5 Reasons Our 6th Graders Need More At-Home Projects

Most of the time, teachers at our school seem to be assigning our 6th graders a lot of projects, but almost none of them are at-home ones. This is certainly easier for the students, but it is not for the best. Here are five reasons why:

1.  At-home projects teach responsibility. When kids have a project to work on at home, most of the time, it provides an opportunity to practice self-initiating doing a necessary task. Also, unlike nightly homework, which is a task that is short and easy to remember, long-term projects require the ability to work on something that is not always do the next day. In other words, they help prevent procrastinating. 

2. They allow parents to see what their kids are working on in school. Some parents do struggle to find out what their children do in school every day, and want to know. With at-home projects, they could get to see what topics are being covered, and how their kids are approaching them.

3. It prepares 6th graders for the upper grades. As our students get older, the work will be harder, and projects like that will be more common. Giving them that sort of work could allow them to be ready for 7th grade and beyond, which has multiple benefits. Not only would being prepared improve grades, but since students would need less effort, they would hopefully have lower anxiety.

4. At-home projects allow more freedom, which could make students more dedicated. When students work at home, they normally have access to more materials than they do at school. If this is the case, there would be more options for fun, enjoyable projects. The more fun students are having, the more dedicated they are, and this will result in an improvement in grades.

5. They free up time to learn in school. If kids work on their projects at-home, than teachers do not have to give time in class to do them. More time could be spent on learning new material, making everyone even smarter. Who doesn't was that?

Overall, it would be amazing if these assignments started to be given more often. The McCall is already an amazing school. However, at-home projects could definitely improve the educations of our 6th graders!