How Long Island kids feel about homework

We were curious to find out how students in our grade felt about homework. We thought of three questions to ask our peers, and these were the results:

Does homework help you understand what you learned in the lesson that day?

Yes: 94

No: 64

Sometimes: 6

Does homework interfere with your after-school schedule in any way?

Yes: 110

No: 45

Sometimes: 9

Does homework make you stressed out for any reason?

Yes: 79

No: 79

Sometimes: 6

As a result of this survey, we think teachers should change their homework policy. Since so many kids responded that homework interferes with their after-school schedules, maybe teachers could assign homework for the week on Monday and the students could budget their own time during the week to complete it. We do this in our class with our homework on SpellingCity (spellingcity.com). For example, if we are busy after school on Mondays, we can do more of the work on a day when we have more free time.

Another solution could be students starting their homework in school if they have free time or if a lesson ends early.

We think that many kids get stressed out with homework because they didn’t understand the lesson, or they might have a lot already on their plates. We can see that a lot more kids find that homework does help with the day’s lesson, so we can’t do away with homework altogether. Maybe we can work with our teachers and our parents to make it more manageable.

Eileen DeCarmine’s fifth-grade class, Laddie A. Decker Sound Beach School, Miller Place