Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy how much homework should my DD11 be doing?

My ds12 goes to a private gifted school and has homework in Algebra, Spanish every evening. He always has a project in LA and History but gets these done in class most of the time. He also always has a couple long term projects in the works. They have bench marks to report in class but it is at least 75% you are on your own. The most recent was a 3000 word creative writing project and a 10 minute documentary movie. Each has a rubric to follow so if you budget your time you are fine. If you get behind you are stressed.

He still does not really study for test or quiz. You can tell on some of the grammar test.
The kicker is all he has to do is look over it once, even a brief glance and no problem.

This.

At the moment I am looking at the results of 4 years of very heavy homework and high expectations at my DD's magnet school. They are all about to move on, and I am having feelings of deep sadness over all the childhood lost. Many of these kids did not get accepted to the local magnet middle schools due to having lower grades than kids at nonmagnets. I am not sure it was worth it. They will never get that time back. It's gone.

I want my children challenged--don't get me wrong. In k-5, can you challenge them in the dang classroom and let them come home and be children? 10, 20, maybe 30 minutes at grade 5. Okay. Middle and high school, more is appropriate. But the little ones. No.

My ds11 is in 6th grade, in a full time gifted program (Middle School). He gets home before me, but always calls me at work to let me know he's home. I always ask if he ask homework, and most of the time the answer in no. Delving deeper, I find out that he gets it done in Directed Studies, or gets the work finished in class (usually math - he's in 8th grade accelerated - is a case of you do it as homework if you don't get it done in class). I know he's supposed to read 30 minutes, and journal every day, as well as write a 1000 word essay monthly in ELA. Social studies and science vary, so once in a while he'll have something to do for them. One time he was doing a group project with 2 others, and they did meet up out of school 3 times to work on it (it was for a C-Span documentary contest). To be perfectly honest, I leave him to his own devices, and thankfully, so far, he's doing a great job of getting it done without my interference. Having said that - and re-reading the original post - in 5th grade (elementary school)- he never had homework.

Yes, yes, yes, a thousand times yes. Children in our area are in the school building for 30 plus hours a week. That should be plenty of time for learning with little need for homework.

On the slightly favorable homework environment side, DS' school offers aftercare for a reasonable fee (since the school closes before most parents are out of work). The first hour is quiet time for homework, then reading. Teachers supervise the time and check homework. This works very well.

Interesting collection of different perspectives here. I think that learning to budget time and plan for larger projects and self direct learning outside of class are very useful skills. I think that spending time just to spend time as part of some misguided idea that homework builds character is just foolish.

So as always it's more about the quality. Sure, we can make some kind of logical maximum limit on homework (x min per week based on grade or x number projects per term or whatnot) but it has nothing to do with whether the child is learning anything in class or whether the work is appropriate for them.

I think that some homework can be useful (both for academic learning and executive function skills building). But I will always vote for no homework over pointless homework.

For our family, hw in 4th-5th grade was all about establishing a routine of recognizing and fulfilling expectations. For ds (now in 9th grade) especially, who has a certain, um, rigidity in his mindset, I believe this was a really important. The hw consisted of a half page math worksheet. Every. Damn Day. It took 5-10 minutes to do, tops. But ds resented doing it, because he never had to before. The teacher, who handed them the worksheets right at the end of the day, and the parents worked together to make sure he didn't weasel out of it. At first, he often "misplaced" his worksheet by the time he got home, so we'd make a photocopy for him, as conveniently, his twin sister brought home the same daily worksheet.

This really paved the way for good study habits when they started Alg. 1 Honors in 6th grade. Ds tried to slack off in 7th grade and got a B in math one quarter. The B was a wake up call for him and provided another important lesson: personal investment = results.

I suspect a lot of us have a different perspective because we after school to provide the challenge they don't get at school.

Hi AmyLou

That sounds like a useful routine. Was the worksheet something the teacher gave all the kids, or something special for your DS? Was it the teacher's idea, or yours?

My DS7 (grade 1) gets weekly homework, which he does without too much fuss, but it's things like 'circle the sight words' and coloring. I feel really silly making him do these things, and was thinking of asking his teachers if they could send harder worksheets home. I've tried getting him to do worksheets that I've picked out, but since he doesn't 'have' to, it's not popular at all...

It fills me with a white hot burning anger that they will warehouse kids for six hours a day and then stll not let them do anything worthwhile or fun afterwards. Why are there so few schools who'll agree to take the kids, teach them how to think, then send them home to climb trees. And so few parents who want that?