Homework Excuse Cards

There are a lot of things that I could do better in my teaching practice.  And I’m naturally quite critical of myself.  A question I’ve been asked a lot over this summer by university friends is, “Do you enjoy teaching?”  And although I always answer yes, and I do enjoy it, the question always makes me think of the days that I travelled home from school frustrated with some part of how the day went.  I tend to focus on the negative aspects of my practice, which makes sense, because they’re the things I want to improve.  But it’s a little depressing!

So it was nice the other day when I was talking to my sister, who is also a teacher, and she asked about something I introduced to my classroom last year that I was quite proud of.  It was, in fact, her idea.  But she wanted to know exactly how I’d organised it and set it up, how I ensured it worked, and followed through on it.  It was very invigorating to be quizzed on a positive aspect of my teaching!

Anyway, two paragraphs is enough to ramble without mentioning the topic of the post, which is Homework Excuse Cards.  When I started teaching, I had big problems with ensuring homework was handed in.  It probably happens with a lot of new teachers – the pupils want to see how they react, how far they can push them.  The result was that the first few weeks of the year I spent a lot of class time writing down the names of pupils who hadn’t given homework in, asking people who hadn’t handed homework in yet if they had it, asking people why they hadn’t come to detentions set for not handing the homework in, and feeling very disorganised.  I needed to give the pupils more responsibility for the process.  After all, why should I be put out for something they haven’t done?

Enter the homework cards.  I prepared cards with the name of each pupil in each of my classes in.  This had the strange initial effect of pupils liking the cards, because they were personalised!  I think it’s a good strategy though, because pupils knew I had them ready if they were needed.  Each year group was printed on a different colour of paper (or card when I could lay my hands on it!) so that I could find them easily.  The cards have three spaces for ‘incidents’ of forgetting homework on them, so when homework is due in pupils have to put it on their desk, and I will walk round the class quickly checking it’s done.  If it isn’t, I give them their Homework Record Card (I thought using the word ‘excuse’ in large font as a heading made it sound too adversarial) and they have to write the date and the reason they haven’t got their homework in the next space.  I can then go round and collect the completed cards in throughout the lesson.

This makes it easy to keep track of who hasn’t done their homework and the follow-up needed, since I keep the ‘active’ cards in a separate pile.  It also allows me to have very transparent guidelines for forgetting homework – the first incident gets a twenty minute detention, the second a forty minute detention, and the third an hour after-school detention including a phone call home.  When pupils have done these detentions I will sign their card so that I know the incident has been dealt with, and the card goes back in the ‘inactive’ pile.

Getting pupils to write down the reasons is useful because it makes them less likely (in my opinion – I’m not sure if there’s research on this) to lie, because it’s a permanent record and they know if they have three missed homeworks you will be reading what they have written out to their parents!  It also allowed me to be more relaxed about when people did their detentions, because it was much easier to keep track of who I still needed to see.

This year I’ve included the school logo (replaced by a hexagon on the uploaded file) to make the cards look more official, and I’ve also created the cards using a mail merge, which I recommend as a time saving measure.  You can do the cards on A4 size documents, and then print four to a page.  That’s what I did anyway.

I want to finish with a few questions you’re likely to get if you choose to use these cards.

1. How long do they last?
   This is completely up to you.  I left it open at first, saying, “We’ll see how it goes,” in the hope that it would keep the pupils on their toes, and because I wasn’t sure how well they would work.  I’ve now settled on a card per term.  It will be different depending on how often you set homework.
2. Can I see my card?
   The pupils who never forget homework will probably rue not being able to see their card.  It’s nice for them to know it’s there and you won’t let them off if they forget just one time!
3. What happens if I fill my card?
   Somebody is bound to ask this.  And I initially hadn’t thought about it.  But to be honest the reply should be the same as it would be with any similar issue.  So my response is that I’ll speak to the Head of Year, and they might go on a monitoring card with them.  I’ve not had to use this option yet.  Another angle to take might be that they will just keep doing one-hour after school detentions.
4. Will you actually keep us for that long?
   The answer is yes.  Always yes.  It’s important that the pupils know you will follow through on this – the way the cards work is a deterrent, and if the consequence is negotiable then this doesn’t work.  My cards even have it as a minimum – the expectation is that they will do their homework in the detention.  If they haven’t, I might ask them to stay for longer. J

Reflecting on the Year

It’s my plan each year to get pupils to fill in review forms to let me know what went well, and what didn’t go so well, and how I should improve it.  Reading through and reflecting on their comments seems a good place to start a blog reflecting on my teaching practice, so here goes!

Apologies for the first post being a bit of a long one!

What went well this year in Maths?

