Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Helping with homework?

At DS's school (he is in 2nd grade), all parents are required to check if homework is complete. The homework packet is very light, and has probably 30 minutes to an hour's worth of work for the entire week. I don't check his answers, but if it is something I can't read, I have him go back and fix it. He is expected to read for 20 minutes, and I don't tell him to read either (he reads a lot; about 80-90 minutes every day. Somedays he reads constantly, when he is in the middle of a very interesting book)

We definitely don't have paragraphs of homework or huge projects. I am actually thankful for this, because I don't really believe that homework at younger elementary ages serves a lot of purpose.

In some cases the appropriate helpis writing to the teacher to say your child won't be doing the said homework.

In my opinion school time is for school and working. After school its play time outside then dinner and relaxing. Thankfully my son doesn't have a lot of homework and he reads at night to relax his body but we don't time him or anything like that.

Sometimes it is obvious that help is expected (rubric for first grade only gives full credit if everything is spelled correctly), sometimes I ask. Most of the time, if we help, she put the names on the project as [child name] and we write, with help from [adult name] next to it. We started doing that in K because she did a very cool project with no help from us and had a model due at the same time that she couldn't have physically done by herself. While I no longer believe she is 2E, she is very out of sync and doesn't always feel good about herself at school. It somehow made us feel better in some small way to differentiate between the two so she could be more proud of the work she did by herself. She needed that.

We kept it up as she moved forward. I don't think anyone at school has noticed, but I think it really does allow her to feel more accomplishment with the work she truly does.

I don't know that this would made sense in 3rd-4th grade, but I do imagine we could very well still be drawing guidelines on posterboard for her to write on pretty late in the game, and I wouldn't feel badly about that--or about helping tape and glue if that is not the point and it gets frustrating and I know she's really tried.

If rubrics demand no spelling or punctuation errors, I also imagine that I will demand to proofread, whether she wants it or not throughout elementary school, though I do believe it is better to say "you have x spelling mistakes" than it is to actually find the mistakes for the child.

Some parents may do the kids' homework, but I just don't get the point. How can they ever feel good about what they've done if they didn't actually do it?

I will say, if the school requested that we didn't help with homework, I'd be communicating with the teacher about every little thing I helped with to make sure it was okay.

So apparently one parent just typed the report for her kid, not sure how much she helped with the actual "writing". These kids don't know how to type because the school isn't teaching keyboarding. So it's hunt and peck, but they want a 5 page report? Since DD is so far behind with writing and probably has a writing disability, I was actually sitting with her and helping her form coherent sentences. I made the teacher aware she was getting help. I stopped doing this because I need the school to see how bad her writing really is. But even for kids with no disability, writing a long research paper is really tough so I'd be really surprised if there are any parents who don't help at all. DD's idea of listing her "references" was to put things like www.google.com. or www.my mom.com, or www.myself.com. The teacher circled these and put question marks. If the assignment is appropriate for the ability level of the kids, then I can see not helping, but I don't think that's the case with a lot of the assignments. DD had to construct a board game for one assignment and present it to the class. That involved printing images from the computer, getting poster board, gluing things, etc. No way could she have figured all that out herself. There is another presentation coming up where they have to dress like the person they did a biography on. Parents are invited to come view these presentations. So they think parents aren't going to help arrange these costumes? For the science fair, it was completely obvious that most kids had parental help putting together their posters boards if nothing else. So I'm not sure if the teachers are stupid enough that they really think kids are doing these things on their own, or if they expect help with some things but not others, or ????

blackcap, I have one kid with a writing disability and one who is an outstanding writer and I've done this for both - it's simply teaching a skill to a child who needs to learn it. I don't see this as being the same thing as writing *for* your child if you're not giving your child the ideas re what to write about or actually doing the writing for them.


When the assignment seems beyond the ability level of the kids in the class, I'd talk with the teacher. First check in and be sure you and your child understand the assignment parameters and expectations, and if that still checks out as seeming to be unreasonable, express the concerns to the teacher.


I'm going to diverge in opinion here. My kids had to do assignments like this in 4th grade and they were able to do it independently. It took one "how-to" lesson at a very early age to teach my kids how to use our printer. (The larger life lesson was how to prevent my then-three-year-old from *not* using the printer to print images she found online... sorry for momentarily veering OT...). Yes, parents have to purchase poster board and supplies, but I'd expect a child your dd's age to be able to put together her own poster. It might not look polished like it would if a parent helped... but the expectation is the parent isn't helping.



