Instructional Strategies

This week I read about behavior learning theories and instructional strategies in the classroom.  One example that stood out to me was homework.  I always have found that homework is a difficult area to assign and to grade.  When assigning homework, you have to keep in mind that your students have been in school for 8 hours, 5 days per week.  Some students have support at home and others have none.  There are some parents or siblings that complete all the work for you students.  Depending on what grade level you teach, you have to consider that there is more than one subject being taught.  Many students have extracurricular activities going on outside the school day.  Keeping all this in mind, is homework really teaching our students anything?  Are students getting anything out of these assignments?  Is homework a reinforcement of what they are doing in class or is something that they are having to teach themselves?  Most of the answers to these questions would be appropriate or not depending on what grade level you are teaching.  When connecting this all to behavior learning theories, I fell that homework is necessary.  It might not be teaching our students new content or eliminating their social life, but most importantly it is teaching them responsibility.  I believe in minimal homework that reinforces what they have learned in class.  My first graders are responsible for daily homework.  It is short and simple.  I only spot-check their homework and do not make corrections if there are only a few errors.  I grade them on being responsible students and completing an assigned task.  I am trying to teach them responsibility that we all have to learn if we want to hold a job, complete a task, or have a successful future.