Homework....

[Sallyskidshop]

Hi, I believe it is better that the child makes the mistake & lets the teacher show her the way it should be done. She may not like you pointing out her mistakes, children can be funny about that sometimes. I would tell her to slow down & think carefully what the questions are about before rushing in to answer it. She needs to have that put in place now so that in the future when homework gets tougher she'll understand it better. Some of the things that you may look at is does she have any free time when she gets home from school? Is she tired? Has she had something to eat? Are there distractions around her? Is she in a quiet place to do her homework? Sorry just thoughts that came to mind as I answered your post. Hope they help. Please let me know how it goes.

[MomoJA]

As a teacher I've been in schools where I had to give homework. Otherwise, I would only assign outside reading and reading of class novels.

I know the research, and I generally agree with it, but I also know that the realities of teaching today mean that there just isn't time available to allow students to do the amount of research they need to do for a research paper, say, and there is something to be said about learning time management for a long term project. Thankfully, due to the nature of my current job, this is not an issue.

Having said all that, I also know that my pre-k daughter is disappointed every day that her homework involves no more than answering a question or singing me a song. I have to give her workbooks to satisfy her.

[alter ego]

we use the rule of 1 hour, per grade, over the week. so our yr 7 does 7hrs a week our kindy 2 do 1 hr a week (reading and maths)
this is for finishing anything off, working on projects and assigned homework.
our kids all do a sport 1 night a week, and swimming lessons 1night a week.
they have social time every evening, and weekends are outdoors family time (with sleepovers and playdates)
i think its a good balance

[kvtsharma]

I think today children are loaded with home work . This burden should lighten a bit ..children should have good time to play after coming back from school.

[GavinH]

I don't think children should be burdened with homework that makes their schedule look worse than mine. When is a kid going to play and be a child if they finish school at 2 and have hours of homework each day and sometimes on the weekend too.

[IADad]

Originally Posted by parentastic

So I am curious, dadu: what would they do or see in this 1 hour per day at home that they couldn't do or see in school, with a professional of education with them?

I agree with the benefit of involving parents in their children's education... when they can do that. But what of all these parents who cannot follow what their children are learning? (this is especially true in high school). I am wondering if other ways could be devised to get the parents involved in their children's education (like they do in Montessori schools, for instance), other than homework...?

I'm going to agree with Dadu from a slightly different perspective. I think homework has some value beyond any pure academic advancement(and it's just my belief, my opinion, not based on anybody's studies.)
-I believe it teaches kids to be responsible for their own learning - there isn't always going to be a teacher, be resourceful - figure it out. My 9 yo, if he's working on homework, with a text book and he doesn't understand the answer he finds in the text book, will go to the internet to find a different explanation.
-I beleive it promotes self discipline and time management
- if done right, it promotes exploration - unlike one view above, I don't think homework should be just more of what was taught in class. Introduce a concept, introduce the resources, then ask a question that is based on that concept but wasn't answered in class.

and as for what to do when suject matter surpasses parental understanding...well, a couple possibilities....

the parents could learn along with the child, nothing wrong with life-long learning...talk about getting more from your education dollar!

or the parent can still provide the role of coach, helping the student stay vigilant, approach problem solving, find resources.

I think education can be so much more than what happens in the classroom between 8 and 3....

[mom2many]

Originally Posted by IADad

and as for what to do when suject matter surpasses parental understanding...well, a couple possibilities....

the parents could learn along with the child, nothing wrong with life-long learning...talk about getting more from your education dollar!

I agree with this to a point, I can tell you that since home schooling Cole....I am NOT smarter then a 5th grader. Goodness how much I have forgotten, however there are night were I sit up and learn it. Math is my weakest point, forget that I was in Calculus in high school, I am lucky if I remember how to multiply a fraction LOL and I have always and still do struggle with word problems. I did find a great site though that has helped me and I have passed it on to quite a few people. I'm gonna share it with you guys, you never know when you might need an extra bit of help.

http://www.khanacademy.org/

He has easy to follow videos on every type of math out there...I mean every type!

[westcoastmom]

Our 10 year old was bringing home math every night and taking 2 hours to get through it. She wasn't learning in the classroom. We had the school counsellor assess her and found a learning gap that is now being addressed. Was a source of frustration and a symptom to a problem

[cybele]

I think homework is a good way to make sure everything is sticking and I certainly think that it helps prepare younger kids for higher education, gets them into a rhythm.

What I disagree with is older kids getting just pointless busywork, were having this issue with Dita at the moment, she's in her last year of high school, she's taken on some hard subjects that she has a lot of homework for, such as specialist mathematics, yet she also has this "all about me" assignment for her homeroom group that has to do with their self esteem camp that is coming up next week that is basically a giant poster about herself, a letter to her parents, and a book about her life. She came home furious when it was assigned because to her its just pointless, and she hates stuff like that, and as a parent its really frustrating to see her waste her time doing this stuff when she has plenty of homework from her actual school subjects.

Lux's teacher this year also seems to be keen on the pointless homework, she's still young so she dosent get much, but she came home this afternoon and told me that she had to draw pictures of 5 of her spelling words, and I dont understand what that is going to do her for or what the point of it is.