“Practice makes perfect. After a long time of practicing, our work will become natural, skillful, swift, and steady.”
-Bruce Lee
When I played soccer as a kid, we had practices three times a week and games on Sunday afternoon. At practices we would warm up, focus on fundamentals, and work on new skills. At games we would apply what we learned to try and crush the competition in front of our parents. We had a blast.
The formula works at the professional athlete level too: multiple practices throughout the week, then game day. At practice the team focuses on the basics. They make mistakes and fix them. There’s nothing to lose, and everything to gain. There’s a goal and reason for their efforts.
But could you imagine if every day were game day? Could you imagine if there were no practices, no room for error, and everything to lose? Unfortunately, we can create this exact situation for our own students with the work we assign. Every assignment, every question, every test puts pressure on students to get it all correct every time, with the threat of “bad grades” or “lost points” if they can’t perform up to our expectations.
On the one hand we like the idea of students feeling like they need to do their best every time; but on the other hand, we don’t necessarily want to penalize students for not having mastered a particular skill or set of knowledge right away.
When it comes to homework, class work, and general assignments, educators have shifted their understanding of the role these play within student learning. What if we considered more tasks as “practice,” much like an athlete will practice before a game? What counts in the record books is the score of the game, but it’s the practice – the learning, the experimenting, the repetition, the mistakes – that get the athlete ready for their performance. Can we do the same for our students?
When teachers begin to view students’ formative work as a chance to practice rather than as a strictly graded duty, something strange happens: students realize the work they do in class and as homework is truly a chance to learn without the fear of being penalized with a low grade.
So when homework and class work become recognized as practice, students can embrace the learning process rather than dread a poor outcome on the mistakes they make. Here are some of the changes a “school work as practice” mindset helps to introduce:
- The purpose of the work is clear. Each assignment is designed to work on particular skills or information, just like an athletic practice.
- Students feel free to make mistakes. While students should pursue perfection, they should not fear failure. Rather, this gives them the opportunity to learn from their mistakes in preparation for the “game day” summative work they have coming up.
- The need to improve is more obvious. Work that’s considered practice makes it more apparent where more practice may be needed for some students. Also, students can witness their own improvement as they repeat similar tasks with better and better results.
- Assessments count for more. Just like a big game, an assessment will illuminate to what extent particular skills or knowledge has been mastered. It also reveals areas that are still weak and can be enhanced before the next “big game.”
Should All Student Work Be Graded?
Teachers may wonder: “If work as practice is work without grades, what in the world will motivate students to do it at all?” Grades certainly play a big role toward incentivizing students to perform well. But not every piece of work a student does needs a score on it to have value. Instead, teachers can focus on how to motivate students to self-reflect, how to offer consistent feedback, and how to show students how they’re performing towards the standard. These can be accomplished with or without grades being a specific part of the picture.
If students are motivated by their own learning and growth, and if work-as-practice emphasizes the learning process, then with the right approach feedback and reflection-driven learning opportunities can radically improve student growth can truly help them get ready for the “big game” summative assessments.
Help Students See the Purpose of the Work They Do
There is much that could be said regarding how to effectively incorporate formative practice in your classroom. Here are a few final tips to help at least get you started:
- Get students on board by showing them the advantages of formative practice. Get them off the every-needs-to-be-graded perception of their work.
- Get parents on board too by showing them how practice leads to growth.
- Require that all students do all the work, and require that they give their best effort on each assignment. Not to go too far with the sports analogy, but coaches may “bench” their players who haven’t put in the time and energy at practice. We obviously don’t want to bench our students, but there is a correlation between their preparation and their ability to achieve when it matters.
- Give meaningful feedback on all tasks, designed to show students how to improve and areas to focus on for their next task.
- Have students reflect on their performance, your feedback, and any other performance indicators (i.e. rubrics) that can help them improve.
- Assess exactly what students have been practicing.
- Set a high, clear standard that all students can understand and work towards.
When we understand and embrace formative and summative practices that truly complement one another, and when we emphasize the classroom as an open space where true practice can take place, we have the possibility of transforming students’ experience. They go from all of their tasks being graded and judged to participating in a process that helps them genuinely reflect and improve.
Have you tried implementing homework as practice? If you have, share how you made it work! If not, what do you think about utilizing this perspective in your classroom?