Ep 37. Homework that works with Jo Castelino

This transcript was created with speech-to-text software.  It was reviewed before posting but may contain errors. Credit to Deepika Tung.

  

You can listen to the episode here: Chalk & Talk Podcast. 

  

Ep 37. Homework that works with Jo Castelino 

[00:00:05] Anna Stokke: Welcome to Chalk and Talk, a podcast about education and math. I'm Anna Stokke, a math professor, and your host. 

 

You are listening to episode 37 of Chalk and Talk. My guest in this episode is Dr. Jo Castelino, who is a teacher and curriculum leader in the UK. A lot of people have asked me to discuss homework on the podcast, and I was pretty excited when I heard about Jo's new book, The Homework Conundrum, so I reached out to her and asked her to come on to talk about it. 

 

This episode is all about homework. We discuss why homework is important. How much homework to assign and what type of homework to assign. We also discussed some of the criticisms of homework, how schools can create a culture that supports homework, rewarding and consequence mechanisms, leveraging feedback, and handling issues like cheating. 

 

Jo was a great guest, and I hope you find our discussion informative. By the time this episode is released, you will be able to order her book, which has even more information. Now, without further ado, let's get started. 

 

[00:01:25] Anna Stokke: I am thrilled to be joined today by Dr. Jo Castelino, and she is joining me from Leeds. She is a secondary school science teacher in West Yorkshire in the UK. She's a curriculum leader for science. She has a doctorate in genetics. She has a special interest in applying cognitive science principles to teaching to maximize student learning. 

 

And she's an expert on homework. She's written articles and blog posts all about homework, and she has an upcoming book that will be released on November 29th that's all about homework. It's called The Homework Conundrum, and I was lucky enough to have read an advanced copy. I highly recommend it, and we're going to talk a lot about some of the things that are in your book today. 

So welcome, Jo. Welcome to my podcast.  

 

[00:02:15] Jo Castelino: Thank you so much, Anna. I am so honoured to be here.  

​

[00:02:18] Anna Stokke:  Let's start with a bit about your background. So, you have a doctorate in genetics. Did you always work as a teacher or what made you decide to join the teaching profession? 

 

[00:02:30] Jo Castelino: When I was a kid, I used to play teachers, like I'm sure lots of children do. I just took it a little bit further, where I used to wake my sister up in the middle of the night and teach her, and she hated me for it. But that's why she became clever, you see. She did really well at school because of me. She won't acknowledge that. 

 

But I also wanted to study, and I've always been very academic, and I wanted to do a PhD, to be honest, to be the first person in the family. We have a very big family. And I just wanted to do that for the ego and the arrogance of it. So, I did. And nobody cared. So, then I thought I might as well go into what I really want to do, and that's teaching. 

 

So, I got into it a bit later than the other people in my cohort, during my placement, but I've really always wanted to teach, to be honest. 

 

[00:03:18] Anna Stokke: First of all, congratulations on being the first person in your family to get a PhD and also congratulations on finding your passion and, and becoming a teacher, which you clearly love to do. So why did you start writing about homework? 

 

[00:03:33] Jo Castelino: Yeah, that's interesting as well. I used to absolutely hate it at the start. I used to hate it when I was a student because Indian schools give you a lot of homework and there is never any follow up on it. So, it was a lot of work for nothing, really. So, I used to hate it. And then when I started to teach, no one really spoke about it. There was no training on it. We were just expected to set it. Sometimes this is also the case now, I think.  

 

So, I used to not really get on with it. I used to set it without really understanding it. But then, I started to look into it a little bit because I thought in the lesson, in the classroom, we're talking a lot about how we should teach and how we should reduce cognitive load and how we should do lots of retrieval practice. 

 

And we started talking about that stuff for the classroom and I started to think, why aren't we talking about this for other stuff then, like homework? And then we had the pandemic. During the pandemic here in England, we set work online for our students and they weren't doing it. No one really was doing it. And I just sat back, and I thought, what if I had been setting them homework? Would that have changed anything? Would they have built some habits of independent study that I have missed out on now, because I, I failed my students in a way and very few of them are actually engaging with the work or even doing it. 

