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The purpose of homework: Teachers don’t give you homework assignments to make your life miserable. Homework assignments are given to help you learn the material in the class and develop good reasoning and problems solving skills. Math is not a subject that most people instantly understand after hearing the teacher’s lesson. Most people need to work on some problems in order to really start to understand the topic, which is the point of the homework! It gives you a set of problems that will help you to understand the topics. Remember that it almost always seems easier to watch an instructor doing problems on the board than it actually is. You won’t know if you truly understand the material and can do the problem if you don’t attempt the homework.
Do the Assignment Promptly
You should always do the assignment as soon after the lecture as possible while the lesson is still fresh in your mind. Do not wait until the last minute to do the whole assignment when comments made by the teacher are no longer fresh in your mind.
Be Organized
When you start working on your homework make sure that you’ve got all the materials that you’ll need to do the homework. Do you have your notes, pencil, calculator, graphing paper, and textbook?
Review
Go back over the lesson for each section and review any examples that the teacher did on the board to make sure that you understand the ideas from that section. Make note of any common errors that your instructor may have mentioned.
Read and Follow the Directions
Make sure that you read and follow all the directions for both the homework set and each individual problem.
Be Neat
Make sure that you write neatly. This will help the teacher as he/she is grading the assignment and you when you are going over the assignment in preparation for an exam.
Check Your Work!
Always go back over your work and make sure that you’ve not made any simple arithmetic/sign errors. If possible, plug your answer back in to the equation to make sure it works.
Use Class Time Wisely.
When you are given a chance to work on your math in class, use it! The time you have in class to work is valuable because you have access to more resources: your classmates (who just heard the same lesson you did), your teacher (who is able to help clarify and re-teach), and time that will free you up later in the day. Get as much done in class as you can!
Show All of Your Work
Do not just give the answer. Showing your work means writing down enough of the steps to let someone familiar with the course reproduce what you did. If a classmate or your teacher can tell how you reached your answer, without having to guess, you have showed your work. There are many good reasons for showing your work:
Showing your work in an organized way helps you organize your thoughts, which in turn makes you less likely to make a mistake.
When doing your homework, you usually have the answers available. If your answer doesn’t match the book’s answer, showing your work helps you figure out where you went wrong. It can also help your teacher or tutor figure out what you did wrong if you go for help.
On tests, if you get a wrong answer your teacher can use your work to figure out what you didn’t understand, and point it out so you can avoid that mistake in the future.
On tests, if you get the wrong answer but your work shows you understood the core of the problem, most teachers will give you partial credit.
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