Going Easy on Homework Help

It is rare to speak to a parent who is not somehow involved in their child's homework. From making sure their student has a time and place to work, to answering the occasional question, to actually sitting with their child and providing lessons and guidance, parents seem to be part of the homework process, especially for younger students.

Often, homework is a chore for both child and parent, one that both may dread. Are there ways to make children more independent when it comes to this inevitable part of most school programs? What works best to build skills without fraying tempers?

One answer seems to emerge from a study out of Finland. The First Steps Study is a wide-ranging long-term examination of learning and motivation in some 2,000 Finnish students from kindergarten through high school. In this component of the study, reported in the journal Learning and Instruction, researchers looked at 365 second through fourth graders and at how their mothers supported their children's homework. They found that the more opportunities for independent, autonomous work that the mother offered the child, the more persistently the child worked on his or her school assignments. This, in turn, resulted in the mothers offering more opportunities for independent work.

In contrast, when mothers offered their children concrete homework help, the children were less independent in their work and the mothers responded by offering more and more help. Note that this effect persisted even when the child's ability level was controlled for. Notably, the study does not mention interventions by fathers. The study authors posited, in a press release from The University of Eastern Finland, that,

"One possible explanation is that when the mother gives her child an opportunity to do homework autonomously, the mother also sends out a message that she believes in the child's skills and capabilities. This, in turn, makes the child believe in him- or herself, and in his or her skills and capabilities."

Similarly, concrete homework assistance - especially if not requested by the child - may send out a message that the mother doesn't believe in the child's ability to do his or her homework.

It is difficult for some parents to draw down their level of homework involvement. It seems, however, that doing so may have long term benefits for students, and likely for their parents as well.

New Research Explores Pitfalls of Homework Help

One question we get a lot here at The Yellin Center is how parents and caregivers can help students grow as learners at home, during homework time, or with supplementary educational activities. We love giving parents and students strategies for building up skills at home, as long as these activities are fun and stress-free, especially during the summer. New research out of Tufts University, conducted by Dr. Melissa Orkin, Sidney May, and Dr. Maryanne Wolf, explores the ways in which parents’ helping behaviors during homework time contribute to how kids feel about their work. 

Homework time, especially for struggling readers and students with disabilities, can be a stressful time for kids and parents alike. Often, homework tasks are not differentiated to meet a student at her or his instructional level; this means that students are often sent home to do work independently that they are not yet able to do. This can lead to task avoidance (a tantrum or power struggle, for example) and negative attitudes towards learning or school. In these situations, parents naturally feel the impetus to sit with their child and help them through the task while building up their skills.

When students are given homework tasks that are too hard to complete independently, they may begin to feel incompetent at managing the academic demands. It would be natural to assume, therefore, that helping your child through the task would increase her or his feelings of competence. However, Orkin and her colleagues found that one common type of homework help, which they dubbed intrusive practices, can actually lead to feelings of helplessness. When students feel helpless in the face of academics, or that they will be unable to produce work at the level expected of them, they will often become very frustrated or have an emotional outburst during work time, seeking to avoid the task.

Intrusive homework help practices include things like checking children’s homework or correcting mistakes when reading. These types of behaviors can contribute to a product (or achievement) oriented learning environment rather than a process-oriented learning environment. Ideally, we want children to value the process of learning, not the output. Sometimes this means taking a step back during homework time and allowing mistakes to be made. Fostering a process-oriented environment also entails providing specific, effort-based praise rather than intrusive corrections during reading or writing that limit the student’s autonomy while working. It’s important for parents and teachers to endorse growth and effort rather than “prescribed standards of success.”

Taking a step back and letting your child make mistakes can be extremely difficult, but research continues to show that encouraging risk-taking while building academic skills is incredibly important for helping children develop a love of learning and a growth mindset. It may take some getting used to, but next time it’s homework time at your house, see what happens when you let mistakes happen while offering up a healthy serving of effort-based encouragement and praise.

