The first thing to keep in mind with regards to the concept of "homework" in North America is that the notion that school as a place where a child learned and home was a place where they finished stuff from school didn't become common (nerdy history puns FTW) until the mid-1800's. There are a number of variables that led to the notion of homework including the rise of disposable, affordable paper and writing implements, textbooks, the rise of high schools in urban areas, and the societal link between studiousness and goodness - but they wouldn't come together until well into the 19th century. Terms like "homework", "home study", and "home practice" weren't part of the vernacular of school until the 1820's, at the earliest. In the 18th and early 19th century, most of the students' learning was assessed via recitations.

Recitations took a couple of different forms. In most cases, teachers (mostly men, mostly white) in the Colonial eras wanted a right answer. Their job was to get the students (mostly boys, mostly white, mostly from the upper class) to master the classical curriculum. This meant the boys could recite, from memory, specific passages from Greek and Latin texts, solve mathematics problems, identify species of birds and plants, and in some cases, historical events, English or French literature, or geography. They were also expected to have rhetorical skills - i.e. debate and discussion. All of this was assessed verbally. It was the general education theory at the time that intelligence was a general sort of a skill. That, in effect, by memorizing information, a young man would get smarter. So, if the smart men in a society or group were familiar with a particular text, say Shakespeare, the boy would learn Shakespeare.

A teacher/tutor might read a passage and expected boys to repeat it back in unison. Or he would ask the class, or his lone pupil if it was a 1:1 situation, to rattle off a list of names, dates, places, or facts. In some cases, recitations were spontaneous, meaning the teacher/tutor would ask a student on the spot as a part of the ebb and flow of a lesson. In others, they were scheduled in advance. In the cases of a scheduled recitation, such as an admission interview into one of the colonial colleges or a presentation in front of other students or his parents, a boy might work on memorization independent of the time with the tutor. This would require that he had access to the texts needed for memorization and the time in his day to do the studying.

Another form of "homework" - that is, taking something from an education setting to a different setting - was discussion and debate with a parent. For example, the mother of a boy attending Boston Latin School might ask her son his opinion on a particular text or idea as part of her responsibilities as a mother, raising the next generation of American leaders. A father might ask a boy to engage in a rhetorical debate about an idea or philosophy, and if the father was dissatisfied, tell the tutor or headmaster what he expected to hear instead. In those situations, a boy might be expected to read or perhaps write about a particular text during his free time.

All in all, homework in the 18th and the first half of the 19th century was about memorization in preparation for recitations. It wouldn't start to resemble homework as we think of it today until the mid-1800's.