 

When we all returned back to school in the classroom, I started to really think, how can I make my homework effective? And I think it's evolved from there. Then I was lucky enough at my school, my previous school that I was working at, where they gave me the chance to lead on homework throughout the school. 

 

That gave me a bigger insight into it. It wasn't just about my classroom anymore. It was about the children. It was about the students in my school. And it was so fascinating hearing from different subject teams as well. I teach science, as you mentioned, but in art, it's completely different. In English, it's different. 

 

And it was nice, really, eye opening, I think, for me, discussing homework with these different teams and trying to build a culture throughout the school. So, it's evolved over time. And I understand people's concerns with homework as well, which you know, I am, I am happy to elaborate on later, but I, I get that because I've gone through that myself. 

 

And I've got to the stage where I truly believe that if we make it effective and set it right, the benefits are incredible. 

 

[00:06:05] Anna Stokke: And I was mentioning to you before we started recording that, a lot of people actually ask me to talk about homework on the podcast. And I always kind of say, well, you know, I don't really know much about the research on homework. I have opinions, my own opinions on homework, which I am sure will come out in this episode. 

 

But so, I have heard from both parents and teachers about it. And in your book, you actually talk about the research on homework. So, it's my understanding, in fact, that the majority of studies on homework are based on math homework, which is great from my point of view, because I love to talk about math, but can you talk a bit about the research on homework? 

 

[00:06:44] Jo Castelino: Yeah, absolutely. You are right. I read so many papers and studies here in the UK. We have something called the Education Endowment Foundation, and it's really useful for us when we are researching anything, when we want to implement something in schools. So, for example, if you are thinking of metacognition or feedback, Or assessment for learning or anything. 

 

They have done a bit of research for us, looked at the studies and summarized it. And they give us some kind of like, numbers that we can use. For example, they tell you how many months of progress a student might make if this strategy has been implemented. So, they have this for homework as well. 

 

And that tends to be the first port of call for most of us here in the UK who are interested in looking at homework. Now, when you go on there and look at their summary on homework, it's really fascinating because it tells you that at the secondary level, I teach secondary, so they are older students.  

 

They can make, on average, five months of additional progress if they do homework regularly, compared to others. When I first saw that, I thought, whoa, we should all be talking about homework, we should all be setting it. But, as part of the research into my book, and actually even before that, I looked a little bit more into detail into the studies that they used. 

 

And It's, it's so hard, to be honest because the studies on homework aren't inconsistent. They are very different. They vary quite a lot. But if you look at the studies they have included, some of them are master's dissertations. Some of them are based not in the UK at all.  

And then some are based on maths. So, it's really difficult to extrapolate what they are saying there. and think that this applies to my classroom here. So that, figure, as impressive as it is, and the EEF, the Education Endowment Foundation, acknowledge this. They say that the evidence strength is quite weak, and they say that there is hardly any implementation cost, and now that's the fascinating aspect as well. 

 

If the implementation cost is low, there are researchers that argue that even if you're not quite sure about the evidence strength, it's still worth trying because it doesn't cost a lot to implement. And that's where I think lots of schools think about homework. They still set it, and they expect it to be set because it doesn't cost much to implement, even though we're not quite sure about the evidence. 

So, in my book, I, I liked to, I mean, I summarized all of this and a bit more as well, but then I look at what we do know about learning and what we do know works in the classroom and how that might relate to homework.  

 

[00:09:28] Anna Stokke: I always kind of wondered about some of the studies I had seen on homework and actually I haven't looked into it that closely, I will say, but I would often hear things like, Students who had more homework do worse in school. 

 

And to me, I thought, is that right? Because it's probably also the case that students who were doing more poorly in school ended up with more homework. I always kind of wonder how they separate those things out. So, those are some of the confounding factors that you're talking about, right? 