Common Core - Unique Ways of Thinking

During a recent vacation visiting a friend, your blogger decided to go out with her one night to a PTA meeting. The topic at hand was Common Core math. The speaker, a math specialist at the school, acknowledged that helping kids with homework can be challenging and potentially frustrating for parents who were taught math in a different way. Borrowing and carrying the one, for example, may be the obvious way to solve a subtraction problem to a parent, but not to his/her child.

The speaker emphasized that students, such as my friend’s daughter (already a mathematician and doing fractions with Belgian waffles at breakfast), will be taught a variety of strategies for solving math problems, so they will be equipped with an arsenal from which they can select what works best for them. For example, without automatic recognition of the answer to 4x3, it could be solved by:

• Adding 4 three times
• Knowing that 4x2=8, and then adding 4 more
• Drawing 4 circles, with 3 dots in each
  
• Using graph paper, or a sketch with dots on regular paper, to make a rectangle with a length of 4 and width of 3, and finding the area
  

A problem such as 43-7 could be solved in various ways, such as:

• Identifying that 40-7 is 33, and then adding 3 more
• Mom and Dad’s good old fashioned borrowing and carrying method
• Representing 43 by sketching bars-of-ten and the leftover ones
  

Then breaking a bar up into ones and crossing out the number of dots being subtracted

Clearly, some problem-solving methods will be more efficient than others, and efficiency is ultimately encouraged. However, the teaching of various strategies allows for:

a) options for students who are struggling with other methods

b) conceptual understanding rather than just rote memorization of procedures

c) foundations to turn to when thinking about more challenging problems in the future

For my friend’s daughter, and for breakfast enthusiasts such as myself, the world makes most sense in terms of waffles. For others, this might not be the best methodology. Exposure to various ways of viewing and analyzing problems creates doors where there might otherwise be walls. We may be entering from different angles, but it is important that we each enter in a place from which we can have the personally clearest view, while ultimately seeking out the most efficient route to get there.

Study Looks at Impact of ADHD on Homework

It should come as no surprise to parents and teachers that researchers have found that students who struggle with attention and executive functions are less likely to complete and submit homework assignments. A study earlier this year in the Journal of School Psychology looked at this phenomenon over a period of 18 months in 104 middle school students who had definitive diagnoses of ADHD.

The researchers looked at all the steps that students had to complete to be successful with homework, something they called the “completion cycle.” These include:

• Accurately recording assignments with sufficient detail

• Bringing home the materials needed for the assignment

• Planning ahead to complete the work (ie: not procrastinating)

• Staying focused and completing the work correctly

• Bringing the completed work back to school and handing it in.

Even where teachers or parents provided some homework support, most of these responsibilities fell upon students to meet.

Multiple teachers were questioned about assignment completion and their reports about each student were highly consistent across classes, with teachers reporting that students with ADHD were turning in an average of 12 percent fewer assignments than their classmates.

Furthermore, there was a strong correlation between the percentage of assignments turned in at the beginning of the study and students’ school grades some 18 months later, even when controlling for numerous academic and socio-economic factors that could affect grades. Poor homework completion was associated with low grades and low grades were associated with lower future homework completion rates. The study also found that students whose parents rated their “homework material management” as problematic at the inception of the study were likely to be reported by teachers as having a lower percentage of assignments turned in as the study came to an end.

The researchers note that homework assignment completion problems are persistent across time and can be an important intervention target for teens with ADHD. For parents (and teachers) dealing with students who seem scattered and disorganized in numerous areas of their lives, a focus on homework may be a good first step towards improving their school performance.

Time Management and Homework Resources

Earlier this spring, we looked at some of the extensive resources tucked away on our website, starting with a look at tech literacy. Today we explore our suggestions for ways to manage tasks, lists, and homework. Take a look and see if they help.

ENHANCING PRODUCTIVITY
​Slife, Rescue Time, Freedom app, and Stay Focused
All four of these online productivity monitors allow users to track how much time they spend on certain websites and even block certain sites from themselves or during predesignated times.

