1. Homework
A. Attention Span
Thanks largely to television, the average attention span for 10 graders does NOT EXCEED 12 minutes (the time between commercials for most TV programs). Students will often say, “You know, I studied for 3 hours last night and today I don’t remember (or understand) anything.” Why is this so? For the first twenty minutes or so, it is possible for material to enter your memory, but afterwards your mind will typically wander. Your eye will traveling over the words, you will turn the pages, but nothing is registered.
What to do: Determine your own attention span. When you sit down to read a text book, jot down the time that you start reading. When you catch yourself no longer registering what is written (thinking of Friday’s party, eye simply passing over the page, etc.) Stop and note the time. Subtract your stop time from your start time. Do this a number of times and take an average. That is your attention span. If it is less than 40 minutes, you have to improve this.
In the future, when studying you need to take a short 5 minute break when you reach the limit of your attention span. Relax for 5 minutes before you start back reading and studying. This will allow more material to be retained in less time.
How to improve attention span: Practice, practice, practice. Focus your concentration. When you feel your attention slipping, you should relax and take three or four deep breaths. The extra oxygen will help your brain function better. You should keep tract of your attention span as it gets longer and longer. You should not push past your attention span. With practice, your attention span will improve.

B. Student Sets Goals
There has to be a commitment to a specific amount of time set aside for homework. When you makes this commitment, it should become apparent that it will be impossible to watch more than one hour, or perhaps two hours, of television each night. Teachers cannot arbitrarily impose this commitment on you. You must decide what kind of success, (what kind of grade you want).
What to do: The average class work/homework that you typically have and how you wish to perform in school will determine if you need to study 4 hours, 10 hours or 20 hours a week. Even if you are a great student, you need to make this time allocation. Some weeks will be lighter than others, but when you have “free” time, you should read ahead so you will have some breathing space when “crunch time” comes.

C. Little Bit Every Day
Studies from psychology have compared learning under various conditions. Research shows the following: Imagine, one group studied 30 minutes a day, each day for six days; another group studies an hour a day on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and the final group studies one day during the week for three hours. Each of these groups studied the same material for three hours total, but those who studied it 30 minutes every day recall 40% more material than the three-times-a-week students and 70% more material than those who “crammed” during one 3 hour episode. This is particularly important for languages and sciences (which are jargon rich) where lots and lots of small details need to be mastered or memorized.

What to do: You must make a commitment to study AT LEAST four nights a week, but even for those of you who are college bound, you will rarely need to do more than three hours a night. Sure an occasional evening will be devoted to finishing a project, but these nearly “all nighters” should be rare. With good planning, work on any project will be divided into manageable parts so that “all nighters” will be avoided completely.

D. A Regular Homework Habit (Fixed Hour)
From what is written above, we see a fixed number of hours of homework every night is desirable. The student should get into a habit, for example Sunday night through Thursday night, from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. This amounts to 10 hours of studying per week in perhaps the most “painless” way possible. (If you are college bound, do three hours per night.) Once it is an ingrained habit, you will practically feel “strange” when not studying during these hours. If you do not have a regular assignment, then you should read “for fun.”
What to do: You must allocate the hours based on your scheduled activities, and then stick to it. Studying should not be scheduled within one hour of the end of dinner for the same reason it is not good to swim within one hour of a big meal: too much blood is in the stomach and intestines means that not enough blood is in the brain. Low brain oxygen means mental performance drops. This is why we get drowsy after a big meal.

E. Three or Four Days of Flex Time
If a paper or project is due on a given date, say October 10, then you should plan to have everything completely finished by Oct. 6 or 7. This gives some flexible time to each one of you. Often very good ideas come to us in the eleventh hour, and if that is three or four days before the deadline, then we have the chance to still revise the paper, incorporate the new material or ask the teacher to preview it to see if it is on target. It also avoids the nasty stress of the last-minute all-nighter, where blood, sweat and tears are spilt. It is much easier to avoid really dumb mistakes if it is not done in the last minute.
What to do: Plan ahead of time, and write down exams and projects on a master calendar. If you can get this under control, then these will become life habits and none of you will ever file your income taxes late! Wouldn’t it be nice if all of us were so blessed?

F. Questions at the Right Level
Homework is a way for you to practice solving problems similar to those that are done in class. Problems too simple are boring and trivial – you will lose interest. Problems too difficult are frustrating – you will become discouraged and your self-esteem will suffer.
What to do: I will give you problems with a mixture of difficulty. Two or three simple problems will emphasize the general approach. Then two or three more challenging problems will be presented in class. That way even if you are struggling you will be able to do some of the problems. If you are a good student, you will have some problems that are more “interesting.”

G. Examination of Errors
If you do your homework, but you do not check to see what was done correctly and what was incorrect, you will learn less from the homework than if you examine and learn from your errors (what you did not know but can learn). Exam questions often will be patterned from the frequently missed homework problems.
What to do: Identify where you have made your mistake. In some cases, you may wish to rework a problem. I usually will NOT look over old homework, but you should know what are the correct answers. The correct answers will be presented in class or posted in the classroom.