 

[00:09:58] Jo Castelino: Yeah, absolutely. There are quite a few, really, because all these different studies, we don't know what type of homework was set. A lot of it is based on self-report, so students or teachers reporting what they perceive to be true. But whether that's actually true or not, we don't know. 

 

Sometimes they report how much time they've spent on homework, but how much time was actually Spent on completing that homework, we don't actually know that. There's also varying levels of motivation, that's not included. And as teachers, we know how much motivation varies in the classroom. And even with the same student over days or within the same lesson, it's so many things. It's really hard. I, I feel for the researchers, to be honest, I am not going to sit here and say that they should have done better. 

 

No, it's hard. It's hard to research something that has so many factors that can impact and have an impact on homework. But yes, you are right. There is a lot of confounding factors. We have to take that research and think about the general evidence and what it's showing us, but not just say I'm 100 percent certain that that thing is right, because that is not how it works. 

 

[00:11:11] Anna Stokke: But in general, the research kind of tends to support using homework at the secondary level though, is what you're saying, right? 

 

[00:11:18] Jo Castelino: Yeah, definitely. So, there is some evidence to suggest there is like a modest relationship between doing homework and attainment and how well students do at school. And it is more so at the secondary level than at the primary level. Now the primary level, this is not always true, but it is true for some in some studies. 

 

So, some studies have found that even at primary, there might be a benefit, but it does again depend on what that homework is. I will bring in here not research experience, really. So, I am a secondary teacher, but my children go to a primary school, and I have two of them. And so, there is two different types of homework being said. 

 

One is much younger, so she only really gets reading. She needs to practice her reading quite often. I think that's powerful. Yes, it is homework, but we do want them to read. We want them to practice reading as often as possible. And if I don't do it because I'm busy with lots of other stuff, I notice a difference. 

Even though I know it's happening at school, and the teachers are doing amazing, but that needs to also happen at home. And with my son, who's a bit older, he gets a bit of maths, you'll be happy, some spelling, reading, and that's it, really. There's no other stuff, because these are the main skills that they need to be good at. 

 

And without them, they're going to struggle later on in life, in their career, in their education. I think that works. It's only about 10 minutes at most, you know, and it, it makes sense. So, we have to look at the research and not just say, oh yeah, it works at secondary, and it doesn't work at primary, but that's not quite true because it depends on what that homework is. 

 

[00:12:57] Anna Stokke: I gave a presentation to a group of teachers just a couple weeks ago, and they asked me about the research on homework or what I thought about homework. And the first question I asked is, okay, are we talking about high school or primary school? 

 

High school, I have strong opinions about that. students are going to end up in post-secondary if they haven't seen a lot of homework, it's going to be tough, but for primary, I said, you know, I don't really want to comment on that because I have someone coming on my podcast who knows a lot about it, but I think what I hear you saying is, definitely, it's the type of homework that goes home and maybe for primary students, we don't necessarily need to give as much as we would for secondary. That makes a lot of sense. So, on that note, you talked about something in your book called the Cooper 10-minute rule. Can you say a couple of words about that? 

 

[00:13:51] Jo Castelino: Yeah. So, this is Harris Cooper. And if you are reading any research on homework, his work is really useful. He's written so much about it. He's researched so much about homework. So, he has this 10-minute rule where it just means that per grade level. So, let's say a student is in grade nine, they need to do 10 minutes of homework per day per grade level. 

So, if they're in year nine, that would be 90 minutes of homework per day and, and so on and so forth. So, it's a general rule. He is very open about the fact that it's not a hard and fast rule, but it gives a benchmark. It gives an idea of how much homework to set depending on the grade level of the student. 

 

[00:14:31] Anna Stokke: So, it's nice to have sort of a, guideline like that, 10-minutes per year of whatever grade you are in. Now in your book, you also have an entire chapter called, how we learn. And I thought that was great. Like to me, that's a great place to start. And there you talk about things like working memory and long-term memory retrieval practice. 

 

A lot of things I have talked about with guests previously on the podcast. And, you know, I really like that's where you start before making recommendations on how to structure homework because really there are two pieces to kind of consider. The first being how students learn should perhaps guide the way we design homework, right? 