Pomodoro
​This free product (upgrades available) is the best of both worlds: a to-do list and a timer. Students can enter their tasks to keep track of their responsibilities, the use the timer to keep track of how long they should be working and when to take breaks. Pomodoro is both a desktop application and a smartphone app. Students who are easily distracted by their phones may want to use it only on their PCs; used in conjunction with Slife, Rescue Time, Freedom app, or Stay Focused (above) to block distractions, Pomodoro can help students stay focused and organized.

MANAGING LISTS AND REMINDERS
Wunderlist
This great app is excellent for those who want to coordinate to-do lists with other people. Wunderlist will send email reminders to members of a group and the group organizer can check to see which tasks have been completed. Group members can use an in-app chat feature to discuss tasks, too. This app, which is free for iOS and Android, is ideal for families or students and professionals who do lots of collaborative work.

Wunderlist

Any.Do
We love this simple, free app! Just type in things you need to remember and your smartphone will alert you when it's time to get things done. You can even attach notes, documents, videos, or images to items on your list. Any.Do works with almost all devices, both mobile and desktop.

Finish
This clever app allows users to create to-do lists and organize tasks by priority. It's simple, elegant, and effective. For iOS only.

Remember the Milk
Manage responsibilities and prearrange text or email reminders so they'll show up when you need them.

Make Custom Checklists
Easily create checklists for your child using this free resource. A checklist can help foster independence so kids can get through routines (getting ready to go to school in the morning or to bed at night, for example) without forgetting anything. 

MANAGING YOUR WORKLOAD
myHomework - free, or $4.99 per year without ads
This award-winning app allows students to stay on top of just about everything. Users can input classes, assignments, tests, and grades, and myHomework will send alerts and reminders and even help students to prioritize tasks. The streamlined layout keeps distractions to a minimum, too.

Here's a helpful tip: Making timelines can be a particularly helpful way to plan an evening of work or a multi-step project. Check out our model, then try making a timeline of your own.

Back-to-School Help

For New York City students, the excellent website InsideSchools has a list of free and low cost programs that offer supplementary instruction for students in elementary through high school, designed to allow them,  "to explore new interests, get extra support, and supplement what is being taught during the school day." As  Liz Willen, one of the InsideSchool bloggers notes, New York City Schools have still not recovered from significant budget cuts and that, coupled with increased specialization of many schools -- music, art, technology, etc. -- means that some students lack access to programs they want or need. This list is one way to access such programs or skills.

Now that school is well underway, homework is something both students and their parents need to deal with on an almost daily basis. A website from the New York City Department of Education has a list of resources to help students at all levels (and their parents) with homework and test preparation. The Brooklyn Public Library has homework helpers at many of its locations, ready to assist students in grades one through eight. Families from other areas should check with their local library; many have in-person or online assistance available.

photo: bgilliard/flickr

And don't forget some of the "tried and true" resources for homework and academic support - websites like Kahn Academy, with video instruction in almost every subject in which a student might need assistance, and Spark Notes study guides and Spark Charts instructional materials for students at all levels, including medical and law school.

Three Tips to Help Make Homework Time Easier

As the school year begins, it's time to think about all the issues your family encountered with homework last year -- and finally take steps to improve things. No one says homework is going to become an easy or pleasant part of family life, but there are things you can do to make it go more smoothly. Here are a few of our favorite suggestions:

Svadilfari

Know the Assignment
There are many reasons a student may not know their homework assignment. Some students have trouble copying accurately from the board. Others can't keep good track of their papers and lose the sheet on which the homework was printed. Still others have handwriting issues and even if they write down the assignment, they can't read their own writing when they sit down to work. If your child consistently has any one of these issues, work with their teacher to make sure they have an alternative way of getting their assignments. Some students work with a homework buddy, others need to show their teacher that they have their worksheets packed in their bag before they leave class. Whatever the system, find one that works. Knowing what to do is the first step in getting the work done.

Homework Needs a Home Office
Think about the kind of space you need when you bring home a project from work. Homework is part of a student's job and he or she needs a dedicated space to work. It can be one end of the dining room table, a desk in their room, or anyplace else in the house. It needs to have a place nearby to store books and long term projects, as well as to be equipped with age-appropriate supplies -- markers and glue, a computer with internet access for research, and access to a printer.

