to only want people on this thread who agree that school setting research topics for a 6 year old

[activate]

is lazy teaching

as a teacher you do not set homework for children that they cannot acheive without parents doing it for them - you set homework for them that they can acheive with parental support

it is two different things

and this time I am going to say something

Sarah, you sound a lovely teacher.

Activate, you are doing a fair amount of patronising yourself, and being a tad aggressive towards stoats whilst doing it. She has a different opinion, and is allowed it - it's a talkboard, you invite different points of view, and it is expected that they will be discussed.

I am not a huge fan of any homework at primary level, speaking both as a parent and a teacher. But 'find out' homework I find is more enjoyable than most, and usually does generate lots of excitement and enthusiasm for a topic. The skills described are part of the curriculum, and the follow up lesson stoats described is excellent for speaking and listening, reading, writing, ICT, etc - and I say that as someone who regularly has to judge lessons, and has my judgement judged too.

If you don't want to do it, don't. Some children will get lots out of it, some don't. In many schools, teachers are obliged to set homework regardless of their standpoint on it, and as homeworks go, it's quite valuable, imo.

We could try and discuss it without the sneering, I think.

Have you ever tried researching on the internet with 30 6 year olds? It is not possible - I think we have all agreed than some can't read, and they are certainly not mature enough to scan texts and make meaningful notes!

Even the thought makes me break out in a cold sweat.

You don't know that she doesn't intregrate it into her ICT lesson, Sarah. Indeed, I would fully expect that she did - I doubt very much if she wants the parents to actually teach the research skills, she would merely want to show parents what the children are learning at school, and letting them support those objectives if they wish.

"IMO that is an even better planned lesson because it avoids any children being at a disadvantage"
But how far should this be taken, Sarah? The children who don't get to read regularly with their parents have an disadvantage.
The children who have tables/spelling homework when no one cares whether they have homework or not are disadvantage - should learning of tables at home never be encouraged then? After all, they will have an unfair advantage.

I don't think you realise the importance of talk in the primary curriculum.

I've said before activate, that it doesn't matter if the parent writes down the fact as long as it has been discussed and talked about. The writing is not the objective - the learning is, ready for a collaborative lesson in the classroom.

Today's primary schools shouldn't be running 'talk and chalk' lessons. Lessons should be interactive and children should be given loads of opportunities to discuss and share things they have found out. These are the qualities that are going to be useful in life.

All children today need to know from an early age how to collect information. Parents and teachers provide models for that -we look at books, newspapers, the internet, dictionaries, etc. All I am saying, all through this thread is that it is beneficial for a child to share this information gathering process at home.

So why expect parents to be able to do it at home then?

"However having their ma reading and writing about it to a teachers schedule is not necessarily going to help them to enjoy learning."

True, not necessarily. But for a lot of children, it does. Not every child of course, but that's true of most things. Even chocolate :o

Sarah you sound great, and yes those are absolutely the right prompts to think about.

I have two further scenarios to add to maryz ones. The child who announces at five mins before school begins that they have homework and then works themselves into tizzy because there isn't enough time and she has a very cross parent. And the child who just refuses to do it, resulting in huge arguments and a late bedtime as it takes all evening to persuade him he has to do it and then to get it done.

Feenie I've not come across the option of just not doing it (hence the problem with scenario two). At our UK school that would mean a sanction, generally missing break, resulting in ds becoming unmanageable and getting into more trouble and dd being very very upset. Lose lose all round really.

(Actually - re the penguins - we did make a class powerpoint presentation with the facts we found!)

Activate, I agree with you 100%.

The work assigned apparently takes no notice whatsoever of what is known (and has been known for a long, long time) about children's intellectual development and what sort of work is appropriate for particular ages and stages of development.

I have 5 DCs and the oldest is now attending university, second gearing up to go next autumn. The others are 15, 12 and 9. All started school, and the oldest finished school in the US, where formal academic teaching really only begins at 5-6 and reading is taught in earnest only at age 6 or 7. No project assignments of any kind were ever handed out until all the class was reading. In the early years, they had a weekly show and tell where they brought an interesting object and shared a little about it with the class. A great exercise in remembering to bring something, public speaking and listening attentively and completely appropriate for the wide range of reading skills in the group, very open ended as far as what you could contribute, and everyone who could hear would learn something about your seashell or bird nest or whatever.

