Cancel homework during benchmark week

As the end of the marking period approaches, students everywhere must worry about the ever present threat, benchmarks. They are meant to boost grades, but can hurt them tremendously if not reviewed enough. Many teachers stress the importance of benchmarks, but still litter students backpacks with tedious homework assignments. Though some students can balance out the homework and preparing for the benchmarks, many can’t.

Teachers do care about students grades and hope for them to succeed in school and life, so why assign so much homework? Study guides are helpful when assigned, but little worksheets covering irrelevant topics are not needed when trying to organize for benchmarks. Though some students may skip doing homework, that could bring down their grades, and if they do bad on the benchmark, they really get brought down.

The main question here is what is the point of new lessons and homework if you’re trying to finish up that marking period? If the teachers are throwing out new lessons, what is the point? The main focus of benchmarks is to review everything learned that marking period, so it is irrelevant to teach brand new topics that won’t be required until the next marking period. Like stated before, study guides are very useful to hand out during benchmarks, and extra credit is too, but little worksheets on information not even located on the test is not needed.

Another thing is no teachers should give out homework during these large tests. Benchmarks are all crammed into one stress-filled week, and though one teacher’s benchmark may be over, they should not assign loads of homework to any class. There usually is still about a week and a half left after benchmarks, so just assign the homework then. If the assignments can’t be fit in, just wait until the next marking period. Being one lesson behind for the marking period isn’t going to hurt anybody.

picture of students taking a test

courtesy of http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_Navy_101110-N-0437M-397_Mooseheart_High_School_science_teacher_Curt_Schlinkman_hands_out_homework_to_his_students_who_are_also_Navy_Junior_ROTC_.jpg

So along with benchmarks comes lots of homework. No junior high student, or any high school student, should have to endure such large amounts of stress over such little things. Benchmarks and homework are important, but spacing them out to make sure the students fully grasp the concept is important too. Giving homework during benchmarks is just digging deeper into a ditch.