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41 Short Stories for High School: Free PDF Downloads

Below you will find the best short stories for high school across multiple genres: horror stories, mystery stories, humorous stories, classic stories, and more. Each story includes a link (READ IT) that will take you to a free copy you can read, copy, download or print.

We’ve also included a free PDF of our favorite short stories that you can download and print (see below) titled The Best Short Stories for High School . It includes stories by Edgar Allan Poe, John Steinbeck, Flannery O’Connor, Madeline Yale Wynne, Ambrose Bierce, Ray Bradbury, McKnight Malmar and Frank O’Connor.

Want great stories for middle school? Go here.

Looking for scary stories for kids? Go here .

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Best Short Stories for High School: Free PDF

Here are the Best Short Stories for High School (at least according to us).

We’ve taught each of these stories to high school students. Kids of all reading levels (including reluctant readers ) found them engaging and suspenseful. They are thought-provoking with plenty of spectacular twists.

To preview, click the thumbnail image below. You can download a free PDF copy by clicking the download button.

Want lesson plans for these stories? We’ve got those too. See what’s in the lesson plans . Lesson plans include material for 16 stories (the 8 in our PDF plus 8 more!).

Click to download our Free PDF.

Funny Short Stories For High School

Lord Oakhurst’s Curse

By O. Henry Lord Oakhurst lay dying in the oak chamber in the eastern wing of Oakhurst Castle.

Machiavelli in Kindergarten

By Peter Schooff A hilarious story told as a series of letters from the kindergarten teachers of young Nicolo Machiavelli.

By Anton Chekhov A young man rushes to his parent’s house to tell them the joyous news about how his name is in the newspaper and he has become famous.

Cannibalism in the Cars

By Mark Twain A train is snowbound and the passengers must find a way to survive. Twain turns the ghastly into the wickedly hilarious.

Mystery Short Stories for High School

Full Circle

By Sue Grafton Private detective Kinsey Millhone witnesses a tragic car accident in which a girl is also shot.

Slowly, Slowly in the Wind

By Patricia Highsmith A man wants to purchase land from his neighbor, but the neighbor refuses. When the man’s daughter runs off with the neighbor’s son, bad goes to worse.

Possibilities

By Bill Pronzini I had been in the backyard no more than two minutes when Roger Telford’s bald head popped up above the boundary fence.

Uncle Auguste

By Andrew Allen No one seemed to know exactly who Uncle Auguste was. There certainly hadn’t been any members of the family by that name. 

Scary Short Stories For High School

Love horror? Check out our page on 40 Scary Stories to Read Online .

Mars Will Have Blood

By Marc Laidlaw “Too much ichor,” said red-faced Jack Magnusson, scowling into a playbook. “The whole tragedy is sopping in it. Blood, blood, blood. 

By Robert Louis Stevenson Markheim enters an antique shop late one night to sell a rare item but ends up murdering the shop owner instead.

The Great God Pan

By Arthur Machen An experiment designed to reveal the spirit world goes horribly wrong, leading to a series of disappearances and deaths.

The Armless Man

By WG Litt I had for some months been trying to find gold or diamonds by digging holes in the veldt.

An Original Revenge

By WC Morrow A soldier intends to kill himself in order to return as a vengeful spirit and take his revenge upon his commanding officer.

The Little Room

By Madeline Yale Wynn A tiny room in a farm house holds a mysterious secret, appearing to be a different room to each person who enters it.

The God of Dark Laughter

By Michael Chabon Thirteen days after the Entwhistle-Ealing Bros. circus left Ashtown two boys stumbled on a body that was dressed in a mad suit of purple and orange velour. 

Literary Short Stories For High School

The Other Woman

By Sherwood Anderson A man struggles with his final days before marriage as he falls for a young barista.

The Scarlet Ibis

By James Hurst The intense relationship between two brothers pushes one boy over the edge into death.

Your Body is a Jewel Box

By Kay Boyle The rain was falling just as it did every day at this time of the year, and when Olive got out of bed she saw that Mildred was sitting on the roof again and crying in the rain.

The Love of My Life

By TC Boyle A haunting story of two high schoolers in love as they enter college, get pregnant and decide what to do about the baby and their future.

A Father’s Story

By Andre Dubus A father frames himself for a potential crime to shield his daughter after she is in a car accident that may have killed someone.

Adventure Short Stories for High School

The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes

By Rudyard Kipling There is, as the conjurers say, no deception about this tale. Jukes by accident stumbled upon a village that is well known to exist, though he is the only Englishman who has been there.

A Descent Into the Maelstrom

By Edgar Allan Poe A seemingly old man recounts his horrific tale of being sucked into a massive whirlpool at sea and how he managed to survive.

The Boar Hunt

By Jose Vasconcelos A group of hunters stalk wild boars through the jungle. When they begin shooting a herd from the trees, they mistakenly believe it’s their lucky day.

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

By Ambrose Bierce A man set for execution escapes his fate when the noose breaks. He flees, desperate to escape from his executioners.

Science Fiction Short Stories for High School

Everything’s Eventual

By Stephen King A young man with very special powers is enlisted to quietly and mysteriously kill people around the country.

The Nine Billion Names of God

By Arthur C. Clarke A group of monks living atop the mountains purchase a supercomputer to help them identify all the names of God and bring an end to the universe.

By Isaac Asimov The planet Lagash has known nothing but sunlight for over 2,000 years. Now they are preparing to experience their first nightfall in millenia.

By Frederic Brown Escalating conflict between Earth and the alien Outsiders must be resolved through single combat between an earthling and an Outsider.

Microcosmic God

By Theodore Sturgeon A brilliant biochemist creates a synthetic lifeform in an attempt to improve mankind, but the results are not at all what he imagined.

Classic Short Stories for High School

By John Steinbeck A man finds his wife in the arms of another man, leading to a horrible murder and its aftermath.

The Tall Men

By William Faulkner Two men arrive at a house with a warrant for the McCallum brothers, but they must first deal with the McCallum relatives, one of whom has had a terrible accident and needs his leg amputated.

The Blue Hotel

By Stephen Crane An intense card game leads to a brutal fight in a blizzard.

The Gambler, the Nun & the Radio

By Ernest Hemingway They brought them in around midnight and then, all night long, everyone along the corridor heard the Russian. ‘Where is he shot?’ Mr. Frazer asked the night nurse.

A Good Man is Hard to Find

By Flannery O’Connor A family finds themselves in dire straits on the road when they run into the Misfit, an insane, murderous escaped convict. 

41 Short Stories for Middle School

8 Diverse Memoirs for the Classroom

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180+ Pages of Short Story Lesson Plans

Wednesday, January 18, 2023

Free social stories about homework, study skills, & tests.

The other day it occurred to me that my kids probably don't really know how to study for a test simply because no one has specifically taught them or shown them how. 

Well, that and there hasn't really been a reason to really study for them yet. But as my oldest approaches high school, this skill set will become more important.

So, quite recently we talked about different ways to study. I showed my kids some different ways they could review their notes and how they could test their knowledge themselves in little ways. That kind of thing.

But I thought it would be helpful to look for some free social stories about homework, study skills, and taking a test  to supplement as needed. And in case someone else might be in the same boat, trying to help their kids learn how to study.

Below you will find a variety of social stories about taking tests, what homework is, cheating and plagiarism, taking notes, writing a research paper or essay, and more. Hopefully you find these helpful!

Free Social Stories About Homework, Study Skills, & Tests

Have you been looking for a social story about doing homework or a social story about test anxiety? Then look no further than these free printable study skills social stories. Some require you to have a Teachers Pay Teachers account (which is free!) before you can download them.

I've rounded up some options for you to explore. That way you find the best homework related social story for yourself or your child. Or you can simply use ideas from different stories below to write your own custom story (free social story templates here to help).

Please note that just because a social story is listed here does not mean I endorse its content. After all, many social stories tend to be poorly written and/or teach autistic masking. Besides, I haven't read all of these stories word for word myself. So please read through the stories carefully before using them.

1. 4 Homework Social Stories from Happy Learners - There are four text-only social stories here about doing homework. No images are included with these stories. The topics include what is homework, why you have to do homework, finding a routine for doing school work at home, and how to keep track of assignments and their due dates.

2. Social Story About Taking Tests at School from Social Stories: Power Tool for Autism - This story includes two clipart images. Otherwise, it's primarily text only. It talks about some test taking rules.

3. Cheating Social Story from Watson Institute - There are lots of stories here, but scroll down until you find the cheating one. It talks about test taking, asking for help, and what cheating is. It uses colorful clipart.

4. Social Stories for Tests & Homework from Watson Institute - There are a number of stories here. One topic that I'm glad to see here is "Sometimes Kids Don't Get 100%" as I know many kids struggle with that.

5. Completing School Work & Assignments Social Stories from Watson Institute - You'll find lots of relevant stories here. Topics include: completing assignments, completing school work, how to start work by myself, and completing work independently.

6. Doing Homework Social Story from Meghan Brice on TPT - This story comes as a PowerPoint so you should be able to edit it. It uses a mix of photos and clipart.

7. Taking a Test Social Story from Mathnolia on TPT - This story looks like it does a good job of explaining what a test is and the different types of tests a child might encounter. It appears to use primarily clipart.

8. Social Story About Taking Exams from Centre for Autism Middletown - Scroll to the bottom and you'll find a one page social story about taking exams. It includes one photo.

9. Avoiding Plagiarism Checklist from Laura Torres on TPT - Okay, it's not technically a social story. However, it's a great checklist for helping kids avoid plagiarism. It would be a great visual to have handy while doing homework or research papers.

Video Social Stories About Study Skills, Note Taking, & More

Here are some video social stories that talk about different aspects of homework, taking tests, and other relevant study skills. You can use these in teletherapy sessions, social skills groups, at home, and/or classroom settings. Videos are always a great alternative to printing off a story.

Like the stories above, some of the wording in these videos aren't always great. But I wanted to make sure you had lots of different options for helping yourself or your child understand different aspects of study skills and completing homework. Remember, many of these videos are geared towards different age groups.

I was surprised by how many free social stories about homework (and related study skills!) are actually out there. Hopefully you'll find one or two that will be useful for your needs.

Need one-on-one support? I can help!

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Primary School Educational Resources

On-demand video stories & resources that bring learning to life., make a profound difference in education one story at a time.

Welcome to Stories for Schools — your go-to digital library for video stories that captivate and educate. Designed specifically for primary school teachers, our library features beautifully narrated stories from professional storytellers around the world, paired with stunning illustrations that bring each tale to life.

These stories aren’t just entertaining; they’re carefully crafted to deepen students’ understanding of essential moral lessons, making them perfect for PSHE, SMSC, PSED and many other subjects.

Our unique offering is more than just a collection of stories—it’s a powerful teaching tool. Each story is accompanied by a full-text version and printable illustrations, making it easy for teachers to use them as story sequencing tasks or other classroom activities.

With Stories for Schools, you can save valuable time and eliminate the stress of searching for the perfect video or story to introduce a topic. Simply choose the moral lesson you want to cover, press play, and engage your students with interactive questions that foster discussion and reflection.

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By subscribing to Stories for Schools, you gain access to a wealth of resources designed to make teaching easier and more impactful. Our library includes:

Interactive Assembly Videos : Each video is around 15 minutes long and starts with thought-provoking questions that engage students and set the stage for the story. After the story, teachers can pause the video to ask follow-up questions, encouraging student participation and critical thinking.

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Helping all children become happy learners

Doing homework, homework is a task we do at home to support our learning in school. most schools expect their students to do some homework., here is some information about doing homework:, some homework helps us remember learning, some homework helps us learn new things, some homework we enjoy doing and some we find boring, as we get older we are often expected to do more homework, finding time to do homework can sometimes be difficult. sometimes we find excuses to do other things we enjoy rather than doing our homework., having to do our homework can make us feel annoyed or angry. many children feel this way., if we do not do our homework we can make our teachers and parents upset or angry, if we do not do our homework we might find learning harder in school, homework is given to help us become better at learning. it is not always fun and most people would rather be doing something else but it can helps us with our learning., homework is a task we do at home to help us with learning. , homework can help us remember things we did in school. sometimes we might have homework that helps us to learn new things., most children have homework tasks that they enjoy doing and some tasks that they wish they didn't have to do., having to do our homework can make us feel annoyed or angry. many children feel this way. , if we do not do our homework we can make our teachers and parents upset or angry. if we do not do our homework we might also find learning in school much harder., as we get older we are often expected to do more homework., homework is given to help us become better at learning. it is not always fun and most people would rather be doing something else but it can helps us with our learning. , my homework, homework is a learning task that i need to do outside the school day., i am given homework to help me become a more independent learner. some tasks i may enjoy doing and some i may dislike doing. this is normal for many people., even when i don't enjoy homework it is important that i do it. if i don't do my homework i may get into trouble at school. it is a school rule that i do my homework., it is important that i have a good routine for doing my homework. i can allow enough time to do my best work. if i need help i can tell someone so i don't get worried about it., homework is just school learning that i do independently. i can try to do my best work. it is ok if i need to ask for help., my homework diary, a homework diary is a way of recording details about homework assignments., when i get homework i can write down what i need to do in my homework diary. i can also write when i need to hand it in., writing my homework in my homework diary means i can always know where to look to check what homework i have. this can help me so i don't forget. if i forget to do homework i may get into trouble with my school., if i forget to write down some of my homework i can ask someone to tell me. i can ask a friend who was in the same lesson to tell me. i can also ask the teacher at the end of lesson or at break time or the end of the day., i can write my homework in my homework diary. i can then complete my homework and hand it in on time., notes on creating your own personalised social story:, use the above examples to create your own personalised social story for the child. if you need to modify the language to support younger children ensure that the exact meaning intended remains clear and unambiguous. you may want to add photographs or pictures to illustrate the meaning or provide motivation to use. alternatively, print out versions of the social stories are available below..

