Homework: Where Should the Limit Be?

• ○A. It defines several types of homework before comparing their difficulty.
• ○B. It presents an everyday situation that leads to a question about policy.
• ○C. It gives research findings that establish the effects of evening assignments.
• ○D. It outlines a classroom procedure that the remaining paragraphs explain.

Imagine finishing a math assignment, opening a reading response, and then remembering a vocabulary sheet.Each teacher may have assigned a reasonable task, yet the combined workload can fill an evening.For a student who also has family responsibilities or an afternoon activity, that pile presents a difficult choice.Should schools judge homework only assignment by assignment, or should they consider the whole evening?

• ○A. To establish that reading assignments deserve more time than math assignments.
• ○B. To describe the steps teachers follow when grading independent assignments.
• ○C. To suggest that students should decide which assignments teachers collect.
• ○D. To acknowledge homework's value before arguing for changes to its use.

• ○A. “Removing all homework would remove opportunities like these, so the debate should distinguish useful practice from work assigned simply to fill time.”
• ○B. “For a student who also has family responsibilities or an afternoon activity, that pile presents a difficult choice.”
• ○C. “Counting completed pages would make the second assignment look stronger, even if the first reveals more understanding.”
• ○D. “Teachers could use a shared assignment calendar to notice when several major tasks fall on the same evening.”

• ○A. It replaces the earlier discussion of learning with a history of homework.
• ○B. It explains why the earlier examples apply mainly to younger students.
• ○C. It shifts from homework's possible benefits to the limits of extra practice.
• ○D. It summarizes the earlier examples before adding another similar benefit.

• ○A. It provides a sequence teachers can follow when creating a worksheet.
• ○B. It illustrates why the amount of work may not show its learning value.
• ○C. It explains why written explanations are easier than repeated problems.
• ○D. It establishes that longer assignments require more difficult thinking.

• ○A. It states a concern about a limit and then offers a way to address it.
• ○B. It compares two school policies and then selects the more popular one.
• ○C. It lists causes of unfinished work and then ranks them by importance.
• ○D. It describes an unsuccessful plan and then explains why it was ended.

A homework limit raises a fair concern: students work at different speeds.One student may finish a task quickly while another needs longer to think through it.A flexible stopping point, paired with a note explaining where the student struggled, could preserve practice without demanding an unlimited evening.The teacher could then use that note to decide what support to provide the next day.

• ○A. It reports results showing that the proposal has succeeded in schools.
• ○B. It shifts responsibility for the proposal from teachers to families.
• ○C. It argues that assignment calendars should replace flexible stopping points.
• ○D. It describes routines needed to put the proposal into daily practice.

• ○A. It introduces a separate debate about how students should receive grades.
• ○B. It asks families to calculate the number of pages students finish each night.
• ○C. It gives readers a standard for judging homework by learning rather than quantity.
• ○D. It settles the concern about different work speeds by recommending equal assignments.

• ○A. A workload question → benefits and drawbacks → a concern and response → practical steps and a proposed test
• ○B. A workload question → a history of assignments → results from school experiments → a prediction about future classes
• ○C. A classroom problem → competing student interviews → a comparison of school rules → a vote on the best policy
• ○D. A classroom problem → instructions for doing homework → examples of completed work → advice about improving grades

• ○A. After the sentence about vocabulary homework in paragraph 1.
• ○B. After the sentence about independent planning in paragraph 2.
• ○C. After the sentence about different work speeds in paragraph 4.
• ○D. After the sentence about a shared assignment calendar in paragraph 5.