Weekly Homework Sheets {Why I Do What I Do Linky}

Welcome to "Why I Do What I Do" on my ol' blog!  Today I'm sharing about why I (we) use weekly homework sheets in my (our) 3rd grade class(rooms)!

The we/our/classrooms is in reference to the entire 3rd grade at my school.  Because we are departmentalized, it's important that everyone have access to the homework sheet that we send home so that all teachers can add necessary class info.

So... we have an easy solution... our weekly homework sheet is a Google Doc that we can all access, change, and print out for our individual classes!

It looks like this...

We print these off each Monday morning and kids take them home in their FALCON folder.  How we handle them in our own classrooms is our own choice.

I go around each morning to check for parent initials.  If a student doesn't have initials, I circle the box and students move their clips down.  Yes, yes, I know... this might sound harsh and could be a parent issue and not a student issue, which I have addressed with individual students (one student was allowed to initial his own sheet last year after completing homework).  But I also think students need to have some responsibility in showing their homework to their families and asking for their sheet to be signed.  Parents are such important partners in school success and this is one easy way for students to be accountable for involving their parents in classroom happenings.  After I implemented the "clip down" policy, it was extremely rare for a student to come in with their sheet un-signed.  If there are no initials two days in a row, the student writes a note home asking his/her parent to please sign their HW sheet.  I carry a clip board with these editable check-lists to check off who has brought their folder/HW sheet back and who has not.

On Fridays, I check the spelling homework that has been completed on the back while my students take their spelling test on Spelling City.

And, on Monday, they turn in the HW sheet from the previous week while taking one for the new week.

So... why do you do homework communication the way that you do?  And how do you do it?

Link up below to share why you do what you do when it comes to homework communication!

An InLinkz Link-up