- Teachers in each grade level will know what skills are most essential for their students. Teachers have a curriculum guide as well as their school district's and state's guidelines that outline an instructional plan. At the beginning of the year, teachers should assign weekly work that reviews skills from the previous year. In November, weekly assignments need to include skills that were introduced in September and October. After Christmas, teachers can review for two weeks, then schedule weekly assignments again that reinforce skills recently taught. After spring break until the end of the year, homework should reflect the variety of concepts that have been taught throughout the year. Teachers should have children keep a separate notebook for these continual homework assignments.
- Assignments that increase math ability need to be simple and useful. Examples include making flash cards for fact practice or addition and subtraction worksheets with no more than ten problems. Writing numbers and multiplication facts are good practice, but should be done in moderation. For younger children, writing numbers one to ten each week is sufficient until they can write to 20. For students learning times tables, writing only one or two number families at a time like the 2 and 3 tables only once or twice each is enough for practice. Monotonous, repetitive writing is boring and will be ineffectual in the long run.
- When teachers and parents communicate and work together, the child will benefit. Teachers should send home notes, make phone calls, or write emails to parents informing them of standing homework assignments. Parents can also be encouraged to use everyday activities to reinforce basic math skills (see Reference 3). Parents and siblings also make great study partners for students to practice counting and math facts. Teachers can have the student and parent complete a standard form that shows what skills they worked on together. This can count toward the required number of weekly assignments and provide an alternative to worksheets.
