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By Trish

I am basing my opinion on 2 things: my experience(which isn't much) and being a mom. I feel that children need recess to let go of built up energy. I have found that when my child is kept from recess or PE, by the end of
the day, he becomes a small discipline problem. When he is allowed to play and release that bottled up energy, no problem. Also from observing children that were kept in, they too seemed to become very restless by dismissal time. This goes from PK to middle school.
I am going to do exactly what my co-operating teacher did in her class. You keep a log (simple calendar) for each student.

When a student misses a homework, write in a F on the day that it is missed. After 3 missed homeworks, the student receives a early morning detention. This is inconvient for the parents who have to get up earlier, so it gets them to pay more attention to their children's work. And the student doesn't like coming in either. I also will use a rubric for the actual h/w grade... 0-2 is an A, 3-5 missed is a B and so forth. This will count as a test grade. If they do their homework, they get an easy A to be averaged in with their other test grades.

Back about recess, think about it from their point of view.. You sit all day in a desk. You are not supposed to get up or talk out without permission.. Try it.. I know I get squirmmy after about 30 minutes. And I have a LONG attention span.. After a while, you need to get up.. That is why I don't believe in keeping a student in.