fallon

my daugter started Kindergarten today and was in preschool for 2 yrs before that, she's 4 yrs old and we did homework, 2 pages of writting reading or math everyday this summer. If I didn't tell her to come to the table to be what we called "pencile papers" she would ask. I believe this has given her a strong upper hand and will continue to work with her beyound her "normal" school hours

Joyce

If a parent has a problem with a teacher, they need to take it up with the teacher or school administrators, not put their son or daughter in the middle. A note excusing a child from homework is a very bad idea, and I would guess something a school would never allow to occur on student by student basis without carefully considering the justifications for each student.

jtee

Define "busy work"?

So far as parent of 11 year old, I have never come across it. We also have been very involved in asking that our daughter have certain a teacher each year. We gotten to know all the teachers at our daughters school because turn over is very low, most have been there at least 5+ years.

evilbrent

yeah yeah. I know.

I wouldn't ACTUALLY do it.

I'm just aware that homework is mostly designed to be stuff done to keep overanal parents happy - it's work that's designed to keep kids busy and stressed in order for their parents to somehow believe that this helps them learn more fully.

I don't believe that it's necessary. But, then, maybe I'm different. I learnt things the first time, and I'm aware that not all minds work like mine.

Kids should be so busy playing, running, playing sports, playing music, reading for fun, being with their parents etc etc etc that I can't reasonably see a time in their life when it's approriate for them to sit down and trudge through some dumbarse rote-learning worksheet that the teacher set purely because of school policy - not because they had an inspiration that this education needed to happen in the privacy of a child's own home instead of during the school day.

evilbrent

+1

mm hmm.

I think that playing at letters and numbers is a much more sensible idea than doing home work.

fallon

I'm not really sure what you're trying to say here.

jtee

Not our experience, not even close.Your comments are reflecting someone who is not involved in the educational process of raising a child who is in school.

Part of the purpose of having a child do a small amount of home work is foster the development of independent study skills. As a 5th grader our daughter had, at most, 1 hour of home work, and on average she was done in 30 minutes. It wasn't every day either. For any books the students read on their own, they got extra points (1 point per page) and the teacher would spend a few minutes discussing the book with them, or they could write a 1-2 page report about the book. Kids were allowed to propose their own extra credit projects, which in itself was a process of learning how to define what they were going to do, how they were going to do it, and the expected results. Our daughter loved it most of the time, but sure she griped occationally about having to spend 30-60 minutes doing a few math problems when she would rather be outside with her friends, but it never was busy work.

ella97b

in the school where i teach, we don't give a numerical grade for homework but we give a letter grade for it. homework is a way of the school to develop a sense of responsibility to our children, to help them establish a good work and study habits at home and it also serves as a communication of the school to parents as to what topic or lesson has been discussed to help the parents further strengthen what they have learned on that day. and in our school, before we give homeworks, we should first make sure that the lesson to be brought home was thoroughly discussed and the child can actually accomplish it all by him/herself. if not, it is the responsibility of the teacher to give remediation to help the child cope with it.

Shari Nielsen

What one parent may consider "busy work" for their child might be a challenge for another. My 2nd grade daughter comes home w/ a math page every night. It takes her about 5 min tops to complete it b/c she has such strong skills. She actually gets annoyed that she has to do these "baby sheets". However, I spoke w/ my neighbor down the street whose son is in the same class and she actually complained that it is too much for the kids at this age.

Meanwhile, my 6 year old comes home w/ stuff that is as simple as matching/writing letters and pictures and then coloring them. Do I see a value in coloring as a homework assignment? Not necessarily, however, she is learning to read and follow the directions, and complete an assignment in a timely manner.

Also, teachers aren't spending time finding an assignment, photocopying it, and collecting it if they didn't think it was of some sort of educational value. And like some of the other replies mentioned, the lesson might be to establish a good work ethic and/or approach to learning on one's own.

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aliinnc

My daughter is a student at a school that has an unbelievable amount of homework. She is a HS sophomore and averages six hrs of work a night. Some of that is due to the fact that she is competitive and is taking two AP's.

As I understand it, there is a trend away from grading homework. The idea is that HW should be practice, and that you should not be graded on it. I personally agree with this trend.

Think about it this way: if you don't do your HW, you won't do well on the next test. So it evens out even if you don't grade HW.