 

And that's going to come up a lot in our conversation today. But then on the other hand, perhaps homework itself. plays an important role in how we learn, so does it, in your opinion, play an important role in how we learn? 

 

[00:15:26] Jo Castelino: Absolutely. So, I have lots of anecdotes here because, when my students do their homework, they come to the lessons feeling far more confident, but then I get lots of data from that homework as well. So, it's, it's twofold. It's not just for them. It's also for me. And then, I can then, decide how I can structure my lesson, or my questioning, or how I explain the next day. And how I link it to what they have learned before as well. And then it also informs future homework. It's, it's amazing. Once you sit down and think about what you are setting, how it actually is a part of what you do in the classroom. It's not something that is separate. And that's another thing. 

 

It's another EEF recommendation, actually. That's when homework is powerful, is when the homework is linked to classroom learning. But it's not just. a tenuous link. It's not like, oh yes, you can research this one person that we learned about in this lesson. That's, that's not how it works. It's an actual link. It, informs, it feeds into what you do in the classroom and then it feeds back into the homework as well.  

 

And it's, it's a cycle really. And it's ongoing. And it helps you learn about your students, and it helps students learn about themselves and how they learn. I think that's just mind blowing. When you think about a student on the other end who's doing their homework, and they get information about how they learn in their own time. It's independent study.  

 

When you do that in the classroom, some people might argue, you know, you could do that in the classroom. Surely, you are giving them a task and a student can decide for themselves, then, and there, how they feel. But you are right there, you are right there to guide them, to support them, and advise them. 

 

This is more powerful when you are not there. That's when the student truly sees, Ah, right, I struggle with this kind of thing, so I need more help on it, and I'm going to have to talk to Miss, Or I find this really easy, and I can do this really quickly, and that's something that you can find out when you do independent study. 

 

I think that's just powerful.  

 

[00:17:37] Anna Stokke: So, two things, well three really, it actually helps with student confidence, because that's the practice piece, as long as they can actually do the homework, that's another thing that'll come up. And then second, it guides you as a teacher. Because you can see what the students can and can't do. 

 

And then the third thing is independent study. It helps students to realize what they can do on their own and what they can't, because sometimes they do get the false impression when they are in class and they are just watching you do things, that they can do it. But watching you do something and getting your help with something is different, than being able to do it on your own. 

 

[00:18:11] Jo Castelino: Yeah, absolutely. Something else I think related to this, if the homework is retrieval practice and we talk a lot about the cues that students use to retrieve a memory perhaps, perhaps, or a bit of knowledge. Now, there has been an argument recently on X actually, not an argument, a discussion about how students might be retrieving information in the classroom, but when they actually have to retrieve it in an exam setting, it's in a completely different place. And does that impact their performance?  

 

And I think, in a way, homework gives them a chance to do this in a different setting. Now, I know, it's obviously a home setting, it's not quite the same thing as doing an exam, but we are not just teaching for an exam. We are trying to teach them to retrieve independent of every, every support that you can possibly give them. 

 

Now, I am not saying you don't give them support with homework. That is, I think, one of the key things. They need to know that the support is there, but they have to use that support independently still. It's not you, there, guiding them and you know, just, just being there all the time. So, yeah, I think, I think that is something we do need to consider when we, when we think about homework. 

 

And I think that's when you design the homework properly as well. Can that homework that you have set achieve these things? That's when it's effective, isn't it? Yeah. 

 

[00:19:34] Anna Stokke: So, the other thing, from my point of view, I see homework as a means of building good study habits and, you know, work ethic and that sort of thing as well. I think that's an important piece. And you mention in the book that homework, you know, there appears to be a cyclical relationship between self-regulatory behaviors and homework practices that leads to higher academic achievement. 

 

Can you say a bit about that? 

 

[00:19:59] Jo Castelino: Yeah, absolutely. So, when a student is sitting down to do any kind of independent work, let's say even if you've not set them any homework, there's an assessment, a test coming up, you expect them to revise. They have to find a quiet space to work in, they have to make sure they manage their distractions, they're not looking at a phone or a television or does anyone listen to the radio anymore? I do, but I don't know if kids do.  

