DD9 brought home some classwork the other day with a sticky note attached that the pages were found in her desk and she needed to have them completed in 2 days. I asked DD and she gave me some excuses as to why they were not done (pulled out for gifted class etc) I started to write a note back to teacher telling her what she told me and DD got worried and insisted I don't and just drop it. Of course my "Mom" radar went off. I looked at the papers and they seemed mostly to be "busy" work. Finally dragged it out of her that she didn't think they were important so she didn't do them. I happened to see her teacher the next day and found out the whole story. She is in an "inclusion" class with both gifted and the other end of the spectrum. Of course since she tends to act like Hermione from Harry Potter they don't watch her too closely. Come to find out after she had only turned 2 pages of morning work in that week she had been stuffing "unimportant" work in her desk since December. When they asked her about it she started to get upset so they dropped it and just made her complete the work from that week.

Of course now that she has been caught she won't be doing this anymore. We tried to do what we felt was right and tell her that you just got to do what is required..life isn't always about doing what you want etc....
but part of me feels bad that she is stuck doing word searches. The other day she independently copied the entire braille alphabet during free time..or hmmm...maybe it wasn't free time..maybe that was what she was doing instead of coloring the square red that had the answer to 5X6?!

My son had to do too-easy busy work like you've described before he was grade-skipped. He also moved to a new school that doesn't give busy work, which also helped.

Note: This is just my perspective!

I don't agree with the idea of making a child do too-easy busywork on principle. I completely fail to understand the point.

Teachers often use the "everyone has to do stuff they don't want to do" argument, but it doesn't convince me. I've counter-argued that there needs to be a reason for doing unpleasant things. For example, I hate washing dishes, but dirty dishes are gross and attract bugs. I'm not always wild about the work I do, but I like to get paid. I hate paying bills, but I like to have electricity.

I don't see anything meaningful coming out of busywork that's too easy. I asked my son's teachers, "He's supposed to be learning things in school. What's he learning from this?"


Can you talk to the teachers to ask them if they can provide more challenging work to your child?

Val

Sayeth my favorite little wizard:
"Stop, stop, stop! You're going to take someone's eye out.
Besides, you're saying it wrong. It's LeviOsa, not LeviosAR!"

(Sorry... back to your regularly scheduled thread now...)

On topic now... I fully understand your daughter's approach to busy work -- that's what I did for many, many moons.

I think she should be required to do what was deliberately hidden, but that it would be quite reasonable for you and/or her to lobby for a reduction in future busy work.

We're lucky about busy work for math - it's been cut down substantially. Like the other posters, I really agree that work should be about learning, not about repetition.

But my son has a habit of defining what he wants as busy work that may not gel with mine, and it has to do with writing. Last weekend, I had to dig my heels in about this one. He was very upset that I required him to do his book review for school. "Since I wasn't planning to hand it up, what you're telling me to do is extra work!" Anyway during the week, he tried to do the same in class but was caught. So he wasn't allowed to proceed with his differentiated work in class. He was really sore about it, so I hope that he's learnt his lesson.

Well, till the next time!

DS5 just finished up his kindergarten year and did this all year long. He just refused to do 'busy work'. He just couldn't understand why he needed to sit there and practice letter sounds when he was already reading, and reading well.

What helped a little bit was that he was sometimes given different 'busy work'. While others were practicing letter sounds, he was using a sentence kit and building 'silly sentences' and reading chapter books.

He hates anything repetitious, when we do math, he'll only tolerate a few of the same type of problems, so I have to constantly switch it up, or he'll shut down.

Sorry, but why did you tell her she had to do it? No matter what the average teacher thinks, the purpose of school is to educate, not to psychologically beat children into blind submission. If there's not a reason behind that work that can be explained by the teacher (at least to your satisfaction, if not your daughter's), you have every right to tell the school your daughter won't be doing it. If I had a parent say that to me about work I assigned, I would be too embarrassed about having ignored a student's needs to even think about trying to force the issue. Then I would consider the fact that being able to tell important, useful, educational activities from unimportant busywork is actually a demonstration of cognitive skill in and of itself. Val's right - we all have to do unpleasant things, but there needs to be a reason. Oh, and I would definitely have a talk with your daughter about self-advocacy as a healthy alternative to stuffing unwanted papers in her desk....

I think the part of you that feels bad about her having to do word searches is on the right track! We've been really lucky with our teachers so far, in that they don't expect the busywork to be done. DS7 gets different things to do at school, and even though he brings home pages of garbage, his teacher says it's just habit for her to hand them out to everyone and that he shouldn't bother with anything he doesn't want to do. I thought at the beginning of this year that we were going to have a problem, when he brought home the first "math minute" pages, but after a couple days of my sending back completed multiplication pages that I printed out online she told me to ignore the busy stuff.

You might try making up your own homework like that, or offering to send in extra pages of whatever DD would rather be doing so that she can do them at school.

Go Zhian, My position is always self-advocacy because that's what's going to go on all their lives! That said, sometimes it just ain't gonna work and you need to suck it up.

After weeks of protesting DS6's desire to bring one of his work books to school, I found out during their end of the year party that his teacher encouraged him to bring it. He often finished before other kids in his class and also could read the instructions to assingments that his teacher had to read to other children, so he needed "busy work". I'm so very glad she let him bring busy work from home that he wanted to do! He even taught his teacher a few things. I just wish that she would've told me it was ok, so I'd stop fussin' with him every morning about that darn animal book! Needless to say, he will be getting a few more this summer for next school year!

Maybe your DD's teacher would allow the same...

She is a funny kid. She gets pretty good grades at school (with the exception of spelling which she is HORRIBLE at) but they are not out of this world amazing. Some of the stuff she doesn't think she needs to do I think she does need the extra practice. It is a little late in the year for me to ask the teachers to change things around now and our school dist is going through a bad time and I fear a lot of changes are coming. We will see what next year brings. Thanks for all your feedback!

One of my earliest, and worst memories of school was exactly this. In first grade, at the end of the school year we had to clean out our desks and put all the papers we hadn't completed in a pile. I had done almost nothing (it was all "baby stuff") and had a huge pile of untouched papers and was absolutely mortified that the other kids could see how dumb i was!

Unfortunately, work continued to be easy all the way through high school (IF I cared to pay attention...) and i grew up thinking i was stupid and lazy. I never really learned what motivation and dedication meant. Never had to. DOn't ask me why i thought i was stupid. I had straight 'A's at least into HS.

So based on my experience you have two options. Force the Kid to do meaningless work which she will hate and fight through (but maybe learn a lesson from?) or forget the whole thing and establish a pattern for life that is tough to break.

Of course the real answer is to find a program that works the way we all know that it should, but good luck with that!

I think it is a good idea to talk to the school now about what has been going on, and to see if you can get a teacher for next year that is a little more aware of what your daughter's readiness level is. I would also write down a little description about what happened this year to share with next year's teacher early in the year, so that it won't happen again.

I've read some articles about cluster grouping, and they reccomends against grouping the highest academic group and the inclusion group together in the same classroom. You might want to sleuth around if they are going to try that again.

Love and More Love,
Grinity (who can't spell either - thankfully it's not highly related to general intelligence)

Your poor DD I have had a teacher tell me "too bad that is life" How sad. Who can blame these kids. Would we want to sit there reading cat in the hat all etc.

I know what you mean though about what is required. We are stuck between a rock and a hard place. They are forced to do busy work. I have not found a solution. Had to do a grade skip that helped a bit. At least he is not counting dots anymore.