Homework is the responsibility of the child to whom it is assigned; however, it is the partnership of parents, children, teachers, and administrators, which empowers student success. Please ask your child about homework assignments daily. Look over the assignments with your child: your emphasis on the importance of completing assigned tasks will reap many rewards, both now and in the future years. All third, fourth, and fifth grade students are required to keep an assignment book. Ask your student to review this with you.

All Flower Mound Elementary students have built-in homework every night. Kindergarten and first grade students should read or be read to 20 minutes nightly. All other students should read 30 minutes nightly. This can be accomplished by obtaining a supplementary reader from the child's teacher. For students in fourth and fifth grades, it is recommended that Social Studies and Science chapters be re-read and summarized in paragraph form as a homework assignment. In addition there will be weekly spelling words and occasional practice with math if that is a weakness. The operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division should be practiced nightly by grades 1–5 respectively. Parents supplying word problems to be solved, is very helpful. We ask for close parent supervision of homework to assure student success. Any unfinished classwork is automatically homework.

Excused Make-up Work. Make-up work will be given to a student upon return to school after an illness. (See also Attendance - Make-Up Work.)

The "Hidden" Values of Homework (John Rosemond, Ending the Homework Hassle, 1990)

• Responsibility— Homework teaches kids to fulfill their obligations. Kids also learn to hold themselves accountable for their mistakes and successes. But, when parents get too involved these lessons don't get learned.
• Autonomy— When teachers start assigning homework, it's probably the first time a person outside the family has assigned tasks to the child. Completing homework teaches the child he can stand on his own two feet.
• Perseverance— Most parents want to protect their children from frustration. “Little do they realize that more often than not, making a child's life easier in the present will only make it harder in the future.”
• Time management— Learning to manage time is one of the most valuable skills your child can learn.
• Initiative— Homework can help students learn to be self-motivated. However: “Initiative is like muscle. If it's exercised, it strengthens.”