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Tag: short stories

Proficiency book club: the waterfall by h e bates.

This is a series of lesson plans for proficiency level students based around stories from “The Oxford Book of English Short Stories” edited by A. S. Byatt. Set the story as homework the week before, encourage students to bring any vocabulary questions to class.

The Waterfall tells the story of a repressed reverend’s daughter trying to cope with the emotions and sentiments of life and love. These feelings are symbolised by the waterfall in her garden which is being renovated. The breaking of the damn and the water surging down the waterfall could symbolise the release of all her bottled up affections and feelings towards her husband and the jovial Mr. Phillips who has been staying with the family.

Download this lesson plan here:

https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=79CFF252BEEA0A7D!383&authkey=!AJRdYjvoRf1OhyM

First copy to the board or project the vocabulary table in the attachment above, students must try to match the new vocab to the definition.

Key: 1 – g, 2 – d, 3 – a, 4 – b, 5 – j, 6 – e, 7 – f, 8 – I, 9 – h, 10 – c.

Once they have matched the vocab give them 5 minutes to find the vocabulary in the text, make it a race, the first team to find all 10 wins.

Then discuss the following discussion questions:

Discussion Questions:

• What happens in the story?
• How would you describe the characters? Straight-laced. Prim and proper, repressed, damaged,
• What does the waterfall represent?
• How do you feel about Rose? Do you sympathise with her?
• How do you think she feels about her new husband?
• How do you think she feels about Phillips?
• Do you think people are more or less emotionally repressed these days?
• Do you think this is a good or bad thing?

Proficiency Book Club: A Widow’s Quilt by Sylvia Townsend Warner

This is a series of lesson plans for proficiency level students based around stories from “The Oxford Book of English Short Stories” edited by A. S. Byatt. Set the story as homework the week before, encourage students to bring any vocabulary questions to class.

Here is some vocab that your students might have trouble with:

• the box – the television
• parlour – a room in a kitchen where food is stored and prepared
• applique quilts – patchwork quilts
• rook – black bird and chess piece
• blacking out curtains – heavy curtains used during world war two to block light from the windows of the houses
• taffeta – material made from silk
• to snatch – to take something from another person aggressively
• jolt – a sudden violent movement
• drudgery – a boring, difficult job
• fidgeting / to fidget – to move comfortably and nervously
• to thwart – to prevent the completion of something
• a harlot – a whore / prostitute
• to grimace – to make an angry / annoyed face

Have your students discuss these questions in small groups or as a class:

• Can you describe the characters?
• What do you think of Charlotte?
• How do you think she feels in her marriage? Trapped?
• What do her actions say about the position of women in the time the story was written?
• What do you think of Everard?
• How do you feel for him at the end?
• How do you feel for Charlotte?
• How can you explain the ending?
• Charlotte takes on the challenge of making the quilt, how important is it to have challenges and things to focus your attention on in life? Different stages of life. Things to look forward to etc.

Proficiency Book Club: The Troll by T. H. White

Here is a matching exercise for some of the more difficult vocabulary in the story. Have the students complete the exercise in pairs.

Here you can download the table to print:

https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=79CFF252BEEA0A7D!358&authkey=!AOgTwYv1J95mH4E

Here are the answers:

• a – 3
• b – 11
• c – 7
• d – 12
• e – 10
• f – 8
• g – 4
• h – 1
• i – 5
• j – 6
• k – 9
• l – 2

Here are the locations of the words in the text and some sentence examples:

• ungainly – bottom of pg 346
• blurry – actual reference is blurring at the bottom of pg 347
• beside the point – middle of pg 348, other sentences example: “He is a nice man, but that’s beside the point; he’s rubbish at his job.”
• bog – bottom of 348
• to ford – bottom of 348
• bow – bottom of 348 in relation to a “bow wave”
• stern – isn’t in the text but is a counterpoint to “bow”
• to wring out – top of 349, wring is irregular – wring wrung wrung.
• come to grips with something – middle of 351, other sentence examples: “We must all get to grips with this tragedy” “If you are going to be an executive you need to get to grips with your fear of public speaking.”
• wizened – middle of 351
• to earmark st – bottom of 351, other sentence example: “this money is earmarked for the Christmas party”

Ask students for any other vocab issues they have.

Discussion Questions

Discuss these questions in groups or as a class:

• What does the troll represent?
• Why does the story have a framing device? (a story within a story) What does it add to the story?
• Some analysts say the story is religious, the character’s latent Christianity defeating the Troll, do you agree?
• What do you think of the gory imagery of the troll?
• How do you explain the ending?
• What other mythical creatures can you think of? (vampires, werewolves, zombies etc.)
• Why do you think these monsters are so popular? Why do people keep writing stories about them?
• Which ones frightened you most as a child? Which ones still scare you now?
• What do you think are the origins of these creatures?

Proficiency Book Club: An Englishman’s Home by Evelyn Waugh

This is the latest in a series of lesson plans for proficiency level students based around short stories from “The Oxford Book of English Short Stories edited by A. S. Byatt. This one is based on “An Englishman’s Home” by Evelyn Waugh, you can read the story for free here:

http://novel.tingroom.com/html/29/149.html

As with the other plans in this series, students read the story for homework and then bring any vocabulary queries or new words they discover to class. Start by asking for these queries. Here are some pieces of vocabulary that might come up in class:

I opened the class by teaching the following 2 expressions: “An Englishman’s home is his castle” and “NIMBY” (Not In My Back Yard) two expressions which neatly sum up the various themes in the story.

aphorisms (page 295)  = sayings / idioms

to wreak stark havoc (296) = to cause chaos

ha-ha (296) = a type of fence built at the bottom of a ditch so that it’s not visible from the house’s windows

Crown Derby (297) = A type of expensive ceramic, plates etc.

impecunious (297) = poor, no money

to pull your weight (298) = to do your share of communal work

to eschew (298) = to avoid

The Peace Ballot (298) = a national survey carried out in 1934-35

jerry builders (302) = cheap unskilled builders

to put / pull a fast one over on somebody (309) = to trick / cheat somebody

to mope (309) = to complain and be worried about something

to fret (309) = to be worried and nervous

• What do you think of the characters?
• What does the story say about people?
• Does anybody come out of it looking good?
• The story talks a lot about manners and maintaining appearances, do you think these things are as important in your country?
• We see Mr. Metcalf trying to follow the instructions on how to live as a country gentleman should. Do you think lots of people act like this in real life? Do they try to act as society expects them to act? Can you think of any examples?
• The story reflects English village life very accurately, can you see parallels with villages in your country?
• What does the expression NIMBY mean? Do you see examples of NIMBY attitudes in your country? Can you think of any examples?
• In the book we see the residents of the village cheated out of their money, what other similar confidence scams and tricks can you think of?

Students may be interested to read about the life of the writer Evelyn Waugh, here is his wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_Waugh

His most famous book “Brideshead Revisited” has been adapted for the screen twice, the 1981 small screen mini series garnered an excellent response from critics.

Proficiency Book Club: Nuns at Luncheon by Aldous Huxley

This a series of posts for proficiency level students based around short stories taken from “The Oxford Book of Short Stories” edited by A.S Byatt.

This lesson plan is based on “Nuns at Luncheon” by Aldous Huxley. Start by addressing any vocabulary issues the students might have.There is a lot of new vocabulary in this story so try to keep this section as brief as possible to leave time for the discussion. Here is a brief run down of some things that might need explaining.

a hare – a kind of  large rabbit

a mixed grill – a plate of assorted types of grilled meat

gaudy / gaudily – tasteless, lots of bright colours

to wriggle out of st – to escape from a responsibility – my students try to wriggle out of doing their homework

to talk shop – to talk about your job / studies during free time

gallows – the place where people are hanged (see also gallows humour)

the plot thickens – expression meaning that something becomes more complicated or interesting

to harness – to capture and use the power of something – windmills harness the power of the wind

folly – stupidity

the coast is clear – expression meaning nobody is watching

to rule with an iron rod – to be very strict

chaste – pure / innocent

to shuffle off this mortal coil – expression from Shakespeare’s Hamlet meaning to die.

to wallow – to immerse yourself in something, usually in something bad – pigs and hippos wallow in mud, people sometimes wallow in self-pity.

to savour something – to enjoy something and try and make it last longer

the Norns – Nordic goddesses of destiny

sullen – moody, sad

to gloat – to show a lot of self-satisfaction about something, usually at someone else’s expense.

to trudge / to tramp – to walk with heavy feet as if you are tired

dingy – badly lit, dirty

• What’s the story about?
• How did it make you feel?
• The story uses a framing device (a story within a story), what effect does this have?
• What happens in the story of the nun?
• Why does the nun run away with the man? For love? Or to save his soul?
• What does the story say about our fascination with tragedy?
• In English we have the expression “car crash TV /cinema” what do you think it means? (shows or films that deliberately show disturbing material to get a reaction or higher viewing figures.)
• Do you think the media exploits other people’s tragedies for higher viewing figures? Can you think of any examples? (Oscar Pistorius trial)
• Based on the events in the story and the repeated scandals involving priests do you think that celibacy is realistic in today’s society?

Zombie Apocalypse Training 101, with Steven Seagal

Need help getting teenage students to produce compositions? Why not try this great warm up game from my friend Magistra Monson. The idea is you take clippings from real news stories and use them as a jumping off point for creative or argumentative writing. The class works as a team adding a paragraph each to the story with hilarious consequences. Definitely an idea I’m gonna use in my next teen class, or even with adults. You can download different introductory paragraphs from Magistra’s blog.

This has actually helped inspire a pipe dream I have for a new blog based around crowd sourced short stories. The working title at the moment is “Crowd Shorts” watch this space………………………. and pay attention to big Steve, that guys knows his onions.

freeenglishlessonplans.com

Proficiency book club, lesson 3: The Toys of Peace by Saki

This lesson is a short discussion based around “The Toys of Peace” by Saki, a short satirical story about two parents attempts to influence their young boy’s playing habits. For this series of classes I am using short stories from “The Oxford Book of English Short Stories” edited by A. S. Byatt. If you don’t have a copy of the book most of the short stories are available for free online. This particular short story is available here:

http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/ToysPeac.shtml

As with the other lessons in this series the story is set of homework the previous week. The first 5-10 minutes of the class are spent going over any vocabulary issues. This is then followed by a discussion based on the themes and issues which arise in the story.

The author Hector Hugh Munro is considered to be one of the masters of the short story. Many of his works were published posthumously following his death in World War 1. His wikipedia page may prove useful for the class discussion:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saki

After going through any vocabulary problems (there shouldn’t be many as the story only runs to 5 pages) have the students discuss the following questions, either in small groups or as a whole class:

Discussion: Toys of Peace

• What was your initial reaction to it?
• Describe the characters.
• What do you think of the parents attempt to influence their children?
• Do you think they are well-meaning? Or deluded?
• What toys did you play with as a child?
• Did your parents ban anything they thought would have a bad influence on you? Toys? TV shows? Etc.
• Do you agree with the expression “boys will be boys”?
• Do you think children should play with toy weapons?
• Should girls be given typically girly toys? Dolls, makeup etc.
• Are there any toys / games / other things that you think are a bad influence on children or young people
• Should these things be banned?
• The story is an example of satire. What do you think it is satirising?
• What satirical programs / writers / magazines etc. do you have in your country?

Next week: Nuns at Luncheon by Aldous Huxley

Proficiency book club, lesson 2: Solid Objects by Virginia Woolf

This is the second part of a series of posts based around stories from “The Oxford Book of English Short Stories” edited by A.S Byatt. This particular class is based on “Solid Objects” by Virginia Woolf, pages 205-209.

As before set the story as reading homework for the week before.

