In past years, Park has been attempting to increase student engagement in the classroom. A common solution to keep students on task is to assign “busy work.” This means that an assignment will be given at the start of the hour, and should be completed by the end of the day. Typically, these assignments are formatives and only count for 20% of a student’s grade.
Recently at Park, students have been assigned everyday work in classes. With students being expected to complete and turn in assignments every day, their workload can build up fast. Noticing these changes led to curiosity if the “busy work” in class is truly beneficial for students’ learning.
Firstly, the Echo Editorial Board said the amount of work assigned per class should be dependent on the subject. Certain subjects require greater amounts of “busy work” because they help you have a deeper understanding of concepts. If they steer away from the course curriculum, it is not beneficial for students who have to complete the task, as well as for the teachers who have to grade.
The Echo Editorial Board also believes that although busy work can be beneficial for your grade if you have done all the small assignments, when it is consuming time and taking away from larger assignments, it is not worth it. Busy work tends to be a task the students don’t want to complete. Because of this, students don’t feel engaged and compelled to finish the assignment, which therefore causes it to take more time for an assignment to be turned in.
The Board said that how teachers view students is a distorted image. Teachers are misunderstanding students’ engagement levels. Teachers might believe an assignment is entertaining and helps students learn. However, if teachers want to create a beneficial assignment for their class, they should assign work less frequently, as students will focus more on the assignment.
Furthermore, the Board said it would be beneficial if teachers took into consideration students’ needs outside of the classroom. As well as making sure the assignments given in class will ultimately help deepen the understanding of the unit.
The Echo Editorial Board sees that teachers are assigning “busy work” often. The Board unanimously believes that teachers should be more intentional about the amount of workload they give students, and understand students’ needs for the class.
