The Secret Lives of Students: How Students Are Motivated By No Homework Assignment

Breakthrough Miami

Angelica Carr, 13, says having no homework will give students the time to study.

For today’s installment in our series, The Secret Lives of Students, we hear from one student about the methods she would like teachers to use to help her learn.

Editor’s note: This post was written by middle school student Angelica Carr.

By Angelica Carr

The methods of teaching that I like using are music, no homework, and field trips.

I like these methods all for different reasons but mostly because they appeal to me in certain ways, and most students my age would agree.

Music

I like using music as a method because you can learn almost anything through a song.

You can make a song about math, language, history, and even language arts.

Sometimes it does not even have to be a song; just a simple rhyme could serve the same purpose. Most of the time it’s catchy so it’s easy to remember, and it prevents teachers from having to teach the same subject more than once so they don’t get behind with the lesson plans.

It benefits both sides of the situation and its fun for both the teacher and the student.

No Homework

Another good method that I like is bribing the kids. No, not with money or any other material things, bribing them with no homework.

Just think about it: most kids never want to do homework. Even when their lives depend on it, I guarantee you students would not want to do homework.

So, let’s just say you gave a lesson about a specific subject for 4 days out of the week. On Friday, give a test and whoever gets over an eighty percent as a grade, they have no homework passes for 3 days out of that month, or week.

It’s a way to get students to actually study and grasp what they’re learning so they don’t have to do homework for a night or two that month, or week depending on who the teacher is.

Field trips

One of the best ways to teach a lesson is to go on field trips.

Let’s say you go to a private school and you are learning about Egypt. Wouldn’t you rather go to Egypt and learn about the pyramids than sit inside a class and get lectured all day?

Breakthrough Miami

Angelica Carr, 13, with her Teaching Intern Steve Stellini, a student at the University of Miami.

However, on a more realistic level, if your class is learning about plants or insects, then they should take a trip to Fairchild Botanical Gardens.

It’s about a fifteen dollar trip to go see flowers, beautiful pieces of blown glass, serene areas, and butterflies that you can get so close to that you can practically pick them up and analyze them.

To me, and probably all practical and sensible people in the world would agree with me as well. It seems so much better to go out it the world and explore what you’re learning about than sit in a room all day and hear about it.

Angelica Carr, 13, is a rising 8th grade student at Coral Reef Montessori Academy. During the summer school program with Breakthrough Miami she attends the Miami Country Day school campus.

For the next month we’ll hear from students about life in Florida schools. They’ll open up about tricks they learn to pass the FCAT, using outdated textbooks, school cliques, and other aspects of school life.