The effects of intervention strategies on student awareness of science homework completion

Abstract

The purpose of this action research project was to develop student awareness about late and missing assignments. The reason for developing student awareness was to help increase homework completion rates. Teacher interviews and surveys were used to determine what types of intervention strategies have been successful in the classroom to increase student awareness of homework completion. Two recurrent intervention strategies were selected from these interviews and surveys to create student awareness of how not completing assignments can affect the overall grade. The first strategy required students to fill out a grade sheet of the assignments, due dates, points each assignment is worth, and an area to record any missing assignments as a reminder for students to improve the total amount of homework completed. The second intervention strategy was to send an electronic progress report to parents that gave a grade-by-grade weekly progress report of how well the student was doing in class for the chapter that was covered. Both intervention strategies helped develop awareness of homework completion with the weekly progress report having slightly more influence in developing student awareness and completing more homework assignments by the due date. There was an improvement in the overall average grade in all classes; however, this improvement was not a result of turning more homework on time, but rather more late homework was turned in for a grade.