ABSTRACT
Students should not have homework unless they need it. When a student does not understand or needs more practice this is the time to assign individualized homework. As author prepared the first Orientation Day slideshow as a new teacher, The author had to fill in homework expectations, including how much time students and parents should commit to every night. Since it was my first year, author had no idea what the curriculum expectations were, so author relied on the old formula of 10 minutes times the grade of the child: fourth graders would have a minimum 40 minutes of homework every night. Homework is really not thoughtful when you just assign to check off a box or follow a guideline for how many minutes students should work outside of school. Homework then becomes a brainless act of repetition, not the metacognitive contemplation that they all should be striving for.