If you don’t have a copy of the book someone has helpfully uploaded it in pdf here:

Click to access SOLID%20OBJECTS,%20Virginia%20Woolf.pdf

This analytical essay by Sam Mitchell about the works of Virginia Woolf may prove useful. It’s a little heavy as it’s an honours thesis but has some useful insights into the story.

https://dspace.lasrworks.org/bitstream/handle/10349/958/2011ENG-MitchellSam.pdf?sequence=1

Lesson Plan:

Start by asking the students for vocabulary problems. Woolf’s style can be confusing so some sections could require a little explanation. Some vocabulary that might cause problems is listed below:

lunging – to lunge, to move towards in a swift movement

tweed – woven material used to make clothes

to fling – to throw without care

to be to hand – to be within reach

to slash – to cut or mark something

to skim – to touch the surface of something lightly

slate – material used to make rooves

to hitch up a sleeve – to roll up or move higher to protect

moat – water around a castle

mantelpiece – surface above a fireplace where objects are kept

on the brink – on the edge

trifling – unimportant

to be cast down – to be depressed

matted – tangled into a lump

Lots of the vocabulary in the story can be used in various contexts, be sure to explore these fully. For example: fling – to have a fling (short sexual relationship)

Once you have cleared up any vocab issues hand out the following discussion questions:

1. Can you describe the characters?

2. What happens in the story?

3. What was your initial reaction to the story?

4. Did you feel sorry for John? Or bemused?

5. What strikes you about the introduction?

6. How can you explain John’s behaviour?

7. What do the objects represent?

8. Do you have any lucky charms? Did you have any when you were a child?

9. Do you collect anything?

10. Did you collect things when you were a child?

Either put the students into small groups to discuss the questionsand then feedback or have an open class discussion.

Here are some ideas and themes that could help fuel discussion:

Story written in 1918 towards the end of World War one. The idea of objects lasting longer than men, so many people died in the war and all that came back were objects: letters, belongings, clothes etc.

The idea of the permanance of objects and the transcience of people. The desire for permanance, ever lasting life.

The simplicity of the objects as pure pieces of different materials and also the mystery surrounding what they used to be.

Follow up: Homework composition about travelling

This is a homework activity written to follow my previous lesson plan about holidays and traveling here is the link to the original lesson plan:

http://freeenglishlessonplans.com/2013/01/30/holidays-and-travelling-conversation-class/

Here is a link to download the handout for homework:

https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=79CFF252BEEA0A7D!300&authkey=!AMJLj8z2NbQgFFI

A travel magazine is running a competition for travel articles about different types of holidays / ways to travel for young people.

Choose 1 type of holiday / way to travel from the class handout and write an article about why it’s good for young people. Include:

• An interesting introduction to catch the reader’s attention. Include direct questions.
• Pros and cons of your chosen subject.
• Reasons why you recommend it to other young people.
• You can include (invented) anecdotes.

Composition: Short story, Nighthawks by Edward Hopper

This is a homework exercise to practice past narrative tenses for intermediate to advanced students (B1-C1) based on the picture above. Nighthawks by Edward Hopper.

Download the handout here:

https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=79CFF252BEEA0A7D!294&authkey=!AJdNI7pP–88YxQ

Composition short story

Write a short story (120-150 words) based on this picture.

• Who are these people?
• Where is the story set? When is it set?
• What are they doing?
• What has happened before this moment?
• What happens next? (think of an exciting ending)

Generally stories are written in the past so use a selection of past tenses:

• Past continuous to describe the scene, “The couple were sat at the bar talking and drinking.”
• Past simple to describe actions in sequence: “The man paid his bill, put on his jacket and left the bar.”
• Past perfect to describe actions that happened before this moment: “The man had been drinking in another bar before”
• Mixture of past tenses to describe different actions: “As the man was putting on his jacket, the phone rang…..”

Competition!!!

Open to teachers or students. If you are a teacher send your best student’s story, or if you are a student your story to me at: [email protected] and I’ll post it to my page for all to see!

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1650+ High School Short Stories to read

Submitted by writers on Reedsy Prompts to our weekly writing contest . Looking for stories that high schoolers actually want to read? The high school short stories in this collection are real and relatable for any teen.

🏆 Winning stories

“ multiple choice ” by zack powell.

🏆 Winner of Contest #198

Okay class! Pop quiz. If you've been doing the readings, this should be a piece of cake. Remember to fill out both sides of this paper. You have the whole class period to finish. Good luck.1. Christopher Columbus first traveled to the Americas using which means of transportation?A) A cargo shipB) A steam locomotiveC) A Boeing 747 airliner D) A vintage red 1985 Camaro with a crack in the middle of the windshield and no heated seats2. What is the term...

“ Burn Damage ” by Madalyn Meyers

🏆 Winner of Contest #83

Beth sauntered toward the sound of crashing water, the twinkling dance of a shoal marker providing promise that she was getting close. She felt the unfamiliar tickle of sand beneath her feet as the chilled grains molded together under the weight of each determined step. As if suddenly passing through a barrier, what had once looked like an endless ether of uninhabited space now abruptly registered as the reflective sur...

“ Primum Nil Nocere ” by Jeff C. Carter

🏆 Winner of Contest #48

The big day had finally arrived at the School for Gifted Children, and the dean practically kowtowed from his own office. The staff and a coterie of New York’s most influential parents were ecstatic to host their esteemed guest, the one and only Dr. Warren Albright. He looked as though he’d stepped out of the glossy author photo from one of his best-selling books. His hair was chestnut brown with frost t...

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“ chasing juliet ” by jane andrews.

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #257

“You should totally go for it,” Artie says, giving my shoulder a squeeze as we stand gazing at the poster on the school’s bulletin board.           ‘Romeo and Juliet – auditions this Thursday after school,’ the words proclaim.           “Me?” My voice is the frightened squeak of a small animal cornered by a predator. Why would I want to put myself through the embarrassment and almost certain humiliation of something like that? &...

“ The Coraline Factor ” by Kaitlyn Wadsworth

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #244

As Vikky walked down the paths leading to the school’s quadrangle, other students moved aside or stopped what they were doing to look at her. Her black hair bobbed, her skirt swished, but her footsteps seemed to glide. Laura and Faye trotted behind her.As they approached where the blood-nosed boys wrestled each other with the ferocity of alligator lizards, Vikky let out a loud wolf whistle, making everyone else turn around. She raised her hands together and widened them out in a gesture demanding that the spectators move aside. They parted l...

“ State ” by Cameron Navarre

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #235

A gunshot crackles through the air. You flinch. A wisp of smoke rises across the field. A blur of bodies bursts away from the gunman. Arms and legs swing furiously. You anxiously shift your weight back and forth. Your foot begins to shake. Breathe. The mass of sprinting bodies curves and hurtles towards you. You stare at the white tape on the ground in front of you.  If you start too early or too late, you’ll ...

Introducing Prompted , a new magazine written by you!

🏆 Featuring 12 prize-winning stories from our community. Download it now for FREE .

✍️ All stories

“ the best fall ever ” by haneul cho.

Submitted to Contest #264

**Haley**I’m Haley Johnson, and I have a heart condition called arrhythmia. I found out a few weeks ago when I fainted due to low blood flow. I used to have a dream—a dream of skydiving. My mom even promised to take me on my 16th birthday, which is in a few days. But now, that seems very unlikely… "Mom, we need milk, meat, flour, potatoes, sugar, fish, butter, and salt." As I walk down the baking aisle, I spot Ethan’s family and Andy’s family. The parents are chatting while Ethan and Andy play around. I’ve never understood why Ethan is frien...

“ Gideon ” by Barney Defanfaler

Submitted to Contest #263

Gideon is a superhero with physical and mental abilities far beyond the vast majority of the human species bar his teammates. Unlike the comic book character, Gideon cannot move faster than a speeding bullet but is a marathon-level athlete. Gideon can fly, although he requires a wing, and, with the aid of a jet-pack, can leap over tall buildings in a single bound. His up close and personal fighting skills are akin to those of any martial arts warrior, and his proficiency with a vast array of weapons is masterful, whether up close or at a dis...

“ In the Shadow ” by Anna Stasko

The candle in my hand flickered, as the sound of our voices filled the auditorium of the 19th century school building during the evening of December 13th 1991. Lucia. The outline of the audience was barely visible from the stage, but I knew they were there. Dressed in a white gown, a red sash around my waist, and a lingonberry greenery head-wreath, I was pleased that I no longer wore tinsel on my head as had been customary when I was younger. But I was still just a handmaiden, positioned next to, and yet behind the Lucia. I was in her shadow...

“ A Crush, or, The Contents of a Ribcage ” by Shuvayon Mukherjee

Dad holds up the mangled school bus, eyeing me expectantly.‘Be careful. Be controlled.’I bite back a retort. My last few tries were controlled, and I’ve hardly damaged the bus at all. I clench my fist tighter this time, then I swing as hard as I can, the slightest of jolts shooting up my elbow. BOOM. The bus rockets out of Dad’s grasp, swatted into the distance with the momentum of an artillery shell. The junkyard around us thunders with the impact. Car windows crack and shatter, glass tinkling as it hits the ground. A few stray sh...

“ Waterfall ” by Cath Kennedy

The waterfall falls,Yet I can only hear its sound. I sit by the small waterfall, just ten minutes away from my two-story house. The third week, fifth day, and the tenth hour of summer break feel like three years, five months, and ten weeks with empty eyes. Graduation feels like it’s long gone in my history, and the only thing I can look forward to is Brown University in just a few weeks. I’m a rarity, a one-in-a-million phenomenon. A medical miracle, but gone wrong. A cloud followed wherever my gaze went, from paragraphs of my final essay to...

“ A Sixties Tale ” by James Barrett

Submitted to Contest #262

PROLOGUE The events I’m about to describe took place during 1967 and 1968. No one involved besides me knows the whole truth about what happened, and I want to keep it that way for reasons that will become obvious. Some of the names and places used in this story are fictitious. The events are real. Why am I telling this tale to you, a stranger? Because the prospect of taking this story untold to my grave is unbearable. Some of you may understand that what I did, I did out of love. Others may feel I should rot in hell for my actions. Each read...

“ The Tire Swing ” by Aspen Hall

I always liked to think of myself as dependable. Some people liked to describe it as boring. But life just went smoothly with a solid routine.  Every day at 7 am, my alarm clock would go off. I would roll out of bed, switch it off, and get in the shower. This morning wasn't any different. I rolled out of bed at 7 am sharp, switched off my alarm, then went to the bathroom to shower. It took me exactly 7 and a half minutes to shower every day. I went to my closet and picked out an outfit that I thought would be good while going over my sc...

“ A Letter For My Teacher ” by Michaela Bull

Submitted to Contest #261

Standing in his burgundy cap and gown, Marcus Gooding never thought he’d see the day he’d graduate with his GED. Being a high school dropout and having a past of being a lazy pothead and drug dealer for a street gang, he wasn’t always given much of a chance in the world, especially in an underprivileged neighborhood in New York. His parents had become ashamed of him and often fought over money and his misbehavior. Eventually, his mother abandoned him due to the stress of her family life and moved to Florida to live with his grandparents, un...

“ Dear Miss Johnson, ” by Sam Jay

Dear Miss Johnson,Happy Mother’s Day.- James No. That wasn’t enough. Dear Miss Johnson,Thank you for taking me in.Happy Mother’s Day.- James Not that either. Dear Miss Johnson,Thank you for everything. You’re the best.Happy Mother’s Day.- James James tore another page from his notebook.  James was nine the first time he tasted alcohol. His mother, who usually kept herself under control back then, must not have had the energy to dump or drink the rest of her vodka (as he later discovered it was) before she passed out.  James had b...

“ What the Student Said ” by Burton Sage

What the Student SaidbyBurt Sage “Good evening, and welcome to It’s Your Turn, the program celebrating local community members in the greater Rochester metropolitan area. I’m your host, Alice Carpenter. Tonight we’re speaking with Dr. Jason Evans, the recipient of Monroe County’s Educator of the Year award. Thank you, Dr. Evans, for taking the time to speak with us.” “You’re welcome, Alice,” Dr. Evans said. “I want to thank you and radio station WHAM for giving me this opportunity to express my gratitude to the students of West High School...

“ Hey Grammy ” by Zia Eigenrauch

2/22/20Hey Grammy, I miss you. It’s my birthday, double digits! 1 O! I’m so happy. When I come over again we should do some more baking! I remember that time we made those spider chocolate balls, there is a photo of us standing at the kitchen counter, me on the stool and you next to me. your red-rimmed smile larger-than-life looking at the camera, a chocolate donut pinched between your thumb and index finger, 4 curled pretzel bits stuck into each side of the chocolaty treat, my goofy smile aimed in the same direction, chocolate around my lip...

“ The True Cost of Arrogance ” by Jeff Meade

The True Cost of ArroganceJon Benêt Ramsey showed up in the news again, just in time for New Years. She’s the 6-year old Beauty Queen found raped and strangled in her parent’s basement on Christmas Day. The event happened in 1997, but she’s still making headlines. The case was sensational, mixing greedy parents with botched police work and even shoddier prosecutions. It’s the Christmas Story you want to ignore, but seemingly can’t get away from.The news this time around mentioned thousands of documents recently released that may shed light o...

