Sand he talks about it cyclically, before the summer holidays and even more so on the eve of the Christmas holidays, which are shorter and more concentrated with family events. Is holiday homework really necessary?
Are Christmas holiday homework really useful?
There are several pedagogists and teachers who have spoken out against holiday homework. Starting with Maurizio Parodi, school director and researcher, who has written books on the topic (No more homework! That’s not how you learn, 2012 and This is how you learn! For a school without homework2018) and founded a group that specifically calls for its abolition.
But the pedagogist Daniele Novara also spoke out against home exercises Dario Ianes, professor of Pedagogy and Special Education at the University of Bolzano and co-founder of the Erickson Study Center in Trento.
Useless in primary school, useful in high school as long as not too many
The topic does not spark debate only in Italy. Harris Cooper, professor of psychology at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, has demonstrated, by comparing a series of studies, that homework may have age-related benefits. Of course they do not show any positive correlation in pupils under the age of 10 but, even with the transition to middle school, the advantages are few.
In high school the advantages come with an extremely small amount of work, beyond which the curve linked to the advantage drops. The negative aspects? They break mental rest, increase stress, negatively impact motivation, create inequalities between those who manage to do them because they are helped and those who are not.
Considering that Italian teenage students are the European homework champions, with an average of 2.3 hours per day dedicated to individual study (according to the 58th Censis Report) we could at least reduce them a little.
Alternative tasks: Training for minds on holiday
Or it could be useful change perspective and conceive holiday tasks in an alternative way. Abandoning repetitive cards and exercises in favor of authentic learning experiences. You can then be inspired by Training for minds on holiday, a project by the social startup Discentis. This is a special booklet that can be requested free of charge: it does not offer exercises or tests, but a series of tasks that don’t feel like tasks, light but intelligent activities that transform daily life into discovery.
The activities are designed for train skills starting from experience, transforming common actions into opportunities for observation, deduction and creation. «We don’t want to fill your holidays, but to train your thoughts in a fun and authentic way», explains Viviana Pinto, founder of the startup, «each proposal is a small learning experiment that arises from daily experience».
From Science in the kitchen to the holiday playlist
For example, you can do science in the kitchen, transforming a family recipe into a “scientific protocol”. That is, treating it like a laboratory experiment, precisely specifying quantities (with correct units of measurement), tools, times and steps. This activity trains observation, measurement and the scientific method. The expected result is a personal scientific recipe book.
Or you can invite the kids to create a holiday playlist, to talk about moods or significant experiences, to then share with their parent or relative, transforming the activity into an intergenerational dialogue.
The geography of labels and the reportage of the holidays
Another idea? The geography of labels: students become “geographical detectives” investigating the origin of approximately fifteen everyday products (such as clothes, telephones or water). The objective is to trace on a map the invisible paths that connect the objects to their places of origin. This exercise aims to reflect on the production chain and global interdependencies.
Or you can invite them to tell about their holidays with images, creating a photo reportage complete with caption (title, date, place and caption). An activity that develops observation and visual storytelling skills.
These proposals are in turn inspired by the European Framework of Key Competences for Lifelong Learning (EU Recommendation, 2018), which invites schools to help people think, communicate and collaborate in complex contexts.
Few activities, transversal approaches, real skills
The advice, in short, is to propose few but significant activities, to be carried out with time and attention, favoring a well-told project rather than the accumulation of completed forms. The objective is that daily experience is transformed into an opportunity to develop real skills. And the approach is always potentially transversal, overcoming the logic of disciplines as watertight compartments: the “family recipe”, for example, can be both a science and an Italian activity.