3-Read Friday #010
Homework, highlighting, and angles
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Here are three blog posts that I found interesting this week.
1. Do we really need to assign homework? by Michael Pershan
The schools I visit often have radically different homework policies. Some assign it all online, others use worksheets. Some set homework twice a week, others set none at all. But what does the research say about what makes homework effective? In this post, Michael Pershan takes a deep-dive, and comes out with some practical findings, particularly about the quality and duration of homework.
2. Getting the Details Just Right: Highlighting by Andrew Watson
When students are faced with a wordy problem in maths, my go-to advice is always: highlight the keywords. In this lovely blog post, Andrew Watson reviews a 2022 meta-analysis into the potential benefits and pitfalls of highlighting to suggest that my advice is likely to be a waste of time for younger students as they do not know which words to highlight. But it is not all doom and gloom. The meta-analysis has some really useful, practical suggestions, such as modelling good highlighting and contrasting this with examples of bad highlighting.
3. Thinking About Interior and Exterior Angles by Paul Rowlandson
On the face of it, this post from Paul Rowlandson looks like it is just for the maths geeks like me. Indeed, it is all about planning how to teach the sum of interior and exterior angles in polygons. But the principles Paul employs in terms of planning - reflecting how he has always taught something, experimenting with a new approach, reflecting on how it went and adapting accordingly - can be applied to any topic in any subject. I’d strongly recommend checking out the other posts in Paul’s Thinking about… series.
If you found this edition of 3-Read Friday useful, feel free to share it with colleagues. Also, you can check out all the back issues of my Eedi newsletter and Tips for Teachers newsletter here. But, most importantly of all, have a great weekend.
Craig