“ Dolion ” by Penny Pepper

Submitted to Contest #260

Amalie was outside waiting for the bus, muddled, when she pulled the arm of her so called ‘friend’, and he turned around.“Okay Dolion. What’s been going on?”“Nothing. Look, I got to get home, I’ll see you later.” And just like that he was off in the crowd of teenagers waiting to get home.That week he and Amalie were supposed to work on some school project that Dolion had even seemed excited for, but then the Tuesday after they got the project he started to avoid her and now it was due that Monday coming up.And how much had they worked on it?...

“ High School in the 70's and 80's ” by Josh Abel

When I entered high school I had a full beard and a medical condition (a seizure disorder) that wasn’t under control with medication. In junior high I was called Abraham Lincoln because of the beard, however no one knew about the seizures. I didn’t eventell my friends about it. It was embracing when I had a seizure. I kept to myself and hid my feelings about it. I didn’t want to go out in public much because I was afraid of people’s reaction if they saw me have a seizure. One time at home I had just climbed aflight of stairs. When I reached ...

“ Fluffy’s Remorse ” by Richard Morris

My name is Dirk. I don’t remember when I fell in love with Maribeth, but it was sometime during my senior year in high school. I was 17. We spent endless days together, driving aimlessly with the windows down in the old Buick, ballroom dancing, laughing at private jokes, going to the drive-in movies they still had back then, and sharing dreams as vast as the horizon.  Maribeth had a way of making the world brighter. Her laughter was infectious. She was a dancer, and her energy was boundless. The girl was beautiful in an effortless way, ...

The Best High School Short Stories

Let’s face it, it can be hard to get high schoolers excited about reading short stories. Between the distractions of Netflix, TikTok, and the latest games, there’s a lot of things your high school students may prefer over analyzing a new story.

But what if you offered them stories that were fresh, feisty, and relatable? Instead of only presenting them with famous short stories that are at least 50 years out of date, our collection of high school short stories provides you with a consistently fresh and updated collection teens can actually get behind.

The freshest high school short stories

If you’re looking for new and emerging voices to keep your students engaged, you’ve come to the right place. We at Reedsy use our weekly short story contest to fill a never-ending well of exciting new short stories for high school students. These may not be the same old stories you’re used to teaching, but they’re ones that your teens are much more likely to actually want to read. Provided by writers from around the world, these stories present a picture of high school life both modern and historical, and are written in more styles than you could ever cover in a single semester.

So if you want to teach something modern and exciting, pull up a chair and get reading our collection of new high school short stories. We’ve highlighted our favorites at the top by pulling up stories that have either been shortlisted or won our contests, but each story here offers something unique. Your students will thank you.

(Psst... If you'd like to read the best of the best entries from across 40+ genres, be sure to check out Prompted , our new literary magazine — there's a free copy waiting for you!)

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Learn English Through Story

Reading English stories is one of the most effective ways of improving your language skills. We have a lot of story books for all levels to learn English easily and quickly. Each English stories has audio files with subtitles. You can also free download them in PDF book form. We offer you to learn English through stories.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (for Elementary Levels A2)

English Stories to improve English – “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” Free Download

Watch this story on YouTube and improve your English skills.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

By Lewis Carroll

Retold by Jennifer Bassett

Chapter one: Down the rabbit-hole

Chapter two: the pool of tears, chapter three: conversation with a caterpillar, chapter four: the cheshire cat, chapter five: a mad tea-party, chapter six: the queen’s game of croquet, chapter seven: who stole the tarts.

     Alice was beginning to get very bored. She and her sister were sitting under the trees. Her sister was reading, but Alice had nothing to do. Once or twice she looked into her sister’s book, but it had no pictures or conversations in it.

     ‘And what is the use of a book,’ thought Alice, ‘without pictures or conversations?’

     She tried to think of something to do, but it was a hot day and she felt very sleepy and stupid. She was still sitting and thinking when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran past her.

Suddenly a White Rabbit ran past her

      There was nothing really strange about seeing a rabbit.  And Alice was not very surprised when the Rabbit said, ‘Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!’ (Perhaps it was a little strange, Alice thought later, but at the time she was not surprised.)

     But then the Rabbit took a watch out of its pocket, looked at it, and hurried on. At once Alice jumped to her feet.

      ‘I’ve never before seen a rabbit with either a pocket, or a watch to take out of it,’ she thought. And she ran quickly across the field after the Rabbit. She did not stop to think, and when the Rabbit ran down a large rabbit-hole, Alice followed it immediately.

     After a little way the rabbit-hole suddenly went down, deep into the ground. Alice could not stop herself falling, and down she went, too.

     It was a very strange hole. Alice was falling very slowly, and she had time to think and to look around her. She could see nothing below her because it was so dark. But when she looked at the sides of the hole, she could see cupboards and books and pictures on the walls.  She had time to take things out of a cupboard, look at them, and then put them back in a cupboard lower down.

     ‘Well!’ thought Alice. ‘After a fall like this, I can fall anywhere! I can fall downstairs at home, and I won’t cry or say a word about it!’

      Down, down, down. ‘How far have I fallen now?’ Alice said aloud to herself. ‘Perhaps I’m near the centre of the earth. Let me think …  That’s four thousand miles down.’ (Alice was very good at her school lessons and could remember a lot of things like this.)

      Down, down, down. Would she ever stop falling? Alice was very nearly asleep when, suddenly, she was sitting on the ground.  Quickly, she jumped to her feet and looked around. She could see the White Rabbit, who was hurrying away and still talking to himself. ‘Oh my ears and whiskers!’ he was saying. ‘How late it’s getting!’

      Alice ran after him like the wind. She was getting very near him when he suddenly turned a corner. Alice ran round the corner too, and then stopped. She was now in a long, dark room with doors all round the walls, and she could not see the White Rabbit anywhere.

      She tried to open the doors, but they were all locked. ‘How will I ever get out again?’ she thought sadly. Then she saw a little glass table with three legs, and on the top of it was a very small gold key. Alice quickly took the key and tried it in all the doors, but oh dear! Either the locks were too big, or the key was too small, but she could not open any of the doors.

      Then she saw another door, a door that was only forty centimetres high. The little gold key unlocked this door easily, but of course Alice could not get through it – she was much too big. So she lay on the floor and looked through the open door, into a beautiful garden with green trees and bright flowers.

     Poor Alice was very unhappy. ‘What a wonderful garden!’ she said to herself. ‘I’d like to be out there – not in this dark room. Why can’t I get smaller?’  It was already a very strange day, and Alice was beginning to think that anything was possible.

     After a while she locked the door again, got up and went back to the glass table. She put the key down and then she saw a little bottle on the table (‘I’m sure it wasn’t here before,’ said Alice).  Round the neck of the bottle was a piece of paper with the words DRINK ME in large letters.

     But Alice was a careful girl.  ‘It can be dangerous to drink out of strange bottles,’ she said. ‘What will it do to me?’ She drank a little bit very slowly. The taste was very nice, like chocolate and oranges and hot sweet coffee, and very soon Alice finished the bottle.

‘What a strange feeling!’ said Alice.  ‘I think I’m getting smaller and smaller every second.’

      And she was. A few minutes later she was only twenty- five centimetres high. ‘And now,’ she said happily, ‘I can get through the little door into that beautiful garden.’

     She ran at once to the door. When she got there, she remembered that the little gold key was back on the glass table. She ran back to the table for it, but of course, she was now much too small! There was the key, high above her, on top of the table. She tried very hard to climb up the table leg, but she could not do it.

      At last, tired and unhappy, Alice sat down on the floor and cried. But after a while she spoke to herself angrily.

      ‘Come now,’ she said. ‘Stop crying at once. What’s the use of crying?’ She was a strange child, and often talked to herself like this.

      Soon she saw a little glass box near her on the floor. She opened it, and found a very small cake with the words EAT ME on it.

     Nothing could surprise Alice now. ‘Well, I’ll eat it,’ she said. ‘If I get taller, I can take the key off the table. And if I get smaller, I can get under the door. One way or another, I’ll get into the garden. So it doesn’t matter what happens!’

Alice tried very hard to climb up the table leg.

     She ate a bit of the cake, and then put her hand on top of her head.  ‘Which way?  Which way?’  she asked herself, a little afraid. Nothing happened.  This was not really surprising. People don’t usually get taller or shorter when they eat cake. But a lot of strange things were happening to Alice today. ‘It will be very boring,’ she said, ‘if nothing happens.’

      So she went on eating, and very soon the cake was finished.

       Curiouser and curiouser!’ said Alice. (She was very surprised, and for a minute she forgot how to speak good English.)

      ‘I shall be as tall as a house in a minute,’ she said. She tried to look down at her feet, and could only just see them. ‘Goodbye, feet!’ she called. ‘Who will put on your shoes now? Oh dear! What nonsense I’m talking!’

     Just then her head hit the ceiling of the room. She was now about three metres high. Quickly, she took the little gold key from the table and hurried to the garden door.

     Poor Alice!  She lay on the floor and looked into the garden with one eye.  She could not even put her head through the door.

    She began to cry again, and went on crying and crying. The tears ran down her face, and soon there was a large pool of water all around her on the floor. Suddenly she heard a voice, and she stopped crying to listen.

    ‘Oh, the Duchess, the Duchess! She’ll be so angry! I’m late, and she’s waiting for me. Oh dear, oh dear!’

    It was the White Rabbit again. He was hurrying down the long room, with some white gloves in one hand and a large fan in the other hand.

     Alice was afraid, but she needed help. She spoke in a quiet voice.  ‘Oh, please, sir—’

    The Rabbit jumped wildly, dropped the gloves and the fan, and hurried away as fast as he could.

     Alice picked up the fan and the gloves. The room was very hot, so she began to fan herself while she talked. ‘Oh dear! How strange everything is today! Did I change in the night? Am I a different person today?  But if I’m a different person, then the next question is – who am I? Ah, that’s the mystery.’

The Rabbit jumped wildly, and dropped the gloves and the fan.

     She began to feel very unhappy again, but then she looked down at her hand. She was wearing one of the Rabbit’s white gloves. ‘How did I get it on my hand?’ she thought.  ‘Oh, I’m getting smaller again!’ She looked round the room. ‘I’m already less than a metre high. And getting smaller every second! How can I stop it?’ She saw the fan in her other hand, and quickly dropped it.

      She was now very, very small – and the little garden door was locked again, and the little gold key was lying on the glass table.

     ‘Things are worse than ever,’ thought poor Alice. She turned away from the door, and fell into salt water, right up to her neck. At first she thought it was the sea, but then she saw it was the pool of tears. Her tears. Crying makes a lot of tears when you are three metres tall.

    ‘Oh, why did I cry so much?’  said Alice.  She swam around and looked for a way out, but the pool was very big. Just then she saw an animal in the water near her. It looked like a large animal to Alice, but it was only a mouse.

     ‘Shall I speak to it?’  thought Alice.  ‘Everything’s very strange down here, so perhaps a mouse can talk.’

     So she began: ‘Oh Mouse, do you know the way out of this pool? I am very tired of swimming, oh Mouse!’ (Alice did not know if this was the right way to speak to a mouse. But she wanted to be polite.)

      The mouse looked at her with its little eyes, but it said nothing.

     ‘Perhaps it doesn’t understand English,’ thought Alice. ‘Perhaps it’s a French mouse.’ So she began again, and said in French:  ‘Where is my cat?’  (This was the first sentence in her French lesson-book.)

It looked like a large animal to Alice, but it was only a mouse.

     The mouse jumped half out of the water and looked at her angrily.

    ‘Oh, I’m so sorry!’ cried Alice quickly. ‘Of course, you don’t like cats, do you?’

    ‘Like cats?’ cried the mouse in a high,  angry voice. ‘Does any mouse like cats?’

    ‘Well, perhaps not,’ Alice began kindly.

     But the mouse was now swimming quickly away, and soon Alice was alone again.  At last she found her way out of the pool and sat down on the ground. She felt very lonely and unhappy. But after a while the White Rabbit came past again, looking for his white gloves and his fan.

    ‘The Duchess! The Duchess! Oh my ears and whiskers! She’ll cut my head off, I know she will! Oh, where did I drop my gloves?’ Then he saw Alice. ‘Why, Mary Ann, what are you doing here? Run home at once, and bring me some gloves and a fan. Quick, now!’

     Alice hurried away. ‘But where is his house?’  she thought while she ran. Strangely, she was no longer in the long room with the little door, but outside in a wood. She ran and ran but could not see a house anywhere, so she sat down under a flower to rest.

   “Now,’ Alice said to herself. ‘First, I must get a little bigger, and second, I must find my way into that beautiful garden. I think that will be the best plan. But oh dear! How shall I get bigger? Perhaps I must eat or drink something, but the question is, what?’

     Alice looked all around her at the flowers and the trees, but she could not see anything to eat. Then she saw a large mushroom near her. It was as tall as she was. She walked across to look at it, and there, on top of the mushroom, was a large caterpillar, smoking a pipe. After a while, the Caterpillar took the pipe out of its mouth and said to Alice in a slow, sleepy voice, ‘Who are you?’