Every aspect of education, every subject taught was graduated to the nth degree in order to maximise the chances of most children in the class actually learning the material and learning the equally appropriate and useful skills that go with teaching the subjects themselves - keeping the homework notebook up to date and filled in, working independently, learning to budget time and organise information and workload yourself.

But then you could also discuss and learn about it in the classroom, perhaps by watching a short video. Teachers have access to all sorts of resources that parents don't. My dd did a project on animals when she was in the States (she would have been eight). They chose different animals in groups, went to the library and came home with a couple of age appropriate books to read with a note for the parents to make sure the books were read or read to and a list of the sort of information they should be looking for. No problem, even ds would have coped with that, and we would probably had some happy conversations and done some more research. To be honest I don't think that your three facts about penguins would cause me or my children much grief, they probably would both have been able to come up with that immediately without any homework required. But as I said that's not been my experience.

Oh for goodness sake.
This homework is not to do with reading and writing - just finding out about an aspect of the world together with a parent.

It is like show and tell. The child remembers the facts and tells them to their group. The group then record the facts in some way (probably in a literacy lesson with a literacy objective).

The groups members will discuss (public speaking) and share their ideas.

The collation and categorisation of the information would be a teaching step towards wokring independently and being able to organise facts and classify appropriately.

The children in my class love these types of homework - and the feedback from the parents is positive, as they catch the their child's enthusiasm.

I know it isn't always easy to get other teachers to collaborate, but I have thought of a fast\time cheap way to sweeten the deal with the ITC teacher.

When they want to refine the kids searching skills they can take your lesson as both the context for the lesson AND a revision aid for science.

Your smartboard presentation is loaded into the PCs if needed, the posters they made before are on the walls or on the center table, they have to chose three fact that somebody else found that they wish to verify and they use Google to check that the fact is correct.

Raising the possibility for chats about "just cos something is on the internet, doesn't mean it is true" and how to work out if the info you have found is from a reliable source.

OR

They could use take in the original posters from your class as inspiration to help them spring board into a class collaboration Prezi (just for example, there are many different free options to chose from for multi media projects), prezi.com/u-5zuqkucd_r/gli-invertebrati/ where they can enhance their original project by finding videos, images, make webcam recording of themselves talking about what they leaned about penguins to embed. That way the ITC teacher doesn't have to get them started on a project "cold" as it were, saving her bundles of time in terms of avoiding having to sort out a lack of awarness or interest in the content needed to actually create a presentation.

Thanks Nooka - it really is only 10-20 minutes every half term I'm talking about here. As you say, it could even be something anecdotal an adult tells them.

I'm the ICT teacher Sarah. I don't know what kind of school you're used to!
I have 30, mixed ability, 6/7 year olds in a computer room at one time, with no help. I have a feeling you've never experienced that.
They're not really ready to follow things through on google unaided.

The only time ds enjoyed one of these sort of research project homework things was when they were told to find someone who had lived in the local area for a long time to tell them what had changed. He got to interview our 80 year old neighbour (which also gave the neighbour a lot of pleasure). But then if we didn't happen to have an old neighbour that we knew well it would have been very difficult.

Look on the bright side. At least you didn't get ds1 coming home last year (in Reception) insisting that his half term holiday homework was a trip to outer space .

They were just supposed to be looking for facts on outer space he he was insistent that his teacher had said that they had to go and find these facts himself - in outer space.

He was furious with me that I 'wasn't going to bother taking him' and would not believe that:
a) they aren't yet running trips to outer space
b) Even if they were they would take more than a week to get to and from
c) It would be much too expensive for us all to go
d) they certainly wouldn't have last minute availability for half term if everybody had been given the same homework
e) what would have happened if we (or others) already had plans for half term week and couldn't go at short notice
etc

He knew that I wasn't telling the truth because his reception teacher knows EVERYTHING EVER and wouldn't have asked if it wasn't possible. obviously.

I'm all for providing support to ds1 when he's set homework, he's one of life's natural inquisitors curious kids that wants to know about everything and have a go. But he hates writing it down - if anything his writing and reading have got worse since he started school 1.3 yrs ago. And his teacher this year is really unapproachable, unlike last years, so has been difficult to find out how to help him improve . sorry, digressing there.

