Too much homework?

We just finished our Social Justice Novel unit. During this four week unit, students read a novel with a small group in a Book Club, discussing it together two or three times per week. Their Reading Notebook work consisted of tracking vocabulary, author's craft, characters, and theme across the beginning, middle, and end of the book: 12 entries across about 3 1/2 weeks of reading workshop. Students had 20-30 minutes in class to work, and completed reading and entries at home. The final assessment was a 4-paragraph literary essay, for which they could use their Reading Notebook and the novel to help them.

For students who don't regularly read a book a month, this was a fast pace. For students who have difficulty organising thoughts on paper, 12 entries was a push. When I gave my mid-year student feedback survey the day after the unit ended, I read a lot of comments about "too much homework".

Homework has been an important issue for me. I value the time students have at home with their families, the time they have after school for athletics or drama or music or other interests, and the time they have to relax and de-stress. So when I assign homework, I want it to be 1) essential to furthering their progress as a learner in my courses, 2) authentic, and 3) a reasonable amount.

Reading at home is a non-negotiable. Lifelong reading habits are vital to establish in middle school, since high school often kills any nascent reading interest. Besides, study after study has shown how vital reading quantity is to academic success.

When I read "too much homework" in the comments, I need to re-evaluate. What were my goals for the 12 Reading Notebook entries? I wanted students to focus on vocabulary a little bit, since vocabulary development is so important and I spend too little time on it. I wanted students to practice noticing the literary elements that were review and those I was teaching: foreshadowing, allusion, irony, and dialect. I wanted students to track how characters changed over the course of a book, and how readers can form a theory about theme early in the book and then add to their theory or change it based on further evidence.

Could students achieve those goals with fewer entries? What if, instead of tracking beginning, middle, and end, they tracked first half and second half? Eight entries? Could I drop one of the categories and make it a task for the Book Club instead, a topic for discussion? Six entries? How much can I minimize before I lose the rigor and high expectations for critical thinking?

Or maybe it was just bad timing. There was a big research project going on in Science at the same time, involving research into five different energy sources, a formal bibliography, graded notes, and a slideshow to go with a speech. Maybe 12 entries isn't too much for mid-year 8th grade. Maybe I can blame it all on Science!

"Too much homework"? If students are stressed out, feel like they are doing nothing but going to school and doing homework, and not enjoying their learning, there is a problem (however much I want to blame it all on Science). So I can back off a bit. But I still wonder, how much is too little?