Pupils were mostly proud of achieving their target levels, and getting high marks. This reinforces a view that it is unnecessary to focus as a teacher on getting pupils to review their progress against a target level, since they will do this themselves.  This is not to say that pupils do not need to be encouraged to reflect on how to improve, as it is my belief that they do!  Many pupils also reflected on individual topics that had gone well, although pleasingly they were a good mix.

‘This is why I’m a Teacher’ Comment:  Sir’s teaching – helpful, fun and detailed.  No teaching from the textbook as well.

Most Worrying Comment:  Having a teacher. (If that’s the best that happened, it doesn’t bode well for me!)

What didn’t go well this year in Maths?

It was nice that some pupils jokingly referred to me breaking one of the classroom rules we had decided upon at the start of the year, which was to have a week’s notice before each test.  I had explained the reasons and apologized, but it was still a fair point, and was something I didn’t enjoy doing.  But it showed me that the pupils placed some value in these rules, and that maybe I should use them more next year?  Distractions and the class being noisy where the main issues coming up here, which is something I need to work on next year, and will focus on how to improve in the next few weeks.  In terms of topics, fractions and ratios seem to be the most troubling, so it may be worth looking at different ways of teaching those.

‘This is why I’m a Teacher’ Comment: Being let out late and doing everything in the last minute when the bell rings.  (This is something I know I do regularly trying to cram too much into lessons, and I want to have calm ends to lessons where we review learning next year.  It’s in the positive column as it really hits the nail on the head – it’s good when your criticisms of yourself match a pupil’s.)

Most Worrying Comment: Mr. Pigott

What did Mr. Pigott do well this year?

Most pupils seemed to appreciate the level I try to go to in helping them on an individual basis, and really caring about how they were getting on with work.  This does however have consequences (more on those in a minute).  A good few mentions of ‘fun’ which is also pleasing, although I know some of my lessons need to be more engaging.

‘This is why I’m a Teacher’ Comment: He taught well, and gives his full support if you’re stuck on a particular question.  He’s kind, thoughtful and understanding.

Most Worrying Comment: Gave me high levels (The pupil earned them, they weren’t given out for free!)

What could Mr. Pigott do better next year?

A lot of general comments that you would expect from any teacher doing a similar activity, such as ‘more fun activities’ and ‘explain [x] better’.  It’s interesting how much overlap there is between this and the previous questions, which maybe is a recognition of effort of trying to do the more difficult things, but not quite getting there!  Some people weren’t happy with the seating plans, but on different levels of wanting to be next to people they were friendly with, or conversely not wanting people to be sat near friends where they would be distracted!  I’ve heard about having seating plans that change every lesson before, so this is a possibility, although it seems like it could be a bit of a nightmare logistically, and doesn’t take account of if you want pupils to be sat with people of similar or different ability in order to aid differentiation.  The main focus here though was undoubtedly being more consistent in discipline (and shouting less, which hopefully should go hand-in-hand).  As mentioned above, I’ll be reflecting on this more over the next few weeks.  I think sometimes my desire to help pupils individually makes this more difficult, because I’ll spend time getting to the bottom of how one person is doing, and in wanting to make sure I’m giving them enough attention, will neglect distractions building up around the class.  Putting procedures into place to stop this happening next year should be a big help in getting my lessons to run smoother.

‘This is why I’m a Teacher’ Comment: I think he has done everything good this year so I am not sure what to say.

Most Worrying Comment: Teach (I do hope I didn’t forget to teach somebody for the whole year! :-S)

Is there anything you expected that didn’t happen?

Most people said no here, although some thought there would be more group work and more competitions, and also more computer work.  I think these will be things I introduce more as I get more confident in ensuring that everyone still makes progress with them – it’s a lot easier for a pupil to get away without doing anything for an entire lesson if there are three other people who’ll cover for them because they don’t want the group to fall behind.

‘This is why I’m a Teacher’ Comment: Me getting sent out all the time (Hopefully did something right with that pupil!  Or alternatively maybe I let them get away with far too much!)

Most Worrying Comment: I thought my maths skills would improve (This wasn’t the same pupil who said I could improve by teaching!)

Is there anything you didn’t expect that did happen?

A lot of ‘no’ answers and blank spaces again, some pupils citing having me as something unexpected, which is fair enough since I was new at the school!  A few people mentioning the classroom being noisier than expected, which links to the issues in other questions.  A couple of mentions of the ‘homework excuse’ cards as well, which I’m planning on continuing next year.  The most disappointing thing here is probably that I didn’t do enough things that are different – I think it’s a lot easier to be engaged in something unexpected, so I should be trying to surprise pupils probably more often than I currently am doing.

‘This is why I’m a Teacher’ Comment: How awesome it could be.  As in Maths.

Most Worrying Comment: I learnt how to solve decimal numbers and I didn’t expect that. (I’m pretty sure they meant ‘order’ rather than ‘solve’, since we’d just done that topic, but perhaps a gentle warning that I need to be more aware of teaching vocab for topics next year!)