The only good thing about being told the homework was a trip to outer space was that it was so impossible that it was obviously not true, but there have been times when ds has been adamant that he needs to do something or do it a certain way (despite the printed note in the homework book) that is much more possible and then it is difficult to know what should be done.

Would be nice to have an indication of time that should be spent on it too - never get that and would be very useful, having seen that mentioned earlier in the thread.

'The child remembers the facts.. ' The child first has to find the facts and then has to memorise them and therein lies the problem.

Some children of 6 would have enormous difficulty remembering three facts about something they were not originally familiar with. Some of them would rely completely on their parents to find the information and then sit with them making sure they knew the facts and could repeat them. There's a world of difference between an assignment on something unfamiliar where facts must be memorised and show and tell, where a child can say "This is a bird's nest that we found in the park. Birds built it with little twigs last spring and they lined it with moss and hair. The mother laid her eggs in the center and then the eggs hatched and the baby birds grew up and flew away."

I really can't see despite some of posts above how asking six yr old to "research" for homework makes sense.. I'm all for teacher making day as intereseting and involving as possible and in my experience most teachers have, but at six imo homework if given at all should involve developing reading skills - ie having parent read to child or child read to parent depending on levels.. later years when all class are at some kind of reasonable level of reading then this type of project is fantastic. Though being of slightly luddite tendencies I resent the assumption that the internet is the only resource to use.. and don't like the whole "everything you need to know is available on the internet" attitude sometimes.. yep it might be but an awful lot is wrong too!!!!

That is disapointing of your school stoats, my dds school has 3 people in the ICT room with the 30 mixed ability kids

Still dont think its fair to send the googling job home though

"But how far should this be taken, Sarah?"

To the point where nobody is left unable to complete COMPULSORY homework due not having access to a computer, internet access, funds for crafty stuff etc.

To the point where nobody is left unable to complete COMPULSORY homework because it goes beyond the point of supervision at most and requires the parents to be capoerble and available to actively participate in order for it to be done.

All bets are off for voluntary activities suggested and outlined by teacher as enrichment, that they think some of the parents\kids might be interested in.

I tend to go and warn the local library what I'm up to and attach a copy of the library's "you can use our internet service" agreement and opening times, so parents without internet access at home are at least aware there are options other than buying computer they can't afford, should they be free duing opening hours, or live near enough to it in order to be able to use it.

ds1 haqs been set the task of writing about 7 different robots. He is ENTHRALLED by robots, but unfortunately, does not have the necessary study skills and I DO NOT HAVE THE NECESSARY SKILLS TO TEACH HIM THESE.

I left school at 16 for God's sake, and I can't be the only person in the world who did that.

So tonight I have sat in front of wikipediia, chosen 7 famous robots and dictated to him 2 sentences on each robot.

Isn't that what I was supposed to do? Because if he wants to hand ANYTHING in (and he really does) this was the only way I could see of doing it.

he hates writing, by the way, but my printer doesn't work so he's stuck with it.

It's all about talking and discussion. I'm not expecting 'The interior of Saturn is probably composed of a core of iron, nickel, silicon and oxygen compounds, surrounded by a deep layer of metallic hydrogen, an intermediate layer of liquid hydrogen and liquid helium and finally, an outer gaseous layer.'
I'm expecting 'You can't stand on the surface of Saturn. You'd fall straight through it because it's made of gas!'

The child would be interested in that - it would grab his/her imagination. Then, maybe that it has rings and it's the second largest planet.

The child doesn't find the facts - you find them together and talk about them. They will most likely be a little familiar with the topics (e.g. animals, minibeasts, space, castles) The child or the parent types or writes them.

coldtits - it's not your job to teach the study skills. You have done the right thing - you both found the facts together and both worked on writing them down. Now he will be able to talk to you about them and you'll know what he's going on about, he's done his homework, he'll be dead chuffed to take it into school. And he's learnt more about robots to boot!
Job done.

"To the point where nobody is left unable to complete COMPULSORY homework"

Hoemwork is NOT compulsory at primary school, and I would kick off if my child was sanctioned for non-completion. I don't believe that's commonplace either.