Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Interesting article re: homework

The stacks of photocopied worksheets given especially in the early grades are useless in my opinion. We found that with some teachers, there would be no argument considered even when the book answer was blatantly wrong or another answer was equally plausible. These were often so simplistic, that my son believed there must be a catch. He would spend way to long a period on them either looking for a deeper meaning or by becoming easily distracted.

I really haven�t seen this level of busy work since 5th grade though (with the exception of one of my daughter�s classes this year where the teacher does rely on the multiple choice book tests).

The schools my kids currently attend report an anticipated 2-2.5 hours of homework per night. This includes study time, research for reports and presentations, writing papers, translations and working problem sets. I think this level of expectation and preparation allows the class to progress further each semester than it would otherwise.

I find that most of my DS5's K homework seems to be "make sure all the moms and/or dads are involved in their kids' schoolwork" assignments. It's not generally "real" work, or even practice to help them learn specific skills. (Some writing practice, but nothing else seems to be practice-oriented.)

I have mixed feelings about this...It's too close to busywork for my taste, but I understand the need to keep parents involved in the process.

<shrug> As long as they keep it to a minimum time commitment--a few minutes per night and only a couple of nights a week, I accept it as a necessary evil. It gets worse as they get older, but I'm pretty sure we're not sticking around this particular school that long...

Kriston

Are your guys in school now? How is it going?

When my son was in K-6 he rarely completed any homeworks tasks unless they were specific research projects (this does not include accelerated subjects). When I spoke to the school about it they were never concerned as he already knew the work. Their reasoning was that homework was for students to practice and hone skills learnt that day, therefore if you could already do the work there was no point.

I then asked, well why bother giving him the sheets? and the reason was that the kids that really did need the homework wouldn't complain about the injustice of not everyone in the class receiving a sheet/s. I could see their point of view with that one!

He didn't seem to have any trouble adjusting to a full workload in HS, even if somethings were started and completed the morning they were due LOL!

We have this issue now with DD in gr 2. She gets all the sheets sent home and she feels she neeeds to do them because "I want to make Ms. S happy. She likes it when everyone does their homework."
However, we have noticed a decrease in the number of them coming home as the teacher accepts that DD really doesn't need the practice.