A home office also needs to have an office-like atmosphere. That doesn't always mean silence -- we know that some students (and adults) prefer to work with music in the background. But it does mean that there is no television or computer on, except as needed for research and word processing. This may be impossible to enforce for older students who work in their rooms, but younger students can learn the importance of separating work from recreation if parents model this by their own behavior. Hopefully, good work habits learned early will continue on through high school.

Create a "Launching Pad" for Your Child
Knowing the assignment and doing the homework are only the first parts of the process; your child needs to bring it back to school. Creating a dedicated space for each child to hold all the items he or she needs for the next school day will make sure that homework wasn't done in vain. The launching pad is also a way to ensure that your student has all of his or her other required school items. It should be the place for permission slips, books, gym attire, and anything else that needs to go to school. Ideally, a basket or shelf big enough to hold their backpack can be dedicated to each child. As homework is completed, books are read, and permission slips signed, they can all be placed inside the backpack and the pack then goes back on the launching pad, to be taken to school, fully loaded, the next day.

No one loves doing homework, but planning and organization can make it easier for all.

Mentor Texts

Writing is a challenging task, and for many children it can be difficult to know where to begin. The use of mentor texts – books, stories, poems, articles, etc. written by professional writers – selected as models can provide young authors with a much-needed boost.

To begin, ask the child to select a text he really enjoys. (Or, if the child must complete a homework assignment, try to find a piece of writing that is similar to the goal of the assignment.) The student should reread the text and consider what makes it so appealing. Some children may need assistance in pinpointing the particular aspects of a text that make it so great – good word choices, flowing sentence structures, plot pattern, etc.

Once the student has generated some good observations, it’s time to get writing. She shouldn’t copy the ideas in the mentor piece, but rather should focus on trying to use the same elements she admires in it. For example, use of specific words that professional author included can make a piece more lively and vivid while simultaneously teaching vocabulary. Using someone else’s sentence structure to express a student’s own ideas will expose her to different ways to construct and join phrases and allow her to experiment and branch out as a writer.

Modeling writing from mentor texts is effective because it can liberate students from writer’s block and promote learning by doing. Pieces written with inspiration from models will be of higher quality than pieces written independently, and students are likely to retain the lessons they learn about good writing because they’ve had the opportunity to practice them.

Imitation is the highest form of flattery, and it can also be a great teaching tool.

Photo: Kristina/Flickr Creative Commons

A Resource for Learning Math... And More

Learning mathematics requires that students grasp simple concepts and procedures and then build upon these to understand more complex or abstract material. When students have challenges with learning math in early grades, it makes it difficult for them to jump in, even with strategies and support, to learn higher mathematics as they move into middle school, high school, and beyond.

One tool we often recommend to students who struggle with math is the Khan Academy website. Founded by Sal Khan, a former hedge fund analyst with degrees from MIT and Harvard, the website and the nonprofit organization behind it grew out of videos Khan posted to YouTube in 2006 to help tutor his cousins in math. Now supported by grants from organizations such as Google and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Khan Academy offers online tutorials in a wide range of subjects including science and social studies and is now replete with sophisticated interactive features. But the heart of the Khan Academy website is step by step instruction in fundamentals, especially math, that can be accessed by students on their own or in class groups, to fill instructional gaps or build new knowledge.

Homework Help from Your Local Library

Homework can pose a challenge not only for students, but for parents as well. There is a fine line between helping your child understand their homework and actually helping them to do it, and this balancing act can be complicated by a number of other issues that parents face -- rusty academic skills; concerns about fostering independence; competition for their child's attention from computers, games, and other activities; and parental exhaustion after their own long day at work.

One place to turn for free help with homework (and, in some instances, for preparation for college admissions exams or advanced placement exams) can be your public library. In Suffolk County, on Long Island, students with a library card (which they can sign up for online) can receive help in a wide array of subjects from tutors who have been trained and cleared with background and reference checks. The service is available every day from 2 until 11 pm. Students can create an account that will allow them to view past sessions and submit questions.

