The Middle School believes that adolescents need to develop and maintain a healthy balance in their personal lives with their academic pursuits and extracurricular and leisure activities, and also spend quality time with their families; therefore, the grade-level teaching teams work together to make sure that homework is purposeful and gives students an opportunity to develop content knowledge, skills, study habits, and time management. Parents can help their child by supporting productive habits and engaging in dialogue about their progress and learning. We suggest that students utilize the following strategies to support their learning:
- Check in with your parents approximately once per week to walk them through your assignments, grades, and learning.
- Utilize the Rowland Hall planner (or an equivalent of your choice) to record upcoming assignments and relevant details.
- Create a nightly to-do list comprised of notes from your planner and assignment details from Canvas (and cross items off the list as you progress!).
- Consider what is due the following day as well as upcoming assignments.
- Complete homework in a distraction-free public space within the home (i.e. kitchen table).
- “Chunk” homework with short breaks (i.e. 30 minutes of quality work time followed by a 10-minute break).
- Break long-term assignments and projects into a series of step-by-step tasks with self-designated “due dates.”
Generally, sixth-grade students will have one hour or less of nightly homework, and seventh- and eighth-grade students can expect 90 minutes or less of nightly homework. Occasionally there may be exceptions to these time limits, but if students follow the long-term assignment guidelines that teachers recommend, they should be able to maintain a manageable homework schedule. Students may be given a day’s homework over weekends, including long weekends, and students might use weekends to complete projects and long-term assignments. No homework is given over our five breaks: Fall, Thanksgiving, December, February, and April.
Policies for accepting late work vary by teacher; however, students whose absences are excused will be given extra time to make up work. Please read Religious and School Holidays Policies for details.