Teachers can increase homework completion by making their assignments more creative.

Many of my homework assignments are short creative writing assignments. I teach 8th grade U.S. History and rather than giving students an assignment out of the textbook that is boring and where answers can easily be copied from one student to another, I try to create homework assignments that are more creative, not easily copied, yet still meet the learning objectives of the lesson.

I have found that having the students write short journal entries from the perspective of someone from the time period or having them write a letter to or from someone from the time period works very well. I can do this for any topic we are studying, but I always make sure to set specific guidelines. For example, the journal entry should be roughly one page in length and must include the date, three facts from the day’s lessons, and certain key terms that I pick out. Other than that it can be as creative as they want.

A similar assignment that meets the same goal is to have the students write a creative letter. For example, the letter could be from someone fighting at the Battle of Gettysburg written to their loved one back home. Of course, the letter must contain certain elements that I assign based on the lesson’s objective.

In both cases the students are creating short pieces of historical fiction.

Again, this gives the students some freedom, it is not something that can easily be copied off of another student (a big issue in 8th grade), and I am able to accomplish the main goal of reinforcing the lesson’s objectives.

Also, I have found that I get a much higher completion rate with these types of homework assignments.

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Are you still having problems getting your students to complete homework?

For more homework strategies that you can start applying to your very next class make sure read eTeach: A Teacher Resource for Learning the Strategies of Master Teachers @ www.TeachingTeacher.com

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