 

Anyway, that as well. They need to make sure that they are focused on the task at hand. And, and stick to something when they're stuck. Now, these are really hard things to do. Really hard things to do for I think many adults, but more so for a student who has so many distractions around them. 

 

And in this day and age, we have a lot of distractions around us. So, it's easy to lose track and lose attention as well. Now, if we set homework, we are giving regular opportunities for students to practice those skills, to practice those, that self-regulation of, I'm going to sit down and I'm going to focus. 

 

And I'm not saying we have to set them hours of work for them to achieve this. It just needs to be regular, and it needs to be short-ish, that is, manageable, I think is the best word there. Manageable and sustainable. And if that is possible, that, that sweet spot. Oh, it's perfect. Then, you know, the student can actually do it. 

 

And I have seen this, you see, I have seen it. I teach lots of students who are not the most motivated. I mean, I teach science for crying out loud. Nobody seems to like it. They come to my lesson and they, oh, I have to do science. And it's, you know, that's the attitude they've got. And it's my job. for them, not just to appreciate science as actually the best subject in the world. 

 

I know maths is there. I know, but science is better. I am sorry. I am so sorry. But, I also want them to be able to, you know, feel like they can do it. That it's not something that is unattainable to them. And I think homework. can help them with that. So, it's not just about self-regulation. It's also a bit of that motivation because I think you can self-regulate when you are motivated, can't you? 

 

And that can be quite hard for a student, for a young person to be able to do. So that's our job. That's what we do as teachers. We support them and building these skills and we give them feedback on it, and we help them grow.  

 

[00:22:28] Anna Stokke: So, resisting the urge to argue with you about science being the best subject in the world, but you are my guest, so I will, I will leave that.  

 

[00:22:36] Jo Castelino: Okay.  

 

[00:22:37] Anna Stokke: But yeah, absolutely. Those self-regulatory behaviors, just knowing. You have got to shut your phone off, avoid the distractions and concentrate. Like if we can build as much of that in students as possible, it's really going to help them succeed. 

 

Let's talk about designing effective homework. That's important. A common theme in your book is that the type of homework, and how much homework is assigned, and how frequently it occurs matters. So, let's go through some of those things. So, the first thing, you mentioned that homework must incorporate retrieval practice. 

 

So, I take that to mean that it should involve practicing or recalling or working on things that the student has already been taught or learned in class. Have I got that right? 

 

[00:23:24] Jo Castelino: Yeah, I would say so. 

 

[00:23:25] Anna Stokke: Okay, so what about things like, pre reading type homework, you know, so you are going to be teaching something the next day and you ask the student to read something in advance to prepare. 

 

[00:23:39] Jo Castelino: Yeah. So, I think it does depend on the students that you are giving this homework to. Now, the majority of students, I would say, are what I would call novices in whatever you are teaching them, because that's why you are teaching them. They don't know it. And I think it does get to a stage where I think maybe towards once they pass high school, secondary, maybe they start to build those schemas, and they start to become more of an expert in one subject. 

 

But I'm talking about secondary, primary, secondary school students. They have not reached that level at all yet. There might be the odd student who, you know, might have read something beyond and actually has that understanding, but that is rare. The majority of our students are novices in something we are teaching them for the first time. 

 

Now eventually, yes, they might change in their expertise level, and they might build on that. But when they are novices, if we give them anything where they are pre reading or they're doing something with new content that you have not taught them, I think there is a real danger that misconceptions or errors start to seep in, and they consolidate in their memory, and then they come to your lesson, and you are trying to build on what they have read, but they've got the wrong idea. 

 

And that, then you're undoing all of that and it unravels I would say. So, it, it does really depend on the students you are setting this homework to. So, I am not saying pre reading or flipped learning, that's the other idea, is completely wrong. It, it's only because who are you setting this homework to? 

