comes to Danny’s house to confer with him and his mother—and you know that Danny is in trouble, because his mother suddenly starts calling him Dan. But he defends what he and his friends have been up to. Grocers and bankers now use adding machines instead of doing arithmetic the old-fashioned way, he says; why should students be different? Surprisingly, this argument works. Miss Arnold tells Danny that she wishes he wouldn’t let Minny do his homework, but that she won’t stop him.

Then the story becomes complicated. Irene tricks the jealous boy, Eddie (Snitcher) Philips, into revealing that he spied on them, then pushes him into a puddle. Eddie and his friend get revenge by sabotaging Minny. Bullfinch returns from Washington and is embarrassed when he tries to demonstrate Minny to two other scientists, one of whom is from the “Federal Research Council.” Danny saves the day by deducing that Eddie must have disconnected Minny’s temperature sensor; he reconnects it, and is treated as a hero. (This turn of events will be familiar to readers of the “Curious George” books, in which George is often praised for solving problems that he himself created.)

Bullfinch and one of the visiting scientists later program the repaired computer to write music, by giving it “full instructions for the composition of a sonata, plus information on note relationships,” and by modifying the typewriter so that it can print musical scores. Still, Bullfinch insists, Minny is limited in ways that humans are not. “It can never be the creator of music or of stories, or paintings, or ideas,” he says. “The machine can only help, as a textbook helps. It can only be a tool, as a typewriter is a tool.” He points out that Danny, in order to program Minny to do his homework, had to do the equivalent of even more homework, much of it quite advanced. (“Gosh, it—it somehow doesn’t seem fair,” Danny says.)

At least until recently, almost everyone has thought of computers in roughly that way. When Bullfinch and his friend play a sonata that Minny has written for them, Mrs. Dunn observes that “it isn’t exactly Beethoven”—and Bullfinch agrees. Yet Minny’s abilities clearly surpass those of a mere “tool.” The children “program” it by loading it with tagged examples, from which Minny somehow produces individualized schoolwork—a method that seems less like mid-twentieth-century programming than like the way that A.I. researchers create algorithms today. (Minny also editorializes , as with its comment about the price of silk and its example of a predicate noun.) Williams and Abrashkin foresaw a less serious practical use for artificial intelligence, too. “You know, we ought to enter her in one of those TV quiz shows,” Joe says in an early chapter, anticipating the “Jeopardy!” triumph, fifty-three years later, of I.B.M.’s Watson.

“Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine” is ostensibly about computers, but it also makes an argument about homework. In a note at the beginning of the book, Williams and Abrashkin write, “In all fairness to both Professor Bullfinch and Danny, we wish to point out that their position on homework is supported by Bulletin 1248-3 of the Educational Service Bureau, University of Pennsylvania.” I haven’t managed to turn up a copy of that bulletin, which was called “What About Homework?,” but I’ve found a number of other publications, from multiple decades, that arrive at what I assume are similar conclusions. For example, in 2007 the education critic Alfie Kohn—whose many books include “ The Homework Myth ,” published in 2018—wrote that “there is absolutely no evidence of any academic benefit from assigning homework in elementary or middle school,” and that in high school “the correlation is weak and tends to disappear when more sophisticated statistical measures are applied.” One problem with homework is that it inevitably encourages the counterproductive over-involvement of parents. (When my kids were young, I suggested to one of their teachers that he conduct a science fair for fathers only.) There’s also the issue of homework whose sole purpose is to squeeze in material that should have been covered during the school day but wasn’t. Miss Arnold offers precisely that justification for some of her huge assignments: the size of her class has nearly doubled, because of rapid population growth in Midston, and she is no longer able to give individual students as much attention as she once did.

