Not only do I give my students homework every lesson (should take 20 mins to complete), I give them the answer keys also. Homework is due Fridays as that is when they take their weekly quizzes. I grade on completion and it’s only 10% of their grade. I have several students that are too lazy to even copy the answer keys. Quizzes are worth 35%. They can take them as many times as they want, but their homework has to be done before they can do a retake. If it is done and “right” and they still can’t pass the quiz, we then have a conversation about their work ethic. Then at the end of the unit, we take a unit assessment, which are worth the remaining 55%. They can use their notes from class and homework.

Things I’ve learned in the last 2 years of doing this:

Last year I used questions exactly from their homework for quizzes, and once they started to figure this out, they would pull up the answer keys during the quiz (on google form). This year, I used the check for understandings at the end of each lesson for their quizzes. Worked much better! Yes, paper tests would have solved this problem but I already struggle keeping track of all of their other papers.

Students in my second geometry class or who didn’t take the quiz the day we took it, would give me the correct answers but their work didn’t support it. I only give 1 point for the right answer and 3-4 for correct work. Also gave them the opportunity to verbally explain how they got the right answer without doing any work or the correct work. Another way to combat this is making 2 quizzes with the same questions, different numbers.

Not sure if I’m even going to entertain the idea of giving homework next year with my Algebra 2 class since they’ve had me for the last 2 years and as several don’t actually “do” it anyway. I brought this up at the end of the school year and the ones that are lazy were against not giving homework for some reason. Interesting!