Ugh! That nasty word!!!

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Ugh! That nasty word!!!
By Pam

I have taught 5th grade for nine years. In that time, I never assigned homework for busywork. Either there was a specific purpose for the task to be completed at home or the child didn't complete his classroom assignment
and had to take it home to finish. The second reason was the case 99% of the time. As you said, this is a problem when all grades are averaged equally since the student who rarely finishes assignments in class is also the one who can't manage to return the same assignment after taking it home. What to do with these students? Even weighting the test scores doesn't solve the problem

because these are the students who usually do very poorly on tests. You can't allow students to fail, yet you just can't give good grades away. Also, at this age, if students realize that they are not getting a grade, they put forth minimal effort to complete an assignment. The administration, parents (not all of course), and students want good grades. However, many students do not want to work for them. I apologize for rambling, but your topic just struck a nerve.