The Misconception
There will be times when your student comes home from school and tells you that they do not have any homework that day. This is a misconception on their part that arises from thinking of homework as something assigned by a teacher that must be written or read. In actuality, any day that your student is in school there will be homework.
Here at Holy Cross High School we normally require our students to spend at least two (2) hours each day on homework. Allow me to offer you an explanation for why we recommend this time and why we say that every day in school will result in homework for the student.
Short Term vs. Long Term Memory
Simply put, we all have two kinds of memory in our brain. We have a Short Term memory and a Long Term memory. Short Term memory is called such because we only retain anything in Short Term memory for a brief duration. In order to move information into Long Term memory we must do something with it. Repetition is important if we are to move information into Long Term memory. Let me give you an example. Say we are in school together and we become friends and I give you my telephone number to call me in the evening so we can talk about class that day or maybe our homework. When you decide to call me later in the evening, you will have to look at my telephone number that I wrote down for you. If my phone is busy and you decide to call later, you are going to have to look at my number on the piece of paper again before you dial me. That is because the information (my telephone number) was in Short Term memory and our brain does not like to clutter up memory with information that isn’t important. If you then call me every evening, after a few days you will not need to have that piece of paper with my telephone number on it since you will have moved my number to Long Term memory and can recall it from there. The same holds true for information learned in class. Even if the student understands everything that the teacher said that day in class, that information is placed in Short Term memory and if it isn’t repeated or looked at again, it will be erased from Short Term memory. Then when it’s time for a test, the student is going to have to relearn all the information that was presented in class. Trying to learn an entire week’s worth of information in one night will be nearly impossible, and the student’s grade will reflect this. By reviewing what was covered in class each day, the student helps move the information into Long Term memory so that rather than having to relearn all the material the student will simply have to review the material and the grades should be higher. Thus, any day that a student is in class means that the student has homework.
Improvements in Test Scores
Learning to study and review each day and moving what the student learns into Long Term memory also helps to increase scores on standardized tests like the Terra Nova, PSAT, and SAT tests. These tests examine Long Term memory and, as mentioned above, reviewing and repeating what was learned in class places what was learned into Long Term memory. Many times we in the Guidance Department hear about how a student with a very high GPA usually scores low on standardized tests. This is not because the student can’t take tests. He or she took tests to establish a high GPA. The problem is that the student is operating on Short Term memory throughout high school and cramming before tests and doing well on them, but not studying effectively to place the learned material into Long Term memory, which the standardized tests examine.
Here is an example of a good homework/study program:
Monday – Review the notes given in class that day.
Tuesday – Review the notes from Monday and the notes taken on Tuesday
Wednesday – Review the notes from Monday, Tuesday and those taken on Wednesday
Thursday – If I can repeat the notes from Monday just by looking at the key words, I have moved that information into Long Term memory and no longer have to review them for homework. I would then review the notes from Tuesday, Wednesday and those taken on Thursday.
This procedure is repeated each day for every class. As the information is placed into Long Term memory, preparing for a subject test becomes a review; not a cramming session trying to relearn all the subject material.
So, the next time you hear “I don’t have any homework tonight,” or “I did my homework in study,” you’ll know it was not true since a review of the material in each class that day is part of homework and a forty-five minute study is not enough time to complete all the homework each day.
written by John Lukasik,
Guidance Counselor, Holy Cross HS
posted 12/17/09