 

If you are setting it to someone who is more of an expert because they know this stuff, they know the basics, they know the main foundation of this topic, then I think that's, that's fine, it's powerful, in fact, it's better for them if they are pre reading, and if they are doing that work for themselves. 

 

But the majority of our students are not there. And I would think that, that wouldn't work. This is why I advocate that in my book because it is aimed at schools, really. I think that retrieval practice and spacing that retrieval practice, those are the key things, because that's what, again, that's what we do in the classroom. 

 

So why aren't we doing it for the homework as well? 

 

[00:25:52] Anna Stokke: I think, I hear you talking a bit about what's called the expertise reversal effect, right? Or if you talk to behavioral scientists, they have something similar called the instructional hierarchy. The idea is that for a novice. You really do need to explicitly teach things. You can't really expect them to learn the things on their own. A few will be able to, but most will not.  

 

And so most students actually in K-12 are novices. At the university level, we do often do things like pre readings for Well, higher level classes or when students know a fair bit, but you have to be careful about it. 

 

And on that note, I did want to just sort of follow up on flipping the classroom because that's something we have heard a lot about maybe not as much in recent years. It was maybe a bit more of a fad a few years ago, but the idea is that the student has to learn the lesson at home. So, maybe they're given a video or something like that. 

 

That's a lot of homework actually. And then they come to class, and they work on things in the class. What do you think about that sort of thing? 

 

[00:26:55] Jo Castelino: I actually tried it. So, when it was a fad, it was a fad here as well, I think, because I was, I think, just starting to train or quite early in my career, and I was told to try it. There was a website called Nearpod that I was using for it, and I was setting homework on it where they had to go through a few tasks with a video, a little quiz, and I thought, this is great. 

 

So, then they come to my lesson, and I don't have to teach it from scratch. We can try really application style questions. I mean they were coming to lesson and I still had to do it anyway. So, I, I still had to explain it all. It was, I spent hours making this beautiful Neaport presentation and these kids didn't know a thing. 

 

Now, I am not saying that there will be someone maybe listening and thinking, well I've tried it and it works so, you have done it wrong. It's possible. But I think when it comes to flip learning it's the same idea again. First of all, we're putting the onus on the student for some reason when you are the teacher. Why are we making them teach themselves when you are the expert and you know what to look out for and you know what, how they should phrase something? So, I think that's really unfair on students to put it on them, especially when they are novices. And even when they are experts, I think, like, at the university level, do they pay a fee, perhaps? I think they do, don't they?  

 

[00:28:19] Anna Stokke: Oh, yes.  

 

[00:28:19] Jo Castelino: What are they paying you for? To give them homework? To do it themselves? I'm sorry, but I feel, It's, it's a bit of cheating then, and it's not really going to help anyway. Maybe there is the odd type of topic someone might argue, but I can't see that for science, I will be honest with you. 

 

Because there's so much there that they could get wrong, and you want them to get it right. And the only way you know they are going to get it right is because you are the expert and you can tell them, and you can teach them, and you can guide them. But if you give it to them to do on their own, I genuinely think that's wrong. 

 

[00:28:55] Anna Stokke: Yeah, no, I agree. I, completely think it's unfair. It's unreasonable. You are the expert. You are the teacher. That's your job, right? To teach students. Which doesn't mean we can't give them challenging problems. We certainly can, but we should also give them the knowledge and teach them in order to be able to solve those problems. 

 

So, the next thing you mentioned is that homework should be regular. So how regular? 

 

[00:29:20] Jo Castelino: Yeah, again, that depends quite a bit. So, when I led on homework in my school, my previous school there were some subjects like science, English, maths, you will be pleased to hear, who saw their classes really often. I mean, I think we saw our classes nearly every day. So, for us, regular homework, I would say, is once a week. 

 

Something like that. But there are some subjects and some teachers who don't see their classes that often. In fact, we used to have art teachers who'd only see the class once a week. So, I can't expect them to set homework every lesson that they see. So regular does depend on how often you see your class and how much content that it is that you want them to know and practice. 

