Strategy Reflection #4 Homework & Practice

What?

Since I teach resource history I don't expect my students to take home much homework. I don't give them big projects due to the lack of parental support at home to help them with the project. The only homework my students have is when they are behind or if they didn't finish their work for the day and request to take it home. I decided to try to implement homework in my senior economics class since they are my older group of students. In economics we are studying pure monopoly and competition. On the section about competition I asked my students to think of ways companies compete for business. They mentioned that businesses compete in prices for the same products.

So What?

I decided to assign my students a homework assignment. In this assignment they were to go home and get two sales ads. I gave them a worksheet with three columns. The columns stated: Product, Store #1, and Store #2. I instructed them to go home and find two stores and products that both stores were selling. They had to write down the product and then each store's price for the product. Once they finished writing down the prices they were then supposed to decide which store had the better price and which one they would buy that product from because of the better deal. My students brought back their completed assignments comparing products from Best Buy and Conn's, Tom Thumb and Albertons, and Wal-Mart and Target. We discussed their findings with the rest of the class.

Now What?

My students expressed how much they enjoyed the assignment and didn't realize that so many stores had the same products on sale the same week. I realized that my students grasped the concept of competition and understood the difference between a good sale. I will try to find more ways to get my students to do homework that is meaningful and relevant to what I am teaching. I am not going to just assign my students homework as a punishment, but as an extended lesson. I just have to make sure that the homework will be easy enough that my students can do it on their own since their parents aren't very supportive in their successes.