Students in adjacent Nassau County can access a free service that provides online help from tutors who have been vetted by an independent tutoring service.

New York City is served by several independent library systems. Students can access free, in-person homework help through their local branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. Queens Public Library and New York Public Library patrons have access to numerous online tools to help with homework. Still another resource is provided by the UFT -- the NYC teachers' union -- which provides telephone help from teachers speaking 12 languages.

These support services won't make homework disappear -- but may help make homework a more effective and less stressful tool for learning.
 

Photo used under Creative Commons by CCAC North Library

A Home Office for Students

A recent article in The Costco Connection, the magazine distributed by the warehouse chain to its customers, suggests that families set up a "home office for homework," something we think is a terrific idea. If you think about it, homework and school are a student's job and, just like a parent who may need a dedicated home office space to do the work of his or her job at home -- full-time or outside the regular work day -- students need a dedicated space to enable them to work most efficiently.

Whether this student office is in the student's own room, or in a more public part of the home, is a decision that families need to make based on the age of the student, the space available, and a particular student's need for direct supervision and ease of distraction. But even when families decide that the kitchen table is the best place for their children to work, there should still be a dedicated area for supplies and storage for each student.

Since this is prime time for sales of school supplies and dorm equipment, it might be helpful to consider the following when you are creating a home office for your student:

• Different students need different kinds of chairs. At our offices, our assessment rooms have both fixed and wheeled chairs, since research has shown -- and we have observed -- that moving about while working can help students who struggle with attention to focus on the task at hand.
• For older students, who may be working for more than an hour a day, proper support for wrists and back while using a computer is important.
• Each student should have his or her own storage area -- a file box with dividers for each subject is ideal -- for papers that need to be retained (for studying for a final exam, for example) but are not needed currently. Students should be encouraged to go through their backpacks not less than every couple of weeks to remove papers that can go into this longer term storage.
• A large white board, perhaps with a calendar, is a helpful way to prioritize tasks and to keep track of deadlines.
• A dedicated place for supplies -- pens, pencils, scissors, glue sticks, paper, etc.-- can be individual to each student or centralized for the entire family. Procrastinators will have fewer excuses when the supplies they need are readily available.

All but the youngest children can become involved in setting up their home office. Taking the time to prepare before school re-opens can help reduce homework battles in the fall.


Photo used under Creative Commons by Lasse Rintakumpu

Friday Links - Homework Help

Avoiding Homework Wars  from LD On Line.

Homework Tips for Parents from the National Center for Learning Disabilties

Homework Help from the New York City Public Library

Parent Toolkit - Homework from All Kinds of Minds

Homework Tips for Parents of Children with ADHD from the American Academy of Pediatrics

Why a Duck?

In the latest issue of the Yellin Center Newsletter, Dr. Yellin writes about signs children may be struggling in school. One sign he mentions is when children are working harder than their teachers may realize -- in the same way a duck's smooth movement across a pond doesn't reflect the effort of his feet paddling away beneath the surface.

This got us thinking about the effort of parents to help keep these student "ducks" afloat. There is no one measure of how much support a parent should provide with homework, projects, or organization. The age of the student, the school environment, whether or not she has significant learning challenges, and the preference of parents will all contribute to how much and what kind of support parents provide at home.

One thing all parents should keep in mind when helping their child is that the ultimate goal of all support should be independence. We all want our children to succeed. But we need to resist the impulse to improve our child's homework. Teachers need to see where students struggle and parents need to find the right balance between providing answers and teaching their child to figure out the answers on his own. It's hard to remember this when it's a half-hour after bedtime and there is still homework left to finish!

Homework Help

The August issue of Good Housekeeping magazine features a list of websites that offer free tutoring in a variety of subjects.

We also have come across a very helpful website sponsored by New York City's Public Libraries which contains information on a wide variety of academic subjects, links to study guides such as Spark Notes and Cliff Notes and standard reference works, as well as links to obtain live help from teachers or librarians. You do not need to be a New York resident or have a library card to use this site although some of the live help features do require residency in certain areas of New York City.

Now, if we only could find a website that gets students to actually sit down and do their homework!