     ‘I don’t really know, sir,’ said Alice. ‘I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I have changed so often since then. I think I am a different person now.’

    ‘What do you mean by that?’ said the Caterpillar. ‘Explain yourself!’

    ‘I can’t explain myself, sir,’ said Alice, ‘because I’m not myself, you know.’

    ‘I don’t know,’ said the Caterpillar.

‘Explain yourself!’ said the Caterpillar.

     ‘It’s difficult to describe,’ Alice replied politely.  ‘One minute I’m very small, the next minute I’m as tall as a house, then I’m small again. Usually, I stay the same all day, and changing so often feels very strange to me.’

      ‘You!’ said the Caterpillar, in a very unfriendly voice. ‘Who are you?’

      They were now back at the beginning of their conversation, which was not very helpful. Alice felt a little cross and decided to walk away.

      ‘Come back!’  the Caterpillar called after her. ‘I’ve something important to say.’

      This sounded better, so Alice turned back.

     ‘Never get angry,’ said the Caterpillar.

      ‘Is that all?’ said Alice, trying not to be angry.

     ‘No,’ said the Caterpillar. For some minutes it smoked its pipe and did not speak, but at last it took the pipe out of its mouth, and said, ‘So you’ve changed, have you? How tall do you want to be?’

     ‘I would like to be a little larger, sir, please,’ said Alice. ‘Eight centimetres is really very small.’

     For a while the Caterpillar smoked its pipe. Then it shook itself, got down off the mushroom, and moved slowly away into the grass. It did not look back at Alice, but said, ‘One side will make you taller, and the other side will make you shorter.’

     ‘One side of what?’ thought Alice to herself.

     She did not say this aloud, but the Caterpillar said, ‘Of the mushroom.’ Then it moved away into the wood.

     Alice looked at the mushroom carefully, but it was round, and did not have sides. At last she broke off a piece in each hand from opposite sides of the mushroom. She ate some of the piece in her left hand, and waited to see what would happen.

     A minute later her head was as high as the tallest tree in the wood, and she was looking at a sea of green leaves. Then a bird appeared and began to fly around her head, screaming, ‘Egg thief!  Egg thief! Go away!’

    ‘I’m not an egg thief,’ said Alice.

    ‘Oh no?’ said the bird angrily. ‘But you eat eggs, don’t you?’

    ‘Well, yes, I do, but I don’t steal them,’ explained Alice quickly. ‘We have them for breakfast, you know.’

     ‘Then how do you get them, if you don’t steal them?’ screamed the bird.

      This was a difficult question to answer, so Alice brought up her right hand through the leaves and ate a little from the other piece of mushroom. She began to get smaller at once and, very carefully, she ate first from one hand, then from the other, until she was about twenty- five centimetres high.

     ‘That’s better,’ she said to herself. ‘And now I must find that garden.’ She began to walk through the wood, and after a while she came to a little house.

     There was a boy outside the door, with a large letter in his hand. (He was dressed like a boy, but his face was very like a fish, Alice thought.) The Fish-Boy knocked at the door, and a second later a large plate came flying out of an open window.

      ‘A letter for the Duchess,’ the Fish-Boy shouted. He pushed the letter under the door and went away.

     Alice went up to the door and knocked, but there was a lot of noise inside and nobody answered. So she opened the door and walked in.

‘A letter for the Duchess,’ the Fish-Boy shouted

      She found herself in a kitchen, which was full of smoke. There was a very angry cook by the fire, and in the middle of the room sat the Duchess, holding a screaming baby. Every few minutes a plate crashed to the floor. There was also a large cat, which was sitting on a chair and grinning from ear to ear.

     ‘Please,’ Alice said politely to the Duchess, ‘why does your cat grin like that?’

     ‘It’s a Cheshire Cat,’ said the Duchess. ‘That’s why.’

     ‘I didn’t know that cats could grin,’ said Alice.

     ‘Well, you don’t know much,’ said the Duchess. Another plate crashed to the floor and Alice jumped. ‘Here!’ the Duchess went on. ‘You can hold the baby for a bit, if you like. The Queen has invited me to play croquet, and I must go and get ready.’ She pushed the baby into Alice’s arms and hurried out of the room.

There was a large cat, which was grinning from ear to ear.

     ‘Oh, the poor little thing!’ said Alice, looking at the baby, which had a very strange face. She took it outside into the wood and walked around under the trees. Then the baby began to make strange noises, and Alice looked into its face again. Its eyes were really very small for a baby, and its nose now looked very like the nose of a pig.

      ‘Don’t make noises like that, my dear,’ said Alice. ‘It’s not polite. You’re beginning to sound like a pig.’

    But a few minutes later, there was no mistake. It was a pig.  Alice put it carefully on the ground, and it ran quietly away on its four legs into the wood.

    ‘I’m pleased about that,’ Alice said to herself. ‘It will be a good-looking pig, but it would be terrible to be a child with a face like that.’

     She was thinking about pigs and children when she suddenly saw the Cheshire Cat in a tree. The Cat grinned at her, and she went nearer to it.

    ‘Please,’ she said, ‘can you tell me which way to go from here?’

      ‘But where do you want to get to?’ said the Cat.

      ‘It doesn’t really matter—’ began Alice.

      ‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said the Cat.

      ‘But I would like to get somewhere,’ Alice explained.

      ‘If you just go on walking,’ said the Cat, ‘in the end you’ll arrive somewhere.’

     That was true, thought Alice, but not very helpful, so she tried another question.  ‘What kind of people live near here?’

     ‘To the left,’ the Cat said, ‘lives a Hatter. And to the right, lives a March Hare. You can visit either of them. They’re both mad.’

     ‘But I don’t want to visit mad people,’ said Alice.

     ‘We’re all mad here, you know,’ said the Cat. ‘I’m mad. You’re mad.’

     ‘How do you know that I’m mad?’ said Alice.

     ‘Of course you’re mad,’ said the Cat.  ‘Only mad people come here.’

     Alice was thinking about this, but the Cat went on, ‘Are you playing croquet with the Queen today?’

    ‘I would like to very much,’ said Alice, ‘but nobody has invited me yet.’

    ‘You’ll see me there,’ said the Cat, and vanished.

     Alice was not really surprised at this, because so many strange things were happening today. She was still looking at the tree when, suddenly, the Cat appeared again.

     ‘I forgot to ask,’ said the Cat. ‘What happened to the baby?’

     ‘It turned into a pig,’ Alice said.

     ‘I’m not surprised,’ said the Cat, and vanished again.

     Alice began to walk on, and decided to visit the March Hare. ‘It’s the month of May now,’ she said to herself, ‘so perhaps the Hare won’t be as mad as he was in March.’

    Suddenly, there was the Cheshire Cat again, sitting in another tree. Alice jumped in surprise.

    ‘Do you think,’ she said politely, ‘that you could come and go more slowly?’

    ‘All right,’ said the Cat. And this time it vanished very slowly. First its tail went, then its body, then its head, and last, the grin.

      ‘Well!  I’ve often seen a cat without a grin,’ thought Alice, ‘but never a grin without a cat!’

     Soon she saw the house of the March Hare in front of her.  It was a large house, so she ate a little piece of mushroom to get bigger, and walked on.

This time the Cat vanished very slowly.

      There was a table under a tree outside the house, and the March Hare and the Hatter were having tea. A Dormouse was sitting between them, asleep. The three of them were all sitting together at one corner of the table, but the table was large and there were many other seats. Alice sat down in a big chair at one end.

     ‘Have some coffee,’ the March Hare said in a friendly voice.

     Alice looked all round the table, but she could only see a teapot. ‘I don’t see any coffee,’ she said.

    ‘There isn’t any,’ said the March Hare.

     ‘Then why did you ask me to have some?’ said Alice crossly. ‘It wasn’t very polite of you.’

     ‘It wasn’t very polite of you to sit down. We haven’t invited you to tea,’ said the March Hare.

    ‘But there are lots of seats,’ said Alice.

    ‘Your hair’s too long,’ said the Hatter, looking at Alice with interest.

    ‘It’s not polite to say things like that,’ said Alice.

    The Hatter looked surprised, but he said, ‘Why is a bird like a desk?’

    Alice was pleased.  She enjoyed playing wordgames, so she said, ‘That’s an easy question.’

    ‘Do you mean you know the answer?’ said the March Hare.

    ‘Yes,’ said Alice.

    ‘Then you must say what you mean,’ the March Hare said.

    ‘I do,’ Alice said quickly. ‘Well, I mean what I say. And that’s the same thing, you know.’

    ‘No, it isn’t!’ said the Hatter. ‘Listen to this. I see what I eat means one thing, but I eat what I see means something very different.’

    Alice did not know what to say to this. So she took some tea and some bread-and-butter while she thought about it. The Dormouse woke up for a minute and then went to sleep again. After a while the Hatter took out his watch, shook it, then looked at it sadly.

    ‘Two days slow! I told you that butter wasn’t good for watches!’ he said angrily to the March Hare.

    ‘It was the best butter,’ said the March Hare sadly.

    Alice was looking at the watch with interest.  ‘It’s a strange watch,’ she said. ‘It shows the day of the week, but not the time.’

    ‘But we know the time,’ said the Hatter. ‘It’s always six o’clock here.’

    Alice suddenly understood. ‘Is that why there are all these cups and plates?’  she said.  ‘It’s always tea-time here, and you go on moving round the table.  Is that right? But what happens when you come to the beginning again?’

    ‘Don’t ask questions,’ said the March Hare crossly. ‘You must tell us a story now.’

    ‘But I don’t know any stories,’ said Alice.

    Then the March Hare and the Hatter turned to the Dormouse. ‘Wake up, Dormouse!’ they shouted loudly in its ears. ‘Tell us a story.’

    ‘Yes, please do,’ said Alice.

     The Dormouse woke up and quickly began to tell a story, but a few minutes later it was asleep again. The March Hare poured a little hot tea on its nose, and the Hatter began to look for a clean plate. Alice decided to leave and walked away into the wood. She looked back once, and the March Hare and the Hatter were trying to put the Dormouse into the teapot.

The March Hare poured a little hot tea on the Dormouse’s nose.

    ‘Well, I won’t go there again,’ said Alice.  ‘What a stupid tea-party it was!’ Just then she saw a door in one of the trees. ‘How curious!’ she thought. ‘But everything is strange today. I think I’ll go in.’

    So she went in. And there she was, back in the long room with the little glass table. At once, she picked up the gold key from the table, unlocked the little door into the garden, and then began to eat a piece of mushroom. When she was down to about thirty centimetres high, she walked through the door, and then, at last, she was in the beautiful garden with its green trees and bright flowers.

    Near the door there was a rose-tree and three gardeners, who were looking at the roses in a very worried way.

     ‘What’s the matter?’ Alice said to them.

    ‘You see, Miss,’ said the first gardener, ‘these roses are white, but the Queen only likes red roses, and she—’

    ‘The Queen!’ said the second gardener suddenly, and at once, the three gardeners lay down flat on their faces. Alice turned round and saw a great crowd of people.

     It was a pack of cards, walking through the garden. There were clubs (they were soldiers), and diamonds, and ten little children (they were hearts).  Next came some Kings and Queens. Then Alice saw the White Rabbit, and behind him, the Knave of Hearts. And last of all, came THE KING AND QUEEN OF HEARTS.

    When the crowd came near to Alice, they all stopped and looked at her, and the Queen said, ‘Who are you?’

    ‘My name is Alice, Your Majesty,’ said Alice very politely. But she thought to herself, ‘They’re only a pack of cards. I don’t need to be afraid of them!’

    ‘And who are these? said the Queen, looking at the three gardeners. Then she saw the white roses, and her face turned red and angry. ‘Off with their heads!’  she shouted, and soldiers hurried up to take the gardeners away. The Queen turned to Alice. ‘Can you play croquet?’ she shouted.

    ‘Yes!’ shouted Alice.

     ‘Come on, then!’ shouted the Queen. The crowd began to move on, and Alice went with them.

    ‘It’s – it’s a very fine day,’ said a worried voice in her ear. Alice saw that the White Rabbit was by her side.

    ‘Very fine,’ said Alice. ‘Where’s the Duchess?’

     ‘Shhh!’  said the Rabbit in a hurried voice.  ‘She’s in prison, waiting for execution.’

     ‘What for?’ said Alice.

    But just then the Queen shouted, ‘Get to your places!’ and the game began.

    It was the strangest game of croquet in Alice’s life! The balls were hedgehogs, and the mallets were flamingoes. And the hoops were made by soldiers, who turned over and stood on their hands and feet.  Alice held her flamingo’s body under her arm, but the flamingo turned its long neck first this way and then that way. At last, Alice was ready to hit the ball with the flamingo’s head. But by then, the hedgehog was tired of waiting and was walking away across the croquet-ground.  And when both the flamingo and the hedgehog were ready, there was no hoop! The soldiers too were always getting up and walking away.  It really was a very difficult game, Alice thought.

