General School No. 1 in Ciolpani will be, starting next year, the first pilot school in Ilfov county. Principal Mariana Banu told “Adevărul” that she wants students to come to school “hands in pocket and go home the same.” Don’t come after them with their bags. Let me provide them with everything they need, from textbooks, aids, notebooks, supplies to lunch”.
The students of the Ciolpani school will no longer have homework. Photo source: archive
About 350 students study at the school in Ciolpani. The director told us that many of them come to class with the homework done at home not by them, as would be normal, but by their parents. “It is already a phenomenon that parents solve their children’s homework. And they just transcribe them into notebooks and that’s it. But without understanding what it is about. And in class, those who come with unfinished homework copy it from others”, weexplained the teacher. “They get ready, many of them, 10 minutes before class starts. And then what’s the point of these homework assignments? It doesn’t help them at all. It is a totally useless activity. Then an idea came to me: what if we stopped giving them homework and made them do it at school, under the guidance of a teacher? And according to their own powers and knowledge.”
“I want to pilot a new design of the class day”
The idea has taken shape, but implementation follows a long and arduous road. “We are in the process of accepting and signing the papers. I have guild mates who have inspired me, who have joined these pilot programs and who have encouraged me. If they could, why couldn’t I do something for my children?”, asks the teacher.
The teacher wants to set up a program where the students, after finishing the classes, stay in the school for a few more hours. “The kids will have four, five hours a day, as the schedule is, followed by a relaxation hour where they eat and rest. I’m going to buy them some puffy armchairs to sit and relax in the classroom. Then, there are two hours during which, under the supervision of a teacher, they will do their homework, work on different projects, get involved in various personal development activities“, explains Prof. Mariana Banu. “I will also work with the latter separately. For example, if I identify students with inclinations in the area of the arts, I will take them to the museum to take part in activities there. We will try to identify the children capable of performance from the early grades, and then educate them in a Performance Center”is the greatest desire of the director of the school in Ciolpani.
Standardized assessment to test knowledge
But things, says the director, will not stop there. The teacher wants to assess the children as well. “Let’s see if our plan works, if the methods implemented through the pilot program will bear fruit. I want to access the Brio educational platform to provide us with assessment tests. I would focus especially on the literacy part because today’s students don’t understand what they read, they don’t know how to tell stories, they don’t know how to express themselves. Here is their big problem”considers the teacher who proposes a series of student evaluations through this pilot program. These will be monthly and standardized for second, fourth and middle school students. The teachers will also evaluate the degree of involvement of the students and will analyze the volume of activities which must be neither large nor boring. “I go by the idea that too much is bad. The students should not think of these two hours as a chore while they are over the schedule. Lessons must be simple, accessible, interesting”continues Mariana Banu. Then, depending on the results of the evaluations, the teachers will prepare a report for each individual child.
The method of learning through play
The director wishes to continue the already implemented method of learning through play in the future. “I have already assigned a teacher to deal with this aspect. On the Internet there are a lot of interactive, interesting and attractive games, puzzels, for example, which could be accessed in Geography class. A map with counties maybe..Or all kinds of experiments to help them learn physics or chemistry”. At the general school in Ciolpani, secondary school students are already learning History in a completely new way. “The lesson “The natural environment and daily life in the Ancient East” is taught with the help of a video game Students, with the help of a console, discover the ancient city and are tasked with noticing the details in the game – the people, the city and the environment.” explained the director.
Study: “A small amount of homework produces big effects”
The homework that students receive, whether they do it at home or at school, is essential for deepening knowledge and skills, but it is not only these that matter in the process of education and knowledge consolidation. This is the conclusion reached by educational psychologist Dacian Dolean, specialist in language development and early literacy, following a study he recently conducted.
The experiment aimed to test the effect of homework on third-grade students and took place in the 2023-2024 school year. Participants were approximately 300 students randomly distributed at grade level into two groups. One group of students received, for 80 days, additional homework in Romanian, and the other group of students received, for 80 days, additional homework in mathematics. Then, they were evaluated. “After 80 days, the students who received homework in Romanian had a very large increase in their general knowledge. However, students in this group did not have a significant increase in reading or writing fluency, oral comprehension, or written comprehension.” the psychologist explained to edupedu.ro. “This shows us that literacy development is not just a process of practice, but involves more factors and greater intensity to produce substantial effects.” the specialist also declared.
As for the students who solved math homework, their performance increased significantly. “The partial results of this study show us that a small amount of homework can produce substantial effects if the homework is carefully constructed,” the psychologist also specified.
However, in order to produce the expected effects, these tasks must be done by the students, not by the parents, as the director of the school in Ciolpani presented the situation. “This is why homework will be done at school, and in order for the students to be able to do it, I intend to bring not one teacher, but two, to teach the subject together.” the teacher also specified.
