Homework. Yuck? Or the determinant of success?

Lets start by not talking about homework. What sets achievers apart?

- their willingness to put in extra effort, when everyone else relaxes, down tools, get distracted, the achiever will relentlessly pursue their goals.
- sheer grit to achieve a result
- the edge you have over other people will be the amount of effort you put into something. If you read more, practice more, reflect more, seek more advice, open yourself to more feedback, open yourself to criticism, learn, adapt, dodge, sprint, selflessly help others - you will slowly tip odds in your favor of achieving your goals.

I'm pretty sure people will argue some of the above points, but if you read enough biographies you will find that successful people do tend to display those qualities.

So how does homework help with this?

- Essential skill to build resilience, determination
- Essential in the formation of a habit that breeds success
- Success is mostly sheer determination, doggedness, willpower, grit.

Homework helps students by complementing and reinforcing classroom learning,
fostering good lifelong learning and study habits, and providing an opportunity for
students to be responsible for their own learning.

Students benefit from completing homework regularly. Homework helps them develop
organizational and time-management skills, self discipline, skills in using out-of-school
resources, and personal responsibility for learning

Note that learning should never stop, and definitely should be on-going all the way through adulthood. The ability to learn new skills, improve current skills, even taking the time to understand a subject in greater depth are core development priorities that adults should practice.

By starting kids with homework and making it a simple habit it will set them on this path.

What types of homework are there?

3 types of homework

1. Cementing the learning that is underway. Reviewing, working problems to identify knowledge gaps. This is the the actual hammering home of the information into the long term memory of the Brain. It is where all the associations and connections happen between the facts, formulas, theories, and are molded into the working knowledge on a subject. This would cover doing maths problems, reviewing and summarizing book chapters etc.
2. Assignments/Practicals/Research/General work that need to be done out of class. This is the expansion of ideas, personal exploration of a subject. There is never enough time in the classroom to fully cover and understand every topic so there will of course need to be some personal time devoted to ensuring all the material is covered. This can include going outside the recommended list of reference materials and studying it from another angle. An example of this would be to do a mini course on the subject or topic using Khan academy.
3. Forward looking - review material that is about to be taught. This is what winners do. They look forward, they prime their brain to what it is about to encounter. Imagine that if for every class you ever took you had already reviewed the material the day before. Your brain would have encountered the terminology, the concepts, the theories. It has had a chance to ask questions, induce curiosity, even start making some early connections with earlier material. When you then subsequently go to the class, you already have a familiarity with what is being discussed, so you can really focus on how it is being applied. It is not entirely new, you already know what sort of questions you want or need to ask to cement the knowledge. Powerful stuff. 

How to do homework?
There is literally a metric bucket-load of resources on the net on effective study techniques. Choose some, review them and put together what works for you and your child.

SO what hacks can we start applying?

- Do YOUR homework at the same time as your child. Show a commitment to learning. 
- Take a course on how to learn. COURSERA have an awesome free online course.
- Encourage your child to ask the teachers what will be covered next. Read ahead in textbooks, pre-read materials being studied. Pre-read material from multiple sources.