The Great Homework Debate

Hi Kim,
I also teach second grade and I assign weekly homework packet. I have a weekly agenda that suggests what pages students should do each night. Typically, students have 2 math sheets and 20 minutes of reading with a response piece. I find that homework completion is much higher with a homework packet. Students learn to plan ahead too! If they have soccer on Tuesday then they can finish their homework another night. I have received positive response from parents as well. They seem to like having an overview of what is going on in school that week. I admire you for differentiating the packet for each student!

Homework is a struggle with my district. There are many teachers that do not give meaningful homework. I teach 8th grade math and I feel that it is absolutely necessary to give homework. I like to call it practice more than homework. It has a better sound to the students when called practice, but isn't that really what it is? I try to give around ten to twenty problems every other night for homework. I will differentiate for students, if I see that someone is struggling, they may get a different assignment that may be easier for them. If someone is bored and needs to be challenged I will give that student more difficult homework as enrichment. The homework I assign is typically worksheets or problems from the textbook. A struggle that I seem to have on a continuous basis is a few students refuse to do the homework. They have study halls everyday, so I try to catch up with them then. I even give time at the end of class to work on homework with a partner and those few students still do not take advantage of that. They know the material and understand how to do the work, but won't complete the assignments.
I would love to hear your feedback. Do I assign too much homework? What do I do with the students that refuse to do the work? I know that the whole debate of homework doesn't have an easy solution. I appreciate your help! Thanks.

I hated doing homework when I was in school, but I did it. My grade level team expects about an hour of homework a night. 30 minutes of reading, 10-15 minutes of math practice, and 10-15 minutes of spelling and vocabulary practice. We have those students and parents that ar on top of it, and there are those that ar not. Overall we have success at getting it done. If the students take longer than 15 minutes to do the math homework, we have the parents work with them for another 10 minutes. If they don't get it, the parents sign the page and say "we tried." When a page ones back with the signature and the message, we work with the student before school, or after school. We want to keep the parents and students frustration level to a minimum. We feel the students get more out of the practice and the parents are more willing to work with us when they do not have to fight with their kids. We also hold the students accountable for the work they don't turn in. We have grade level activites each week and those that need to complete homework spend time with one teacher getting it done wihile the others are in the activity.