We've had projects like this too. Yes, parents help kids pull together costumes if they need to find pieces for them, but in reality my kids had their own ideas for costumes, I just had to help with pulling something out of the adult closet occasionally or finding material. This isn't the same thing as the parent going out and buying a costume or creating the idea for the child.


As I mentioned above, having judged a lot of science fairs, it's usually pretty obvious who's had parental involvement vs over-involvement vs no-involvement. Most science fair judges take that into account. It's also not usually just the board that's the most obvious - but talking to the kids you can find out pretty quick whether or not the project was a student idea carried out by the student or a parent-infused project.

I don't think that the issue is whether or not teachers are "stupid" - my guess is that teachers can see through a situation where a parent is over-stepping bounds in helping, and that's what led to a request of the whole class that parents not help with typing or whatever.

I'd also add - parents and teachers aren't the only ones who can usually see when some students are receiving extra help above and beyond what is expected from parents. My kids are *very* aware of this, and they don't come home saying "Mom, why didn't you do this for me too?", instead their take-away is more of thinking it was lame on the part of the other parent. They rarely see it as something that has anything to do with the student, fwiw. Also, please know I don't mean that's *you* at all blackcap

polarbear

My son is in 6th grade (Middle school here). The only homework he ever had in elementary school was spelling - so yes, I did help quiz him on his spelling words. Anything else, he's on his own. Interestingly, he had some homework yesterday, part of which was asking what our homework policy was. Questions included whether his parents helped with his homework. He answered with a big fat NO - bolded, huge font,in red and underlined Having said that, he does his homework as soon as he gets home, before we are home. I have tried to help with math a couple of times, but each time ended with a huge meltdown (I won't say on who's part), so we don't do that any more Yes - I am of the firm belief that homework is HIS work, not mine.

polarbear, DD must be inept then because I had to ask Dh for help in terms of printing out game cards, and images that were the right size for the poster board, as well as a map that was the right size. I suppose she could have handwritten/drawn everything but it would have taken hours, involving much drama, and the end result would have been laughable--not something fit to be presented to a class. DD has impaired executive functioning ability, but even for "normal" kids, I think planning/designing a board game about a specific topic, including the relevant information that the teacher wanted included, would be difficult.

I do think parents are helping too much, because the assignments are too hard, but the teachers don't realize that, and they actually do think some kids are doing things on their own when they are really not. They actually have rubrics, for instance if a kid writes a research paper and has more than 2 grammatical/spelling errors, they get marked down. Really? For fourth grade? So my question is, where should the line be drawn...when is it Ok to assist, correct, whatever...esp. if it's something that the kid can't figure out on their own, they are expressing frustration, refusing to do the assignment, etc. The teacher has these harsh criteria, but now she's saying that it's Ok if they get an F but then they can re-do or fix the assignment and get an A or a B. I don't understand that logic. Why not just make the assignments easy enough that kids can do them correctly (on their own) the first time?

blackcat-- my DD had a number of those assignments (build a game) through elementary school.

No, the end result was often not too "pretty" at the time, but she did actually enjoy doing them-- well, some of the time, anyway.

I understand the concept of revisions in the writing process (all evidence here aside, I mean-- LOL); but I also tend to agree that in that case, why "grade" the initial rough draft to begin with??

It makes no sense to me to even call that initial submission "finished/final" if it can be regraded after revision.

Why not have it be explicit that this is two different components to the assignment in the first place?

I think, honestly, that such policies ("regrading" and very harsh initial grading) tend to foster really unhealthy perfectionistic tendencies in some kids-- and extremely sloppy work habits in others.

Sometimes both things in the same child, in fact.

It also robs children of any pride that they might take in their own accomplishments and hard work. It feels capricious, and as though the teacher (and parent, in the cases where s/he seemingly MUST be involved) are the ones "owning" the process, not the student.

Which makes me wonder--

where is the growth and learning for the student in all of this?

I think all it teaches my DD is that it's Ok to turn in a piece of ****, and get an F. You can always re-do it. Or not. She couldn't care less about her grades. But other kids get very worked up about it, and eventually may stop trying. In Jr. High, they are not going to be able to re-do work or tests the way they do now (they also allow kids to re-take tests that they fail).
The teachers say "Oh, you got an F. No big deal. Re-do it if you want." So what does this really teach? I don't get it. Since some kids are really worried about the grades or doing the assignment as written, they either stress out about the assignment, or ask for help from the parent. In some cases, parents don't want to see F's. So they help. Parents are probably thinking their kid is about to get kicked out of the gifted program because they are doing so bad. So the teachers are perpetuating this weird situation.