Checking Homework = Learning Experience

During student teaching and so far into this year, I have developed a comprehensive procedure for checking and correcting homework.
I make clear to my students that I will check homework every day any homework is due. I usually only assign 20-30 minutes a night, a reasonable amount of homework I feel really helps reinforce the concepts taught in class. I believe that homework is crucial to helping students remember the process they will need to know going into high school, as well as provides a tool for me to check student understanding of concepts in the curriculum.

Each homework assignment is worth 5 points, and can be in the form of textbook problems, worksheets, online quizzes, etc. There are bigger assignments as well, such as unit study guides, poster/video/PowerPoint projects, etc. I check homework as students are working on their warm ups, as a way to maximize class time. When I check homework, I look for both:

• Completion
• Work shown/quality - did they show their work? Is their work complete? Is their evidence of using the methods taught in class?

My way of correcting homework, has, so far, been one of my class' favorite procedures. Students pair up into groups of 3 or 4 and receive a blank half sheet of overhead plastic paper. They usually copy 2-3 problems down from the homework from last night or last night & the night before with their group, with work shown. Each group puts up their half sheet of overhead paper on the overhead after 3 minutes in their groups. The group directly clockwise from them in the room would then collectively look at the half sheet on the board and identify mistakes. They are to use a red overhead marker to correct the mistakes, and then score the group out of 10 points. We then discuss as a class and move on to the next group and repeat this process till all groups have gone up. The group with the highest number of points gets to pick a treat from the "goodie bag".

I only do this activity every other day or so, and though it takes about 15 minutes in total, I feel this is an AMAZING review tool having students help each other identify their mistakes and then having a class discussion about how those mistakes are made and identify strategies that I have (or that the students have) to avoid making these mistakes.

Well, that's what I think.

Today, however, I was eager to find out what my students thought of the activity. Overall, the responses from my informal survey were very positive. My students said it helped because a friend could identify the mistakes, so it's less pressure on them, working in the small groups can help them catch their mistake beforehand, they like bringing out their *positive* competitive natures and that peer grading is fun because it helps the graders avoid common mistakes also.

Well, guess that's a "so far, so good" activity I have pretty nailed down! :)