This text is part of the special public school notebook
The start of the school year took place a few weeks ago, and for many students, it rhymes with the return of homework. But this is not the case for everyone, some teachers having chosen to lighten the end of their students’ days.
David Bessette is an elementary school teacher at Notre-Dame-du-Rosaire school in Sherbrooke. Twelve years ago, he decided he would no longer give his students homework and even made a comic strip out of it with artist Alex S. Girard. For him, homework has several negative effects. “They widen social inequalities, because some parents cannot support the children,” he explains. The strong become stronger and the weak become weaker. »
The teacher also judges that homework is not very effective in terms of learning. For him, after a day of school, children are tired and it is better for them to rest. According to Mr. Bessette, homework can even mislead the teacher about what his students have actually learned. “For example, did the student call Alloprof or get help from his parents to do this exercise? » he illustrates.
Homework? Yes, but not just any
For professor emeritus at the Faculty of Educational Sciences at the University of Montreal, Roch Chouinard, homework has benefits, but only under certain conditions. In a scientific article published in 2023, entitled “Homework, useless chore or essential learning opportunity? “, of which he is the co-author, we can read that there are three categories of homework: “exercises aimed at applying and reinforcing newly acquired knowledge”, “preparatory homework […] on the subjects that will soon be covered in class” and “projects, tests or surveys allowing the use of knowledge developed in class”.
In all three cases, it is necessary, according to him, for homework to be fun and different from what is done in class. “For example, we could ask children to create a family tree of their family, or to take measurements of the objects they have at home after a geometry lesson,” he illustrates.
For Mr. Chouinard, fifteen minutes a day devoted to homework in the first cycle of primary school is sufficient, while in the second cycle, this could rise to thirty minutes, four times a week. This time could then increase in secondary school.
It is important, explains the teacher, to create a good homework routine, with time slots and a place conducive to reflection. It is also necessary to ensure that the child has good resources to carry them out. “A good assignment is one that the student is capable of doing alone,” he continues.
Other success factors
Even if he is against giving homework to his primary school students at home, David Bessette agrees to the idea of giving students daily study time. “There are things that it is not up to me to teach, it is up to the students to learn,” he explains. For example, I can do exercises in class on vocabulary words, I can play games, but at some point, the student has to dedicate himself to learning these things. »
This is why the teacher decided to organize his class day differently. He now begins his daily program with thirty minutes of study during which he allows students who have not understood certain concepts to review them with him in smaller groups. At the same time, it teaches effective study strategies to those who are trying to assimilate new things seen the day before, for example. “Often, we ask young people to study, but we do not teach them how to study,” he laments.
Even though he had to remove “superfluous things” from his teaching day to free up those thirty minutes of study time, he says that in the long term, he saved time on his program: “I had finished in June, I even had time to review certain concepts with my students. »
Since then, he has noticed that the gap in level between his students is less critical: “Strong students stay strong, students in difficulty are able to cover basic concepts. »
Roch Chouinard mentions, however, that when we compare students in the same education system, those who have the most homework generally have the best performance. He adds, however, that a 2014 PISA study comparing the education systems of several countries highlights that the time students spend on homework in a school system does not necessarily influence its ranking on a global scale. For example, in Finland and South Korea, which are at the top of the rankings for performance in mathematics, science and reading, students spent less than three hours per week on homework, while in the Russian Federation , located below the ranking average, students devoted nearly ten hours per week to it.
For the teacher, other factors are more important to a student’s success than homework. “It is first and foremost the quality of the time we spend in class that is important. If there’s a ruckus and the teachers spend their day disciplining, what’s the point of giving homework? »
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