HOMEwork or homeWORK?

The most effective procedures and purposes of homework (especially for math) has yet been agreed upon by educators.  The discussion of how much, when, and where homework should be completed is ongoing in the educational field.  In our ED 206 math course, we read an article about the case for and against homework.  It brought up many interesting aspects of homework that I think many teachers neglect to think about.   For example, we must consider the purpose of homework.  Let's think about math in particular (mostly because that is what I teach and that is what the article was about).  Should we assign math homework that allows students to practice the same types of problems that we taught in class, or should the homework extend to other concepts and aspects of the students lives?  Should homework be merely practice or should it focus on the application of new knowledge?  I know as a first year teacher, all of my homework assignments focused on practice and only covered that day's lesson, except for a review assignment before each unit test.

In addition, how should we go over homework, if at all?  Do we spend time going over every problem that the students have questions about at the beginning of class?  That becomes a problem when we spend time going over homework problems during the students' brains' peak learning periods in the first 15 minutes of class, and then the students don't maintain full attention during the subsequent lesson.  Is this the reason why students' are not understanding the lessons in the first place?  Are we not teaching new information at peak brain periods?  Anyways, that is probably a discussion for another blog post.

I have talked to many math teachers in particular who have not settled into a comfortable homework routine.  I tried to give my Algebra AB students at least 15 minutes to start their homework on a dailiy basis because I thought that this time allowed them to ask me or their peers for help.  Other teachers argue that it is called HOMEwork for a reason, and thus should be completed at home.  In this case, were the assignments I gave my students more of homeWORK, or practice assignments that should have been considered classwork?  While I do not have answers to all of these questions I have proposed, I think this is an important aspect of teaching that all teachers must consciously think about and plan for.  Homework should not be random assignments given to students.  Rather, we need to be sure that we are assigning purposeful and meaningful assignments for our students that are within their ability level (not too easy or too difficult) and do not take too long to complete.  It is great to involve parents in the assignments, but we should not expect parents to teach the students the concepts that we teach in our class.  With this said, does anybody have ideas about math homework?  What kind?  How often?  How to check?  How much should it be worth?.... because research has yet to agree upon answers to these questions.