 

For big hitting subjects like science and English and maths, when there's a lot that we need to get through as well. I would say regular is about once a week or where they have a reasonable amount of time to be able to do it. So, if it's less than a week, as long as you think that, that is a reasonable amount of time for them to do it, fair enough. 

 

I give, I set homework every week because I think less than that. If someone had sent me anything and gave me less than a week to do it, I would be a bit cross. I wouldn't like my headteacher coming to me and saying, I want you to do this in two days' time. The other aspect of regular is, I would say, setting it on the same day each time. 

 

Because then, we spoke about self-regulation. Part of it is organizing your time. As teachers, I wouldn't want to know something I needed to do randomly or sporadically. So, oh, right, you have to do it in two days or next time it's every three days or next time it's something else. For example, like, let's say I see my class four of the five days of the week and I set homework on a Wednesday. 

 

So, it's every Wednesday and they know what to expect. They can plan their time. I know what I am doing. I can plan my time. I think it helps motivate because it's a routine that we can all get into, and it means we know what to expect. It's not unexpected. It's not something you can't control  

 

[00:31:23] Anna Stokke: I think again, it probably depends on the level the students at, how frequently, right? Actually, I'll say for my university class, when it's a first-year class, I give them problems to do every day. And, but I mean, I'm also not marking them, right? So that, that makes a difference too. And we should talk about that later. Like a lot of our homework is actually online homework, so it's instantaneous feedback, but I do actually expect them to keep up. So, I give homework after each topic's covered. The reason really is that math really builds on itself, right? 

 

So, if they don't practice the first topic, it's going to be hard to do the next topic.  

 

[00:32:02] Jo Castelino: Yes, absolutely.  

 

[00:32:04] Anna Stokke: But yeah, the point is it should be regular. And you also mentioned it should be set at the right amount. So how do you determine what's the right amount? 

 

[00:32:13] Jo Castelino: Yeah. So, I think that 10-minute rule is part of it, but I think what that 10-minute rule is forgetting is or people who use it are forgetting, is that, that is how much homework they should do in sum, altogether, not just for your subject. Now, as a student, who is doing a few subjects, we have our GCSE students doing about eight, nine subjects, we can't expect each subject to be giving them 90 minutes' worth of work per night. It's insane.  

 

They need to do other things. One of the things people have against homework is children need to have their lives. They need to do other extracurricular activities, and I get it and I, I support that. My son does lots of football, but we still make time for his spelling. We still make time for reading, and writing, and maths because that's important. 

 

But, if he had hours and hours of work, we wouldn't not be able to do that. So, I think it's important to consider a whole school approach. Now, this is obviously for schools. At university, it's a bit different because that's, that's the course that they've chosen. So that makes sense. Absolutely. If you set homework every day, it makes complete sense. 

 

At the school level, you have got students doing lots of different subjects and you cannot expect them to spend every day on every single subject. So, it needs to be a bit of a whole school approach. Now some schools, what they do is they decide for the subjects, that on Monday, you are going to get maths. 

 

On Tuesday, you are going to get English. On Wednesday, you are going to get this. I am a bit against that because it forces the subjects to follow somebody else's plan. And I feel that, that will take away some of the teacher's motivation in setting homework and the teacher's control and expertise in setting homework. 

 

And there is a danger by doing that, by deciding it holistically, a whole school approach, is that the teacher will only do it to tick a box and not really have any meaning behind it. And that's something we have to get away from. So, the other side of it is something we tried in my school before, where every student had a little planner. 

 

I don't know, do you have student planners in Canada as well? They are. Amazing, right?  So, they had a little planner where there was a blank timetable. And what we did was we said to every teacher at the start of the academic year, decide when your homework day, for your lesson is going to be. 

 

And the student would write it in. So, it was something that the teachers had control over and didn't feel like that was being taken away. They had autonomy there. But at the same time, there was an expectation that they did set homework on one day, every week. And then by having it in one place, we could see how spread out the homework was, how much it was, and that's, that's one aspect of it. 

