The Problem with Pre-Work

Pre-work for many subjects is an excellent thing. Setting prior-reading, whether it be a historical extract, a case log, a poem, a magazine article, whatever, is incredibly useful in setting the scene, developing ideas and broadening students' learning.

On the other hand, I have heard of pre-work being set that is so essential to that lesson, that if students have not completed it they are sent from the room to do it before being allowed to return. I guess the idea is that those students would never 'make that mistake again', but this doesn't sit right with me whatsoever, not just because you're inevitably going to face the hard discussion with a student about why they haven't done it before sending them away and hence breaking any flow or momentum in the lesson that you had, but also because the student may not have completed the pre-work just because of laziness (which in the end is likely to be our go-to reasoning, depending on the student).

There could be a whole host of reasons why the student hasn't read the 8 page article on 1950s Japanese cinema. What if all of their other subjects from the previous day had all set large pieces of pre-work (on top of their weekly homework assignments)? What if at home they don't have a quiet place to study, or the internet at home was on the blink, or it was a close relative's birthday party the night before, or they hadn't been feeling well, or any of the other millions of real-life excuses it could be, other than 'I couldn't be bothered'?

It begs the question as to why such large pieces of pre-work would be set a day in advance if it was so integral to the lesson. It may well be that once a few students have been sent from the classroom to complete their pre-work, hence missing out on class-time, they quickly learn to never 'make that mistake again', and know that for your lesson, you'd better have your pre-work done, or else!

I think sometimes at Level 3, we expect students to be able to manage this kind of huge workload because that's what they'll get when they're at university as undergraduates. It's certainly good practice, until you remember that at university, they may only have 10 hours of contact time a week, not 18, and so are much more able to handle large pieces of pre-work between lectures.

So unless I become a teacher that is happy to send students out of the room for goodness-knows how long for them to find an available computer, print off the required work, read through and annotate it, meanwhile missing what could be important course content, then that leaves me with three options.

Option 1: You reduce the amount of pre-work to about 10-15 minutes.

For A-Level Maths, it's not like I would ask my students to read an 8 page article after every lesson. On what, exactly? The majority of maths articles are so far beyond Level 3 students that they would be incomprehensible. For Maths pre-work, we're really talking about a few algebra questions that could pre-empt what we'll be doing in class. For example, to be ready to find the Volume of Revolution, you might want students to practice rearranging equations to get y^2.

Option 2: You make the pre-work not essential for the learning in the next lesson.

Then why would you set it? The whole idea about pre-work is that it prepares you for the next lesson, otherwise it could just be a couple of follow-up exercises based on last week's work. If that's all it was, then why wouldn't it just be set as part of the weekly homework?

Option 3: You set the pre-work further in advance.

This of course takes a lot of forward planning, which I've got to admit I find quite challenging to do. I'm very organised when it comes to my lessons, but once I come to the end of a 1.5 hour lesson, when I'm wrapping up the day's learning, if I remember to set the pre-work it's always a "Oh wait, before you go, there was some pre-work I need you to complete before next lesson..." as they start running through the door.

Part of the problem also is only setting it now and again. In comparison, my homework routine is set in stone - every Monday the work is due in via Google Classroom and every Monday the next piece of work is set for the following week. It's like clockwork. For pre-work, there could be a few weeks gap between pieces of work being set, so it's probably no wonder that I often forget to set it at all.

I'm the kind of person that must do something properly, if I'm going to do it at all - I can't leave a job half done. Take my teaching videos for example - it would be easy to give up half way through a 200 video playlist, but I just can't bring myself to do that.

So with pre-work, I either want to be setting it every lesson, or once a week on a specific day, or some other regular time, or not at all. It doesn't make sense to set it always on a specific day, unless you always have the good fortune of teaching a new topic during that next lesson. With INSET days, mock exams, half-days, bank holidays, the idea would be scuppered before you could properly begin. If your lessons were on a Monday, Tuesday, Friday, then I could see the merit in always setting work between Tuesday and Friday to bridge the gap, but if your lessons are Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday then you've got problems. I don't want to be in a position where I set pre-work with one group and not another because of timetabling.

If I were to set pre-work every lesson, a lot of it would be non-essential. It could be set via Google Classroom and submitted that way also, just as homework is. I do like that idea, but as I say it would have to be non-essential, as not every student will be able to complete it (perhaps due to one or more of the reasons as mentioned above), and may have to complete it a day or so after the required lesson.

I also like the idea of setting pre-work further in advance, but not for just a specific lesson. Think of it as a half-termly pack of algebra practice that feeds directly into the topics that are taught in the following half term. Teaching the Equation of a Circle between October half term and Christmas? Then make sure there's plenty of completing the square practice in the booklet for the Sep-Oct half term. Teaching Mean and Standard Deviation between February half term and Easter? Then make sure there's plenty of finding the mean from grouped data and histograms for Jan-Feb half term.

So on top of the weekly homework assignments, there's a half term assignment as well to ready them for lessons in the following half term. It would take some doing as a resource, but I believe it could have potential.

So while I absolutely see the benefits of setting pre-work, the pitfalls are plentiful, whether it be down to the students' own organisation, the teacher's organisation, timetabling, or whether it is necessary or relevant.