     The players all played at the same time, and they were always arguing and fighting for hedgehogs. Nobody could agree about anything. Very soon, the Queen was wildly angry, and went around shouting ‘Off with his head!’ or ‘Off with her head!’ about once a minute.

    Alice began to feel worried. ‘The Queen is sure to argue with me soon,’ she thought.  ‘And what will happen to me then? They’re cutting people’s heads off all the time here. I’m surprised there is anyone left alive!’

     Just then she saw something very strange. She watched carefully, and after a minute or two she saw that the thing was a grin. ‘It’s the Cheshire Cat,’ she said to herself.  ‘Now I’ll have somebody to talk to.’   

The balls were hedgehogs, and the mallets were flamingoes

    ‘How are you getting on?’ said the Cat, when its mouth appeared.

    Alice waited. ‘I can’t talk to something without ears,’ she thought. Slowly the Cat’s eyes, then its ears, and then the rest of its head appeared. But it stopped at the neck, and its body did not appear.

    Alice began to tell the Cat all about the game. ‘It’s very difficult to play,’ she said.  ‘Everybody argues all the time, and the hoops and the hedgehogs walk away.’

    ‘How do you like the Queen?’ said the Cat quietly.

     ‘I don’t,’ said Alice. ‘She’s very—’ Just then she saw the Queen behind her, so she went on, ‘—clever. She’s the best player here.’

    The Queen smiled and walked past.

    ‘Who are you talking to?’ said the King. He came up behind Alice and looked at the Cat’s head in surprise.

      ‘It’s a friend of mine – a Cheshire Cat,’ said Alice.

      ‘I’m not sure that I like it,’ said the King.  ‘But it can touch my hand if it likes.’

     ‘I prefer not to,’ said the Cat.

    ‘Well!’  said the King angrily.  He called out to the Queen, ‘My dear! There’s a cat here, and I don’t like it.’

     The Queen did not look round. ‘Off with its head!’ she shouted. ‘Call for the executioner!’

      Alice was a little worried for her friend, but when the executioner arrived, everybody began to argue.

     ‘I can’t cut off a head,’ said the executioner, ‘if there isn’t a body to cut it off from.’

      ‘You can cut the head off,’ said the King, ‘from anything that’s got a head.’

     ‘If somebody doesn’t do something quickly,’ said the Queen, ‘I’ll cut everybody’s head off.’

      Nobody liked that plan very much, so they all turned to Alice. ‘And what do you say?’ they cried.

     ‘The Cat belongs to the Duchess,’ said Alice carefully. ‘Perhaps you could ask her about it.’

    ‘She’s in prison,’ the Queen said to the executioner. ‘Bring her here at once.’

     But then the Cat’s head slowly began to vanish, and when the executioner came back with the Duchess, there was nothing there. The King ran wildly up and down, looking for the Cat, and the Duchess put her arm round Alice. ‘I’m so pleased to see you again, my dear!’ she said.

     ‘Let’s get on with the game,’ the Queen said angrily, and Alice followed her back to the croquet-ground.

    The game went on, but all the time the Queen was arguing, and shouting ‘Off with his head!’ or ‘Off with her head!’  Soon there were no hoops left, because the soldiers (who were the hoops) were too busy taking everybody to prison.  And at the end there were only three players left – the King, the Queen, and Alice.

     The Queen stopped shouting and said to Alice, ‘Have you seen the Mock Turtle yet?’

    ‘No,’ said Alice. ‘I’m not sure what a Mock Turtle is.’

    ‘Then come with me,’ said the Queen.

    They found the Mock Turtle down by the sea. Next to him was a Gryphon, asleep in the sun. Then the Queen hurried away, saying, ‘I have to get on with some executions.’

    The Gryphon woke up, and said sleepily to Alice, ‘It’s just talk, you know. They never execute anybody.’

    Alice was pleased to hear this. She felt a little afraid of the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle, because they were so large. But they were very friendly, and sang songs and told her many stories about their lives. The Mock Turtle was in the middle of a very sad song when they all heard a shout a long way away: ‘It’s beginning!’ ‘Come on! We must hurry!’ cried the Gryphon. It took Alice by the hand and began to run.

The Mock Turtle and the Gryphon were very friendly.

      The King and Queen of Hearts were sitting on their thrones when Alice and the Gryphon arrived. There was a great crowd of birds and animals, and all the pack of cards.

    Soldiers stood all around the Knave of Hearts, and near the King was the White Rabbit, with a trumpet in one hand.

    In the middle of the room there was a table, with a large plate of tarts on it. ‘They look good,’ thought Alice, who was feeling a little hungry.

     Then the White Rabbit called out loudly, ‘Silence! The trial of the Knave of Hearts will now begin!’ He took out a long piece of paper, and read:

The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts,

All on a summer day.

The Knave of Hearts, he stole those tarts,

And took them all away.

        ‘Very good,’ said the King. ‘Call the first witness.’

    Alice looked at the jury, who were now writing everything down. It was a very strange jury. Some of the jurymen were animals, and the others were birds.

     Then the White Rabbit blew his trumpet three times, and called out, ‘First witness!’

    The first witness was the Hatter.  He came in with a teacup in one hand and a piece of bread-and-butter in the other hand.  ‘I’m very sorry, Your Majesty,’ he said.  ‘I was in the middle of tea when the trial began.’

     ‘Take off your hat,’ the King said.

     ‘It isn’t mine,’ said the Hatter.

    ‘Stolen! Write that down,’ the King said to the jury.

     ‘I keep hats to sell,’ explained the Hatter. ‘I don’t have a hat myself. I’m a Hatter.’

     ‘Give your evidence,’ said the King, ‘or we’ll cut your head off.’

    The Hatter’s face turned white. ‘I’m a poor man, Your Majesty,’ he began, in a shaking voice.

     Just then Alice had a strange feeling. After a minute or two she understood what it was.

    ‘Don’t push like that,’ said the Dormouse, who was sitting next to her. ‘I’m nearly falling off my seat.’

     ‘I’m very sorry,’ Alice said politely. ‘I’m getting bigger and taller, you see.’

     ‘Well, you can’t do that here,’ said the Dormouse crossly, and he got up and moved to another seat.

    The Hatter was still giving evidence, but nobody could understand a word of it. The King looked at the Queen, and the Queen looked at the executioner.

     The unhappy Hatter saw this, and dropped his bread- and-butter.  ‘I’m a poor man, Your Majesty,’ he said again.

    ‘You’re a very poor speaker,’ said the King. He turned to the White Rabbit. ‘Call the next witness,’ he said.

    The next witness was the Duchess’s cook, who spoke very angrily and said  that  she  would  not  give  any evidence. The King looked worried and told the White Rabbit to call another witness. Alice watched while the White Rabbit looked at the names on his piece of paper. Then, to her great surprise, he called out loudly, ‘Alice!’ ‘Here!’ cried Alice, jumping to her feet.

     ‘Here!’ cried Alice, jumping to her feet.

     ‘What do you know about these tarts?’ said the King.

     ‘Nothing,’ said Alice.

     The Queen was looking hard at Alice. Now she said,

     ‘All people a mile high must leave the room.’

     ‘I’m not a mile high,’ said Alice. ‘And I won’t leave the room. I want to hear the evidence.’

    ‘There is no more evidence,’ said the King very quickly, ‘and now the jury will—’

     ‘Your Majesty!’ said the White Rabbit, jumping up in a great hurry.  ‘We’ve just found this letter. There’s no name on it, but I think the Knave wrote it.’

    ‘No, I didn’t!’ said the Knave loudly.

    ‘Read it to us,’ said the King.

    ‘Where shall I begin, Your Majesty?’ asked the Rabbit.

    ‘Begin at the beginning,’ said the King, ‘and go on until you get to the end, then stop.’

    Everybody listened very carefully while the White Rabbit read these words.

They tell me you have been to her,

And talked of me to him.

She thought I was a gardener,

But said I could not swim.

He tells them that I have not gone,

(We know that this is true).

If she decide to hurry on,

What will they do to you?

I gave her one, they gave him two,

You gave us three or more.

They all returned from him to you,

But they were mine before.

   ‘That’s a very important piece of evidence,’ said the King. He looked very pleased. ‘Now the jury must—’

     ‘If anybody in the jury can explain that letter,’ said Alice (she was not afraid of anything now, because she was much bigger than everybody in the room), ‘I’ll give him sixpence. It’s all nonsense! It doesn’t mean anything.’

    The jury busily wrote this down.  ‘She thinks it’s all nonsense.’

     ‘All nonsense, eh?’ said the King. He read some of the words again. ‘But said I could not swim. You can’t swim, can you?’ he said to the Knave.

    The Knave’s face was sad. ‘Do I look like a swimmer?’ he said. (And he didn’t – because he was made of paper.)

     The King smiled. ‘I understand everything now,’ he said. ‘There are the tarts, and here is the Knave of Hearts. And now the jury must decide who the thief is.’

    ‘No, no!’ said the Queen. ‘Off with his head! The jury can say what it thinks later.’

    ‘What nonsense!’ said Alice loudly. ‘The jury must decide first. You can’t—’

    ‘Be quiet!’ said the Queen, her face turning red.

    ‘I won’t!’ said Alice.

    ‘Off with her head!’  screamed the Queen.  Nobody moved.

    ‘It doesn’t matter what you say,’ said Alice.  ‘You’re only a pack of cards!’

    Then the pack of cards flew up into the sky and began to fall on Alice’s face. She gave a little scream . . . and woke up. She was lying next to her sister under the trees, and some leaves were falling on her face.

    ‘Wake up, Alice dear,’ said her sister.  ‘You’ve been asleep a long time.’

    ‘Oh, I’ve had a very curious dream!’  said Alice, and she told her sister all about the strange adventures in her wonderful dream.   

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Does Homework Really Help Students Learn?

A conversation with a Wheelock researcher, a BU student, and a fourth-grade teacher

“Quality homework is engaging and relevant to kids’ lives,” says Wheelock’s Janine Bempechat. “It gives them autonomy and engages them in the community and with their families. In some subjects, like math, worksheets can be very helpful. It has to do with the value of practicing over and over.” Photo by iStock/Glenn Cook Photography

Do your homework.

If only it were that simple.

Educators have debated the merits of homework since the late 19th century. In recent years, amid concerns of some parents and teachers that children are being stressed out by too much homework, things have only gotten more fraught.

“Homework is complicated,” says developmental psychologist Janine Bempechat, a Wheelock College of Education & Human Development clinical professor. The author of the essay “ The Case for (Quality) Homework—Why It Improves Learning and How Parents Can Help ” in the winter 2019 issue of Education Next , Bempechat has studied how the debate about homework is influencing teacher preparation, parent and student beliefs about learning, and school policies.

She worries especially about socioeconomically disadvantaged students from low-performing schools who, according to research by Bempechat and others, get little or no homework.

BU Today  sat down with Bempechat and Erin Bruce (Wheelock’17,’18), a new fourth-grade teacher at a suburban Boston school, and future teacher freshman Emma Ardizzone (Wheelock) to talk about what quality homework looks like, how it can help children learn, and how schools can equip teachers to design it, evaluate it, and facilitate parents’ role in it.

BU Today: Parents and educators who are against homework in elementary school say there is no research definitively linking it to academic performance for kids in the early grades. You’ve said that they’re missing the point.

Bempechat : I think teachers assign homework in elementary school as a way to help kids develop skills they’ll need when they’re older—to begin to instill a sense of responsibility and to learn planning and organizational skills. That’s what I think is the greatest value of homework—in cultivating beliefs about learning and skills associated with academic success. If we greatly reduce or eliminate homework in elementary school, we deprive kids and parents of opportunities to instill these important learning habits and skills.

We do know that beginning in late middle school, and continuing through high school, there is a strong and positive correlation between homework completion and academic success.

That’s what I think is the greatest value of homework—in cultivating beliefs about learning and skills associated with academic success.

You talk about the importance of quality homework. What is that?

Quality homework is engaging and relevant to kids’ lives. It gives them autonomy and engages them in the community and with their families. In some subjects, like math, worksheets can be very helpful. It has to do with the value of practicing over and over.

What are your concerns about homework and low-income children?

The argument that some people make—that homework “punishes the poor” because lower-income parents may not be as well-equipped as affluent parents to help their children with homework—is very troubling to me. There are no parents who don’t care about their children’s learning. Parents don’t actually have to help with homework completion in order for kids to do well. They can help in other ways—by helping children organize a study space, providing snacks, being there as a support, helping children work in groups with siblings or friends.

Isn’t the discussion about getting rid of homework happening mostly in affluent communities?

Yes, and the stories we hear of kids being stressed out from too much homework—four or five hours of homework a night—are real. That’s problematic for physical and mental health and overall well-being. But the research shows that higher-income students get a lot more homework than lower-income kids.

