Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Tips for Managing Homework (Accelerated Student)?

DS is accelerated two years in a few subjects and balking at the amount of homework in his writing/reading class. I'm not sure if this is a start of school thing (he didn't fuss about what he had to do last year with the same cohort of classmates) or if the workload is too much for his age (9). He can understand it, but seems to be struggling to manage the assignments (i.e., when what is due, thinking it will take forever -- but then, when finally settling down to it, enjoying it).

I'm realizing that we probably need to step in and make sure we understand his workload and how the teacher shares info. Any other suggestions?

For the thinking it will take forever...let him use a timer/stopwatch.

Maybe share with him this story...I dread unloading the dishwasher. One I don't like the reaching involved but mostly I feel like it will take forever. I finally timed myself and it takes between 6-9 minutes to unload. I break it into 3 jobs, silverware, top rack, bottom rack....and know each of those small tasks will take 2-3 minutes at the most depending on how focused I am or if I am interrupted.

He can do the same thing...collect data on how long certain tasks generally take (and break big tasks into smaller pieces) and then he knows basically this type of assignment takes around this amount of time.

Also he could set up a three column chart.
First column name of assignment, second...rating 1-10 how much I think I will like the assignment, third...rating on how much I actually enjoyed assignment.

After a while he might see he over estimate how bad something might be and in actuality it will probably be tolerable to fun...with the occasional no fun assignment. Then you can convince him to start at least assuming the assignment will be fine to enjoyable from the beginning and skip the negativity. Because the data supports being positive.

Thank you! I have used the timer myself (and he does at times for other tasks), so that should be helpful. I like your idea of collecting data... good approach if I can get him to do more writing things down. ;-)

We seem to still be in "catch up" mode... he didn't go to the upper classes the first few days and got some of the info later. I'm hoping we can get him on a better track soon. He also seems to just be a bit off as far as math, perhaps just summer slump. (It's normally his top subject but he's looking at story problems like he has no clue what to do. Sigh.)

These are good ideas and tips that we may have to try ourselves.

The J(F)DI sink or swim approach as the volume increased actually did get our DD to focus more. However, the above tips to seem to be a smarter approach than the one that we have used.

Our DD10 is whole grade accelerated once with an addition 2 years in Maths and she is also doing a year long online composition class online.

Our plan is to get her to be able to crank out the written assignments on auto and for the Maths parts of science to be a breeze so that the modern AP busywork until 3am every night on top of extra curriculars overload should not happen later on in high school, But in Mike Tyson's immortal words...

Thanks for the tips - will let the first few middle school weeks ease by before trying any of the above but I am glad to have them in my back pocket now.

We bought a large white board/calendar that our kids write their daily things, due dates, swim team practice, whatever on it.
It makes them to organize themselves to see what they have going on daily and weekly.

We tried this starting 5th grade when homework started to need some management. It worked, well sort of.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique

Thank you for the great suggestions! I am sure they will all be attempted here. :-)

Ironically, dear child suddenly caught the bug of writing this "dreaded" poem and I just had to make him stop tweaking it so he could go to bed (late). This NEVER happens. And his math is supposedly done, though I am not 100% sure that is true.

He did forget until the poem was almost done to study the continents for social studies, but as he said, he knew those in kindergarten, so he doesn't need to do much there...