Learning with Fun: how to enjoy Holiday homeworks

Summer holidays mean relax: students can finally take a break and spend some time with their friends and families. Assigning them books to read, exercises to complete and problems to solve is an outdated homework model. Thanks to education technology, it is now easier than ever to stimulate students during holidays, motivating them to keep on training their mind. Here are some ideas.

But first, catch their attention and enthusiasm

Before using smart tech tools to engage students and help them to enjoy the summer learning activities, it is important to understand their needs and catch their attention, improving their motivation and enthusiasm.
This has nothing to do with technology. It is a previous process that teachers should conduct face to face in the classroom.

Rule #1: appeal to students’ interests

Students enjoy their homework when it sounds funny, interesting, relevant to them: that’s why teachers should incorporate what their learners know and love in the summer assigments. How? First of all, taking a poll to find out what the majority of the class is into – sports, arts, nature? – and then creating a way to integrate the favourite subjects into the summer homework. Appealing to students’ interests is a great motivation driver!

Rule #2: keep it short

Holiday homework has the purpose to practice – or extend – those concepts learned at school during the school year. The duration of homework per day depends on the purpose. The National PTA (Parents Teacher Association, U.S.A.) recommends 10-20 minutes of homework in the 1st grade, arriving to 120 minutes of homework for a student in high school. But it is very tough to find a student who enjoys 2 hours of homework per day! In fact, consistent studies suggest that shorter – and more frequent – homework assignments are more effective, because learners are more likely to complete them.

Rule #3: stimulate sharing

During summertime, students prefer to stay outdoor, enjoying leisure with friends. Holiday homeworks can be a great opportunity to leverage on students’ cooperation, stimulating them with assignments including teamworks and activities to complete together with their classmates.

Rule #4: make it fun

Instead of force students to do traditional summaries regarding books they have read during summer, try to assign different kinds of homeworks, maybe including more subjects at the same time. An example: a written recap of summer holidays where students have to talk about the places they visited, merging this story with the music they listenend to, the histories they learnt and including even the photos they took during holidays. This could be a great way to test the students’ capability to deal with multitasks and activities of different nature.
Regarding the many ways students can learn with fun, technology gives a lot of solutions suitable for students to do their holiday homework and keep on learning during summer in a more engaging and funny way.
In Google Play Store, you can find a lot of apps that allow innovative and effective ways to learn at home during holidays:

• To students, the apps enable them to learn and to do homeworks in a more innovative and – above all – fun way;
• For teachers, it will be possible for them to assign homeworks and other activities with the possibility to better organize students’ tasks and to collect homework in an easier way when students will be back to school.