As legend has it, an Italian teacher named Roberto Nevilis invented a form of punishment for students who misbehaved in his class in 1905: He called it “homework.”

This origin of homework is apocryphal, but homework itself has become ubiquitous in American schools and the debate about whether it is a help or a hindrance rages on. As a newer teacher, you may be familiar with where research has landed on the link between homework and student achievement (it’s unclear), who benefits from homework (older students more than younger ones) and how much homework is optimal (10 minutes per grade is a standard rule of thumb).

If you haven’t already developed a personal homework philosophy, it can be helpful to devote some time to considering the practical value of the homework you plan to assign and the logistics around its submission and grading. As you do so, keep in mind these “three Ds” of what homework should allow students to do:

Demonstrate knowledge. It’s easy to assign homework that can feel more like busy work. “Giving students homework that involves drill and practice is often said to ‘reinforce’ the skills they’ve been taught in class ... [but] practicing doesn’t create understanding,” writes author and progressive educator Alfie Kohn in his book “The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing.” Students who struggle with a particular math concept in class, for instance, are unlikely to develop an understanding of it by completing a page of equations for homework. Conversely, students who have mastered the concept at school probably get little benefit from that page of equations either. Homework should allow students to demonstrate what they understand (or don’t) about a topic in a meaningful way. Instead of solving variations on the same problem, for instance, ask students to analyze an equation that was solved incorrectly and explain where the mathematician went wrong.

Develop and apply their skills. Homework doesn’t have to be a one-off worksheet or an opportunity to “cram kids’ heads with facts for tomorrow’s tests that they’re going to forget by next week,” as Kohn puts it. If you extend the timeframe students have to complete assignments, you’ll give them the chance to reinforce their learning over time — and you’ll likely be able to give them more meaningful feedback. “We assign homework to set strong expectations of continuing research outside our regular social studies period,” says Ted Ganung, a teacher at Renaissance School of the Arts in East Harlem. Folding in homework on longer-term projects also helps students hone time management skills.

Differentiate their own learning from their peers. Your students aren’t identical in terms of their abilities, their interests and their understanding — so their homework shouldn’t necessarily be identical, either. “I feel homework is a chance for students to take full ownership of their learning,” says Andriana Xenophontos, an English teacher at Martin Van Buren HS in Queens Village. She gives her students a “choice board” from which they select one in-depth assignment per week, like a character analysis or a topic to research and reflect on.

In the upper grades, a choice between assignments gives students both the freedom to pursue a particular interest or medium and the agency to bolster their self-awareness of their strengths and challenges. In younger grades, differentiated assignments can help students reinforce particular skills or deepen their understanding.