20th April 2012 12:20
By Blue Tutors
The power of interesting homework.
I was tutoring last week and focussing on the techniques of persuasive writing. My student said they had just been doing some persuasive writing in school too. ‘What was it on?” I asked. ‘Whether we should be allowed to vote at 16”, he replied.
Now, some 14 year-olds may well get excited about this but I suspect the majority thought it a pretty boring topic. Although in thinking through the homework task I had set for my student, I had come up with various standard ideas, I had dismissed them all as being particularly uninteresting. Instead I came up with the idea of asking him to write an email to me ( requiring an informal but still respectful register - one difficult to master at a young age) in order to try and persuade me not to give him any homework over the Easter holidays.
I have never seen a students eyes light up so much. “Really?”, he asked, “ so if I do this well, I won’t get any homework to do over the holidays?” For once his homework had real consequences, not in terms of a bad mark, or a telling off, but the actual possibility of three weeks without having to do homework for me. Clearly he had other work from school.
You may think, it was irresponsible of me to allow the possibility of this, but I don’t think so. He has no exams this year and he has made huge strides in terms of his performance over the last few months, so much so his teacher felt moved to email his parents. He deserves a break. He needs to see the rewards hard work can lead to and when I wished him a happy holiday last night after marking his excellent piece of homework, he had witnessed and experienced the true power of persuasive writing.