Transcript

The homework program that we've devised at our school is called Tic Tac Toe, and it's a series of nine activities that are sent home again weekly. The activities focus specifically on areas in the curriculum that have just been covered that past week. So if I've taught a comprehension strategy, for example the connection song, a copy of the song goes home that week, and the homework is that the students sing the song to their parents and when they're reading their borrow-a-books that week they look for and record a connection. Or, if I've taught them how to see something through a poet's eyes they have to find something in their refrigerator and, with their parents, see it like a poet and record that. Or, if we're talking about media literacy components and commercials and advertisements then they're asked, as part of their homework, to sit and watch commercials and record whatever the expectation has been laid out. Of course, social studies, science, math, health, grammar, spelling, a whole gamut of activities are provided throughout the year. 

We begin by asking the students to do three or four only, and then by halfway through the year we up that to five activities must be done, incorporated within that are usually one or two must do's, the activities you absolutely want to make sure the parents have had a chance to see. And often I find the children do eight or nine, sometimes all of them. Again, parents love it, and what I like about it is it almost takes the place of, although it doesn't, but it could take the place of a newsletter in terms of Curriculum Corner. Because the parents are right on top of what's been done, and not what you're about to do, but what they can reinforce and continue to work on at home. And it's a real history, the parents tend to keep a lot of the paperwork with them throughout the year, whether it's math games or comprehension songs, so it's been really a valuable tool that my colleagues introduced to me.