Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy 1st Grade Homework

If the principal says homework should be about 30 minutes a night, and you're adding up and coming up with 39.5 minutes a night, then there's a problem that you might count on principal backing to address. These problems come up pretty easily when you're dealing with two teachers, and one doesn't know what the other is doing.

For example... if the GT teacher is assigning math, why should your DD do math assignments from the homeroom teacher? And more importantly... IF IT'S ENRICHMENT, WHY IS IT HOMEWORK?!

Seems to me like that's an easy cut.

As for reading, this depends on the child, but in our case, we filled out the reading log for a while on DD's behalf, without policing this at all, because her reading skills were already far advanced, and you'd have a tougher task in preventing her from reading than you'd have in ensuring she did 15 minutes a day. After a couple of months, we just reached out to the teacher and told her we weren't going to fill it out anymore, and she immediately agreed with our reasoning, no argument necessary.

So, there's another 15 minutes a night gone. Together, these two changes get you well under the principal's 30-minute guideline. Whether that's still excessive is another conversation, but it would seem to be one that's unlikely to get much support from your school.

Wow - just - wow. I cannot imagine trying to convince my DS7 to do all of that weekly.

He is supposed to do nightly reading (20 min). Then weekly they have one English worksheet and one French worksheet. These take maybe 30 min max. over the weekend. He also has a 'stretch your thinking' math activity weekly (optional), which usually takes him 2 seconds (OK two minutes when I make him write down how he got the answer)

Recently he had to prepare an oral book report, which took a few nights to work on.

He also has a weekly GT pullout, but no homework for that.

Honestly, your 1st grader has more HW than my 5th grader.

Except for the reading, I really wish teachers would skip the homework in the early grades. There is no value I can see in what they've sent home so far.

I love this!

Another way to reduce homework is to encourage your child to do as much of it as they can in their downtime at school. It's very common for a teacher to schedule 20 minutes for the class to work on math exercises that the GT kid knocks out in 5. So... use that remaining time to do some homework, and you just bought yourself 15 minutes of extra play time at home.

We have no homework at all in first grade. And I'm just beginning to realize how lucky we are.

Sue

That seems like a lot! My DS was in 1st last year. It was a self-contained gifted classroom. She had spelling (write 3 times each, use in a sentence....) and math (2 workbook pages) every night and was supposed to read for 30 minutes. I thought that was too much. We struggled every afternoon.

Her 2nd grade teacher takes the approach that the kids work really hard in school and the only stuff that comes home is work that wasn't finished during the school day. It has been amazing. DS is so much happier and she is doing quality work, not just busy work for the sake of having homework.

I haven't read the full set of replies, but fwiw, here's what I would most likely do in hour situation:

1) Save the interaction with the principal for your upcoming discussion about math acceleration.

2) Recognize that it's late in the year, and it's likely that the large amount of homework your dd is getting is likely a function of her teachers - both the regular classroom teacher and the G&T teacher.

3) Consider just dropping some of it if you think it wouldn't cause too much of an issue with the classroom teacher. If you are concerned that it might, talk to the teacher about the amount of time, ask if it's what she expects, and ask if it's ok to drop pieces that are related to knowledge/skills your dd already has. I know this conversation probably will be difficult or frustrating, particularly if the teacher isn't happy about your dd having skipped a grade into the class, but keep that in mind - it's an individual teacher issue, not something worth saving the world over. This year *is* almost over. Next year's teacher may be entirely different re amount of homework and attitude (we've had teachers all over the place with both over the years).

4) Consider talking to the G&T teacher. Point out that the amount of G&T homework she's getting is a lot when added onto regular classroom homework. Ask her what the objective of the G&T homework is - is any of it considered "catch-up" (i.e., fill in gaps created by the skip) or is any of it work needed to subject accelerate her in something next year? If it's just work for the sake of work, drop it. Seriously! We've found that sometimes school staff equate "G&T" with "loves homework" or "needs excessive amounts of homework" - and that's just silly.

5) Keep an open mind and consider that what you've described about your dd's conversations surrounding homework really don't come into play with the expected time the teachers are asking for with respect to homework, and I think for most of our gifted kids, conversations that go into depth or steer off-topic as you've mentioned aren't the types of conversations that our kids get tired out from, they're the things that feed their brains... so I wouldn't count those as "homework" time, just time spent with my child happily contemplating. Try looking at just the actual work time when counting up how much homework time your dd is doing.

Hope some of that helps!

polarbear

It sounds like a lot of the work actually has potential to be interesting, if you could just focus on the content during interactive quality time, and dump the busy-work aspects. DS always took an hour or more to read his nightly book - but those crazy divergences were unique conversations, and I cherished the one-on-one time (even while cursing the need to get a move on and brush our teeth).

Would it be possible to reduce the time/ drudgery element by turning some of these tasks into a discussion rather than a written product? As a simple example, when DS was bringing home a lot of worksheets, I would do a quick oral check that he knew the material cold, and possibly have him complete the last couple problems if they offered any kind of novelty/ challenge. Then I labelled the sheet "completed orally with mother", initialled it, and sent it back. Elapsed time: 30 seconds - 5 minutes. You could provide a similar kind of guarantee that there are no "holes", without drowning your DD in unnecessary repetition. Focus your time together on talking through the new, interesting, or conceptual aspects, rather than filling in worksheets.

If writing is a relative weakness, maybe put some good effort into an important written product like the composition - and just remove the writing requirement from math homework where it isn't essential. Scribe, if need be (DS does his best math thinking with me holding pen at whiteboard while he expounds).

It's easy to get sucked into the idea that if writing is a weakness, then the more writing practice the better, but my experience is that this is really a case for quality over quantity. Write, where writing is the goal - and learn and think where anything else is the goal.

Michelle's advice is excellent.

Our school really only assigns homework because a large number of parents think forming 'good habits' is more important than playing. Most teachers get round that by making most homework optional. So kids in first and third -weekly homework comes homonmonday and goes back Friday, spelling words (I do orally so about 2 mins a night), basic facts about 1 minute once a week, reading (reader for less than 5 mins, 20 mins free reading for ds7 ). Sometimes we do the optional stuff.

A workmate whose kid attends the same school said her kid took half an hour when she started school but then the instructions for spelling are to write the word and a lot of people insist even when the kid is tired and writing is hard because the teacher said so.

To me all homework is optional. If they can't cover stuff at school they need to be more efficient notsend work home.