Miss Arnold also assigns homework for a suspect reason that’s described in a paper published under the sponsorship of the U.S. Department of Education, in 1988: “Punishing assignments exercise the teacher’s power to use up time at home that would otherwise be under the student’s control. The assignments often center on behavior rather than academic skills, and stress embarrassment rather than mastery.” That’s what she was up to with all those sentences she made Danny write, back in the first book in the series. Luckily for everyone, Danny handled his embarrassment with aplomb, by writing most of the sentences during downtime in outer space, and the mindlessness of the exercise did no permanent harm to his imagination. At the end of “Homework Machine”—as he, Irene, and Joe are heading to the drugstore to celebrate Minny’s resurrection—he suddenly has “a strange, wild look in his eyes, and a faraway smile on his lips.” He says, “This is just a simple idea I had. Listen—what about a teaching machine. . . .”

Irene, as always, knows better. “Grab his other arm, Joe,” she shouts. “He needs a soda—fast.” ♦

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The Homework Myth – (Book)

The homework myth:, why our kids get too much of a bad thing.

(Da Capo Books, 2006)(Hachette Audio, 2018)

A compelling exposé of homework – how it fails our children, why it’s so widely accepted, and what we can do about it.

Death and taxes come later; what seems inevitable for children is the idea that, after spending the day at school, they must then complete more academic assignments at home. The predictable results: stress and conflict, frustration and exhaustion. Parents respond by reassuring themselves that at least the benefits outweigh the costs.

But what if they don’t? In  The Homework Myth , Alfie Kohn systematically examines the usual defenses of homework – that it promotes higher achievement, “reinforces” learning, teaches study skills and responsibility. None of these assumptions, he shows, actually passes the test of research, logic, or experience.

So why do we continue to administer this modern cod liver oil – or even demand a larger dose? Kohn’s incisive analysis reveals how a mistrust of children, a set of misconceptions about learning, and a misguided focus on competitiveness have all left our kids with less free time and our families with more conflict. Pointing to parents who have fought back – and schools that have proved educational excellence is possible without homework — Kohn shows how we can rethink what happens during and after school in order to rescue our families and our children’s love of learning.

Table of Contents

What people are saying.

“Parents take note: this is a stinging jeremiad against the assignment of homework, which the author, a prominent educator, convincingly argues is a wasteful, unimaginative, and pedagogically bankrupt practice that initiates kids into a soul-sucking rat race long before their time.”

–Atlantic Monthly

“The Homework Myth should be required reading for every teacher, principal, and school district head in the country. . . . Kohn cites plenty of research to back up his thesis. None of it shows the slightest connection between homework and independent thinking. Kohn argues that homework is a burden to children, and, not surprisingly, their parents. . . . It’s hard not to see his point. Or wish that we could find other ways to measure intelligence and nurture the curious minds of children.”

–Boston Globe

“Alfie Kohn . . . has made a convincing case against homework . . . . This book is typical of his work. It is engaging, informative, and exudes the passion that drives him to write. It is a well-researched volume with more than 300 references. Kohn has never been better at challenging the status quo and declaring that the emperor has no clothes.”

–Kappa Delta Pi Record

“Kohn takes many of the things we assume about homework and shreds them, showing over and over how little research there is to back up all the accepted theories. . . . [He] chip[s] away at the conventional thinking that homework improves achievement, that homework improves grades, that homework builds character and all the other things we’ve heard about it since we were doing it . . . Worse, [it] may have the adverse effect of dulling a child’s interest in learning altogether.

“‘Some parents seem to figure that as long as their kids have lots of stuff to do every night, never mind what it is, then learning must be taking place.’ That statement, early in the book, is the one that will keep parents reading the rest of the book. And hopefully, teachers, too. Because, in the end, what Kohn wants parents and teachers to do, if nothing else, is think about this homework issue. Really think. And then talk about it among themselves. And, ultimately, take that conversation to the principal and the district level. And that may be the crucial thing parents and teachers take away from the book: Challenge the status quo.”

–San Diego Union Tribune

“Like all Kohn’s books, The Homework Myth provokes thought and encourages activism. But best of all, it brings back the now almost forgotten question: ‘What is good for the child?'”

–Our Schools / Our Selves

“Powerful and thought-provoking.”

–Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry

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