Teachers may not have as high expectations for lower-income children. Schools should bear responsibility for providing supports for kids to be able to get their homework done—after-school clubs, community support, peer group support. It does kids a disservice when our expectations are lower for them.

The conversation around homework is to some extent a social class and social justice issue. If we eliminate homework for all children because affluent children have too much, we’re really doing a disservice to low-income children. They need the challenge, and every student can rise to the challenge with enough supports in place.

What did you learn by studying how education schools are preparing future teachers to handle homework?

My colleague, Margarita Jimenez-Silva, at the University of California, Davis, School of Education, and I interviewed faculty members at education schools, as well as supervising teachers, to find out how students are being prepared. And it seemed that they weren’t. There didn’t seem to be any readings on the research, or conversations on what high-quality homework is and how to design it.

Erin, what kind of training did you get in handling homework?

Bruce : I had phenomenal professors at Wheelock, but homework just didn’t come up. I did lots of student teaching. I’ve been in classrooms where the teachers didn’t assign any homework, and I’ve been in rooms where they assigned hours of homework a night. But I never even considered homework as something that was my decision. I just thought it was something I’d pull out of a book and it’d be done.

I started giving homework on the first night of school this year. My first assignment was to go home and draw a picture of the room where you do your homework. I want to know if it’s at a table and if there are chairs around it and if mom’s cooking dinner while you’re doing homework.

The second night I asked them to talk to a grown-up about how are you going to be able to get your homework done during the week. The kids really enjoyed it. There’s a running joke that I’m teaching life skills.

Friday nights, I read all my kids’ responses to me on their homework from the week and it’s wonderful. They pour their hearts out. It’s like we’re having a conversation on my couch Friday night.

It matters to know that the teacher cares about you and that what you think matters to the teacher. Homework is a vehicle to connect home and school…for parents to know teachers are welcoming to them and their families.

Bempechat : I can’t imagine that most new teachers would have the intuition Erin had in designing homework the way she did.

Ardizzone : Conversations with kids about homework, feeling you’re being listened to—that’s such a big part of wanting to do homework….I grew up in Westchester County. It was a pretty demanding school district. My junior year English teacher—I loved her—she would give us feedback, have meetings with all of us. She’d say, “If you have any questions, if you have anything you want to talk about, you can talk to me, here are my office hours.” It felt like she actually cared.

Bempechat : It matters to know that the teacher cares about you and that what you think matters to the teacher. Homework is a vehicle to connect home and school…for parents to know teachers are welcoming to them and their families.

Ardizzone : But can’t it lead to parents being overbearing and too involved in their children’s lives as students?

Bempechat : There’s good help and there’s bad help. The bad help is what you’re describing—when parents hover inappropriately, when they micromanage, when they see their children confused and struggling and tell them what to do.

Good help is when parents recognize there’s a struggle going on and instead ask informative questions: “Where do you think you went wrong?” They give hints, or pointers, rather than saying, “You missed this,” or “You didn’t read that.”

Bruce : I hope something comes of this. I hope BU or Wheelock can think of some way to make this a more pressing issue. As a first-year teacher, it was not something I even thought about on the first day of school—until a kid raised his hand and said, “Do we have homework?” It would have been wonderful if I’d had a plan from day one.

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Senior Contributing Editor

Sara Rimer A journalist for more than three decades, Sara Rimer worked at the Miami Herald , Washington Post and, for 26 years, the New York Times , where she was the New England bureau chief, and a national reporter covering education, aging, immigration, and other social justice issues. Her stories on the death penalty’s inequities were nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and cited in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision outlawing the execution of people with intellectual disabilities. Her journalism honors include Columbia University’s Meyer Berger award for in-depth human interest reporting. She holds a BA degree in American Studies from the University of Michigan. Profile

She can be reached at [email protected] .

Comments & Discussion

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There are 81 comments on Does Homework Really Help Students Learn?

Insightful! The values about homework in elementary schools are well aligned with my intuition as a parent.

when i finish my work i do my homework and i sometimes forget what to do because i did not get enough sleep

same omg it does not help me it is stressful and if I have it in more than one class I hate it.

Same I think my parent wants to help me but, she doesn’t care if I get bad grades so I just try my best and my grades are great.

I think that last question about Good help from parents is not know to all parents, we do as our parents did or how we best think it can be done, so maybe coaching parents or giving them resources on how to help with homework would be very beneficial for the parent on how to help and for the teacher to have consistency and improve homework results, and of course for the child. I do see how homework helps reaffirm the knowledge obtained in the classroom, I also have the ability to see progress and it is a time I share with my kids

The answer to the headline question is a no-brainer – a more pressing problem is why there is a difference in how students from different cultures succeed. Perfect example is the student population at BU – why is there a majority population of Asian students and only about 3% black students at BU? In fact at some universities there are law suits by Asians to stop discrimination and quotas against admitting Asian students because the real truth is that as a group they are demonstrating better qualifications for admittance, while at the same time there are quotas and reduced requirements for black students to boost their portion of the student population because as a group they do more poorly in meeting admissions standards – and it is not about the Benjamins. The real problem is that in our PC society no one has the gazuntas to explore this issue as it may reveal that all people are not created equal after all. Or is it just environmental cultural differences??????

I get you have a concern about the issue but that is not even what the point of this article is about. If you have an issue please take this to the site we have and only post your opinion about the actual topic

This is not at all what the article is talking about.

This literally has nothing to do with the article brought up. You should really take your opinions somewhere else before you speak about something that doesn’t make sense.

we have the same name

so they have the same name what of it?

lol you tell her

totally agree

What does that have to do with homework, that is not what the article talks about AT ALL.

Yes, I think homework plays an important role in the development of student life. Through homework, students have to face challenges on a daily basis and they try to solve them quickly.I am an intense online tutor at 24x7homeworkhelp and I give homework to my students at that level in which they handle it easily.

More than two-thirds of students said they used alcohol and drugs, primarily marijuana, to cope with stress.

You know what’s funny? I got this assignment to write an argument for homework about homework and this article was really helpful and understandable, and I also agree with this article’s point of view.

I also got the same task as you! I was looking for some good resources and I found this! I really found this article useful and easy to understand, just like you! ^^

i think that homework is the best thing that a child can have on the school because it help them with their thinking and memory.

I am a child myself and i think homework is a terrific pass time because i can’t play video games during the week. It also helps me set goals.

Homework is not harmful ,but it will if there is too much

I feel like, from a minors point of view that we shouldn’t get homework. Not only is the homework stressful, but it takes us away from relaxing and being social. For example, me and my friends was supposed to hang at the mall last week but we had to postpone it since we all had some sort of work to do. Our minds shouldn’t be focused on finishing an assignment that in realty, doesn’t matter. I completely understand that we should have homework. I have to write a paper on the unimportance of homework so thanks.

homework isn’t that bad

Are you a student? if not then i don’t really think you know how much and how severe todays homework really is

i am a student and i do not enjoy homework because i practice my sport 4 out of the five days we have school for 4 hours and that’s not even counting the commute time or the fact i still have to shower and eat dinner when i get home. its draining!

i totally agree with you. these people are such boomers

why just why

they do make a really good point, i think that there should be a limit though. hours and hours of homework can be really stressful, and the extra work isn’t making a difference to our learning, but i do believe homework should be optional and extra credit. that would make it for students to not have the leaning stress of a assignment and if you have a low grade you you can catch up.

Studies show that homework improves student achievement in terms of improved grades, test results, and the likelihood to attend college. Research published in the High School Journal indicates that students who spent between 31 and 90 minutes each day on homework “scored about 40 points higher on the SAT-Mathematics subtest than their peers, who reported spending no time on homework each day, on average.” On both standardized tests and grades, students in classes that were assigned homework outperformed 69% of students who didn’t have homework. A majority of studies on homework’s impact – 64% in one meta-study and 72% in another – showed that take home assignments were effective at improving academic achievement. Research by the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) concluded that increased homework led to better GPAs and higher probability of college attendance for high school boys. In fact, boys who attended college did more than three hours of additional homework per week in high school.

So how are your measuring student achievement? That’s the real question. The argument that doing homework is simply a tool for teaching responsibility isn’t enough for me. We can teach responsibility in a number of ways. Also the poor argument that parents don’t need to help with homework, and that students can do it on their own, is wishful thinking at best. It completely ignores neurodiverse students. Students in poverty aren’t magically going to find a space to do homework, a friend’s or siblings to help them do it, and snacks to eat. I feel like the author of this piece has never set foot in a classroom of students.

THIS. This article is pathetic coming from a university. So intellectually dishonest, refusing to address the havoc of capitalism and poverty plays on academic success in life. How can they in one sentence use poor kids in an argument and never once address that poor children have access to damn near 0 of the resources affluent kids have? Draw me a picture and let’s talk about feelings lmao what a joke is that gonna put food in their belly so they can have the calories to burn in order to use their brain to study? What about quiet their 7 other siblings that they share a single bedroom with for hours? Is it gonna force the single mom to magically be at home and at work at the same time to cook food while you study and be there to throw an encouraging word?

Also the “parents don’t need to be a parent and be able to guide their kid at all academically they just need to exist in the next room” is wild. Its one thing if a parent straight up is not equipped but to say kids can just figured it out is…. wow coming from an educator What’s next the teacher doesn’t need to teach cause the kid can just follow the packet and figure it out?

Well then get a tutor right? Oh wait you are poor only affluent kids can afford a tutor for their hours of homework a day were they on average have none of the worries a poor child does. Does this address that poor children are more likely to also suffer abuse and mental illness? Like mentioned what about kids that can’t learn or comprehend the forced standardized way? Just let em fail? These children regularly are not in “special education”(some of those are a joke in their own and full of neglect and abuse) programs cause most aren’t even acknowledged as having disabilities or disorders.

But yes all and all those pesky poor kids just aren’t being worked hard enough lol pretty sure poor children’s existence just in childhood is more work, stress, and responsibility alone than an affluent child’s entire life cycle. Love they never once talked about the quality of education in the classroom being so bad between the poor and affluent it can qualify as segregation, just basically blamed poor people for being lazy, good job capitalism for failing us once again!

why the hell?

you should feel bad for saying this, this article can be helpful for people who has to write a essay about it

This is more of a political rant than it is about homework

I know a teacher who has told his students their homework is to find something they are interested in, pursue it and then come share what they learn. The student responses are quite compelling. One girl taught herself German so she could talk to her grandfather. One boy did a research project on Nelson Mandela because the teacher had mentioned him in class. Another boy, a both on the autism spectrum, fixed his family’s computer. The list goes on. This is fourth grade. I think students are highly motivated to learn, when we step aside and encourage them.

The whole point of homework is to give the students a chance to use the material that they have been presented with in class. If they never have the opportunity to use that information, and discover that it is actually useful, it will be in one ear and out the other. As a science teacher, it is critical that the students are challenged to use the material they have been presented with, which gives them the opportunity to actually think about it rather than regurgitate “facts”. Well designed homework forces the student to think conceptually, as opposed to regurgitation, which is never a pretty sight

Wonderful discussion. and yes, homework helps in learning and building skills in students.

not true it just causes kids to stress

Homework can be both beneficial and unuseful, if you will. There are students who are gifted in all subjects in school and ones with disabilities. Why should the students who are gifted get the lucky break, whereas the people who have disabilities suffer? The people who were born with this “gift” go through school with ease whereas people with disabilities struggle with the work given to them. I speak from experience because I am one of those students: the ones with disabilities. Homework doesn’t benefit “us”, it only tears us down and put us in an abyss of confusion and stress and hopelessness because we can’t learn as fast as others. Or we can’t handle the amount of work given whereas the gifted students go through it with ease. It just brings us down and makes us feel lost; because no mater what, it feels like we are destined to fail. It feels like we weren’t “cut out” for success.

homework does help

here is the thing though, if a child is shoved in the face with a whole ton of homework that isn’t really even considered homework it is assignments, it’s not helpful. the teacher should make homework more of a fun learning experience rather than something that is dreaded

This article was wonderful, I am going to ask my teachers about extra, or at all giving homework.

I agree. Especially when you have homework before an exam. Which is distasteful as you’ll need that time to study. It doesn’t make any sense, nor does us doing homework really matters as It’s just facts thrown at us.

Homework is too severe and is just too much for students, schools need to decrease the amount of homework. When teachers assign homework they forget that the students have other classes that give them the same amount of homework each day. Students need to work on social skills and life skills.

I disagree.

Beyond achievement, proponents of homework argue that it can have many other beneficial effects. They claim it can help students develop good study habits so they are ready to grow as their cognitive capacities mature. It can help students recognize that learning can occur at home as well as at school. Homework can foster independent learning and responsible character traits. And it can give parents an opportunity to see what’s going on at school and let them express positive attitudes toward achievement.

Homework is helpful because homework helps us by teaching us how to learn a specific topic.