 

But the other side of it then is, once you know all that, how do you as a teacher decide how much homework to set? I think knowledge of your students helps here massively. So, I have got a range of classes. I have got some classes that really fly. I mean, they are academically amazing. They get things really quickly. 

 

They want to do more challenging work. Amazing. Brilliant. So, I might set them challenging homework that takes slightly longer. I still don't set more than 20 minutes per week, because I know how many other subjects they have to do and they do lots of other stuff too. So, that's, my benchmark. 

 

But for classes that really, really struggle with memory or with motivation or with organization, I would set at the start, especially when I am trying to build that habit, I would set easier homework, shorter pieces of homework. And then as I get to know them and we get that routine built in place, I start to increase it slowly. 

 

And so, it just comes with, I think, knowledge of your students and having a whole school approach as well. I think there's two sides to that. 

  

[00:36:10] Anna Stokke: I think what I hear you saying is you kind of scaffold the homework even, especially for students who are struggling and you're trying to kind of get them on board, get them into the habit of doing the homework, start with a small amount and make it easy and gradually increase the difficulty and increase the amount you're giving. 

 

[00:36:26] Jo Castelino: And the other thing I do is sometimes I will give them a similar question from the homework in the lesson. So, those who have done that homework, get to your lesson and they think, oh, I know that I just did that, So, I know that. And they feel I, I can do this, I can do science and it's not something that I can't. 

 

And it just builds that confidence and a little bit of fluency in the topic as well. Eventually, I think that's very powerful, but you do need to know your students and it does take time.  

 

[00:36:55] Anna Stokke: Now you mentioned feedback. So, you mentioned that homework must include feedback. So how soon after it's completed, should it include feedback? And my other question is how can teachers provide feedback to every student in the class in a timely fashion? Because it seems like a lot of work. 

 

[00:37:15] Jo Castelino: It is, it is. And I have made that mistake in the past where I have set stacks and stacks of work because I thought this is good stuff and they need to know it. And I have set it and then I have had absolutely no time to mark it or assess it. I have tried the bit where I mark it in the lesson that then takes away your lesson time. 

 

When are you going to learn the other stuff? Teach the other stuff. Or I take it home and then promptly forget about it. And eventually the kids have eaten it. My kids, yes, they eat paper. But these things happen. Okay they don't actually eat paper, but I think there's two parts of the feedback. 

 

I think part of the feedback should be that the homework should be a way for students to be able to recognize what they know, and they don't know. For that to happen, I think a bit of instant feedback is very useful. Now I set online homework as well, just like you. I use something called carousel learning. 

 

I think it's really powerful for schools and it's got not just simple questions, you know, you can really think about the questions you are putting in. You put in that question as well as the teacher. So, I set that, and in that homework, students can revise flashcards at the start, which has the same questions, and then they practice typing their answers. 

 

And then after they do that, it shows them the actual answer and their answer, so they can check if they got it right. And they have to do this themselves. It doesn't mark it for them. They mark it for themselves. And then I check whether they have marked it properly. I think that's really good, but that if not all students can do online homework, of course not, because, you know, there's all sorts of issues with connectivity, access. 

 

So, if that's the case. There are ways to set homework where part of it is so straightforward, retrieval practice that they can check themselves, like you said, and that gives them that practice of checking their notes. Did they get that right? Did they not? What do they know? What, what is missing in what, what are the gaps in their knowledge? 

 

And then there could be an element of giving them something a bit more complicated, but shorter, not the whole homework, and that could be assessed in a lesson. But the other side of giving feedback can be a bit delayed as well. And so, with my carousel learning, what I do is, I will gather information from the homework because I am scanning all of the work, and then I give them whole class feedback. 

 

I don't give individual feedback. I give it as a class. And then we focus on, these were the common mistakes. These were the common strengths. And I think it's really valuable to talk about the strengths and the weaknesses. And this is how, I highly recommend you do it like this person did it here. No names, all anonymous. 

 

But this person did it exactly right. And this person Clearly Googled their answer. So that's, that's the other side of it, giving a bit of delayed feedback, but some of it, an aspect of it, being immediate, is really important too.