As a student myself, I can say that I have almost never gotten the full 9 hours of recommended sleep time, because of homework. (Now I’m writing an essay on it in the middle of the night D=)

I am a 10 year old kid doing a report about “Is homework good or bad” for homework before i was going to do homework is bad but the sources from this site changed my mind!

Homeowkr is god for stusenrs

I agree with hunter because homework can be so stressful especially with this whole covid thing no one has time for homework and every one just wants to get back to there normal lives it is especially stressful when you go on a 2 week vaca 3 weeks into the new school year and and then less then a week after you come back from the vaca you are out for over a month because of covid and you have no way to get the assignment done and turned in

As great as homework is said to be in the is article, I feel like the viewpoint of the students was left out. Every where I go on the internet researching about this topic it almost always has interviews from teachers, professors, and the like. However isn’t that a little biased? Of course teachers are going to be for homework, they’re not the ones that have to stay up past midnight completing the homework from not just one class, but all of them. I just feel like this site is one-sided and you should include what the students of today think of spending four hours every night completing 6-8 classes worth of work.

Are we talking about homework or practice? Those are two very different things and can result in different outcomes.

Homework is a graded assignment. I do not know of research showing the benefits of graded assignments going home.

Practice; however, can be extremely beneficial, especially if there is some sort of feedback (not a grade but feedback). That feedback can come from the teacher, another student or even an automated grading program.

As a former band director, I assigned daily practice. I never once thought it would be appropriate for me to require the students to turn in a recording of their practice for me to grade. Instead, I had in-class assignments/assessments that were graded and directly related to the practice assigned.

I would really like to read articles on “homework” that truly distinguish between the two.

oof i feel bad good luck!

thank you guys for the artical because I have to finish an assingment. yes i did cite it but just thanks

thx for the article guys.

Homework is good

I think homework is helpful AND harmful. Sometimes u can’t get sleep bc of homework but it helps u practice for school too so idk.

I agree with this Article. And does anyone know when this was published. I would like to know.

It was published FEb 19, 2019.

Studies have shown that homework improved student achievement in terms of improved grades, test results, and the likelihood to attend college.

i think homework can help kids but at the same time not help kids

This article is so out of touch with majority of homes it would be laughable if it wasn’t so incredibly sad.

There is no value to homework all it does is add stress to already stressed homes. Parents or adults magically having the time or energy to shepherd kids through homework is dome sort of 1950’s fantasy.

What lala land do these teachers live in?

Homework gives noting to the kid

Homework is Bad

homework is bad.

why do kids even have homework?

Comments are closed.

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Is Homework Good for Kids? Here’s What the Research Says

A s kids return to school, debate is heating up once again over how they should spend their time after they leave the classroom for the day.

The no-homework policy of a second-grade teacher in Texas went viral last week , earning praise from parents across the country who lament the heavy workload often assigned to young students. Brandy Young told parents she would not formally assign any homework this year, asking students instead to eat dinner with their families, play outside and go to bed early.

But the question of how much work children should be doing outside of school remains controversial, and plenty of parents take issue with no-homework policies, worried their kids are losing a potential academic advantage. Here’s what you need to know:

For decades, the homework standard has been a “10-minute rule,” which recommends a daily maximum of 10 minutes of homework per grade level. Second graders, for example, should do about 20 minutes of homework each night. High school seniors should complete about two hours of homework each night. The National PTA and the National Education Association both support that guideline.

But some schools have begun to give their youngest students a break. A Massachusetts elementary school has announced a no-homework pilot program for the coming school year, lengthening the school day by two hours to provide more in-class instruction. “We really want kids to go home at 4 o’clock, tired. We want their brain to be tired,” Kelly Elementary School Principal Jackie Glasheen said in an interview with a local TV station . “We want them to enjoy their families. We want them to go to soccer practice or football practice, and we want them to go to bed. And that’s it.”

A New York City public elementary school implemented a similar policy last year, eliminating traditional homework assignments in favor of family time. The change was quickly met with outrage from some parents, though it earned support from other education leaders.

New solutions and approaches to homework differ by community, and these local debates are complicated by the fact that even education experts disagree about what’s best for kids.

The research

The most comprehensive research on homework to date comes from a 2006 meta-analysis by Duke University psychology professor Harris Cooper, who found evidence of a positive correlation between homework and student achievement, meaning students who did homework performed better in school. The correlation was stronger for older students—in seventh through 12th grade—than for those in younger grades, for whom there was a weak relationship between homework and performance.

Cooper’s analysis focused on how homework impacts academic achievement—test scores, for example. His report noted that homework is also thought to improve study habits, attitudes toward school, self-discipline, inquisitiveness and independent problem solving skills. On the other hand, some studies he examined showed that homework can cause physical and emotional fatigue, fuel negative attitudes about learning and limit leisure time for children. At the end of his analysis, Cooper recommended further study of such potential effects of homework.

Despite the weak correlation between homework and performance for young children, Cooper argues that a small amount of homework is useful for all students. Second-graders should not be doing two hours of homework each night, he said, but they also shouldn’t be doing no homework.

Not all education experts agree entirely with Cooper’s assessment.

Cathy Vatterott, an education professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, supports the “10-minute rule” as a maximum, but she thinks there is not sufficient proof that homework is helpful for students in elementary school.

“Correlation is not causation,” she said. “Does homework cause achievement, or do high achievers do more homework?”

Vatterott, the author of Rethinking Homework: Best Practices That Support Diverse Needs , thinks there should be more emphasis on improving the quality of homework tasks, and she supports efforts to eliminate homework for younger kids.

“I have no concerns about students not starting homework until fourth grade or fifth grade,” she said, noting that while the debate over homework will undoubtedly continue, she has noticed a trend toward limiting, if not eliminating, homework in elementary school.

The issue has been debated for decades. A TIME cover in 1999 read: “Too much homework! How it’s hurting our kids, and what parents should do about it.” The accompanying story noted that the launch of Sputnik in 1957 led to a push for better math and science education in the U.S. The ensuing pressure to be competitive on a global scale, plus the increasingly demanding college admissions process, fueled the practice of assigning homework.

“The complaints are cyclical, and we’re in the part of the cycle now where the concern is for too much,” Cooper said. “You can go back to the 1970s, when you’ll find there were concerns that there was too little, when we were concerned about our global competitiveness.”

Cooper acknowledged that some students really are bringing home too much homework, and their parents are right to be concerned.

“A good way to think about homework is the way you think about medications or dietary supplements,” he said. “If you take too little, they’ll have no effect. If you take too much, they can kill you. If you take the right amount, you’ll get better.”

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Write to Katie Reilly at [email protected]

The Surprising History of Homework Reform

Really, kids, there was a time when lots of grownups thought homework was bad for you.

Homework causes a lot of fights. Between parents and kids, sure. But also, as education scholar Brian Gill and historian Steven Schlossman write, among U.S. educators. For more than a century, they’ve been debating how, and whether, kids should do schoolwork at home .

At the dawn of the twentieth century, homework meant memorizing lists of facts which could then be recited to the teacher the next day. The rising progressive education movement despised that approach. These educators advocated classrooms free from recitation. Instead, they wanted students to learn by doing. To most, homework had no place in this sort of system.

Through the middle of the century, Gill and Schlossman write, this seemed like common sense to most progressives. And they got their way in many schools—at least at the elementary level. Many districts abolished homework for K–6 classes, and almost all of them eliminated it for students below fourth grade.

By the 1950s, many educators roundly condemned drills, like practicing spelling words and arithmetic problems. In 1963, Helen Heffernan, chief of California’s Bureau of Elementary Education, definitively stated that “No teacher aware of recent theories could advocate such meaningless homework assignments as pages of repetitive computation in arithmetic. Such an assignment not only kills time but kills the child’s creative urge to intellectual activity.”

But, the authors note, not all reformers wanted to eliminate homework entirely. Some educators reconfigured the concept, suggesting supplemental reading or having students do projects based in their own interests. One teacher proposed “homework” consisting of after-school “field trips to the woods, factories, museums, libraries, art galleries.” In 1937, Carleton Washburne, an influential educator who was the superintendent of the Winnetka, Illinois, schools, proposed a homework regimen of “cooking and sewing…meal planning…budgeting, home repairs, interior decorating, and family relationships.”

Another reformer explained that “at first homework had as its purpose one thing—to prepare the next day’s lessons. Its purpose now is to prepare the children for fuller living through a new type of creative and recreational homework.”

That idea didn’t necessarily appeal to all educators. But moderation in the use of traditional homework became the norm.

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“Virtually all commentators on homework in the postwar years would have agreed with the sentiment expressed in the NEA Journal in 1952 that ‘it would be absurd to demand homework in the first grade or to denounce it as useless in the eighth grade and in high school,’” Gill and Schlossman write.

That remained more or less true until 1983, when publication of the landmark government report A Nation at Risk helped jump-start a conservative “back to basics” agenda, including an emphasis on drill-style homework. In the decades since, continuing “reforms” like high-stakes testing, the No Child Left Behind Act, and the Common Core standards have kept pressure on schools. Which is why twenty-first-century first graders get spelling words and pages of arithmetic.

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Generative AI Transformed English Homework. Math Is Next

ChatGPT has already wreaked havoc on classrooms and changed how teachers approach writing homework, since OpenAI publicly launched the generative AI chatbot in late 2022. School administrators rushed to try to detect AI-generated essays , and in turn, students scrambled to find out how to cloak their synthetic compositions. But by focusing on writing assignments, educators let another seismic shift take place in the periphery: students using AI more often to complete math homework too.

Right now, high schoolers and college students around the country are experimenting with free smartphone apps that help complete their math homework using generative AI . One of the most popular options on campus right now is the Gauth app , with millions of downloads. It’s owned by ByteDance, which is also TikTok’s parent company.

The Gauth app first launched in 2019 with a primary focus on mathematics, but soon expanded to other subjects as well, like chemistry and physics. It’s grown in relevance, and neared the top of smartphone download lists earlier this year for the education category. Students seem to love it. With hundreds of thousands of primarily positive reviews, Gauth has a favorable 4.8 star rating in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store .

All students have to do after downloading the app is point their smartphone at a homework problem, printed or handwritten, and then make sure any relevant information is inside of the image crop. Then Gauth’s AI model generates a step-by-step guide, often with the correct answer.

From our testing on high-school-level algebra and geometry homework samples, Gauth’s AI tool didn’t deliver A+ results and particularly struggled with some graphing questions. It performed well enough to get around a low B grade or a high C average on the homework we fed it. Not perfect, but also likely good enough to satisfy bored students who'd rather spend their time after school doing literally anything else.

The app struggled more on higher levels of math, like Calculus 2 problems, so students further along in their educational journey may find less utility in this current generation of AI homework-solving apps.

Yes, generative AI tools , with a foundation in natural language processing, are known for failing to generate accurate answers when presented with complex math equations. But researchers are focused on improving AI’s abilities in this sector, and an entry-level high school math class is likely well within the reach of current AI homework apps. Will has even written about how researchers at Google DeepMind are ecstatic about recent results from testing a math-focused large language model, called AlphaProof , on problems shown at this year’s International Math Olympiad.

To be fair, Gauth positions itself as an AI study company that’s there to “ace your homework” and help with difficult problems, rather than a cheating aid. The company even goes so far as to include an “ Honor Code ” on its website dictating proper usage. “Resist the temptation to use Gauth in ways that go against your values or school’s expectations,” reads the company’s website. So basically, Gauth implicitly acknowledges impulsive teenagers may use the app for much more than the occasional stumper, and wants them to pinkie promise that they’ll behave.

Prior to publication, a spokesperson for ByteDance did not answer a list of questions about the Gauth app when contacted by WIRED over email.

It’s easy to focus on Gauth’s limitations, but millions of students now have a free app in their pocket that can walk them through various math problems in seconds , with decent accuracy. This concept would be almost inconceivable to students from even a few years ago.

You could argue that Gauth promotes accessibility for students who don’t have access to quality education or who process information at a slower pace than their teacher’s curriculum. It’s a perspective shared by proponents of using AI tools, like ChatGPT, in the classroom. As long as the students all make it to the same destination, who cares what path they took on the journey? And isn’t this just the next evolution in our available math tools? We moved on from the abacus to the graphing calculator, so why not envision generative AI as another critical step forward?

I see value in teachers thoughtfully employing AI in the classroom for specific lessons or to provide students with more personalized practice questions. But I can’t get out of my head how this app, if students overly rely on it, could hollow out future generations’ critical thinking skills—often gleaned from powering through frustrating math classes and tough homework assignments. (I totally get it, though, as an English major.)

Educational leaders are missing the holistic picture if they continue to focus on AI-generated essays as the primary threat that could undermine the current approach to teaching. Instead of arduous assignments to complete outside of class, maybe centering in-class math practice could continue to facilitate positive learning outcomes in the age of AI.

If Gauth and apps like it eventually lead to the demise of math homework for high schoolers, throngs of students will breathe a collective sigh of relief. How will parents and educators respond? I’m not so sure. That remains an open question, and one for which Gauth can’t calculate an answer yet either.

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