To think this is too much to ask of 7/8 (yr3) year olds?

[emkana]

about a topic, read relevant books/websites, digest the information, then write about the topic (seven subheadings to cover) using all your own words, plus illustrate appropriately?

Reading does not = research, how can anyone not know that??? Research may = reading, but reading does not = research. More skills than reading are needed.

its quite clear you don't, you just don't have the sense to see what you don't understand.

I think the task is OK for Y3, but not as homework. DS had similar things in Y3 (and more so now in Y4) but they were done entirely at school (well, less so this year, but almost all at school) and so the teachers were able to vary the amount of support and guidance to meet the needs and abilities of each child - this year, for example, the top set were expected to do all research and first draft themselves, and were then guided as to how to refine it, where the other sets were 'stepped through' the process a lot more.

..and the school don't believe in holiday homework at all until such time as they are preparing for external exams.

You cannot reaerch on the internet or books without reading .

Research involves so much more but if you can't read your up the creek without a paddle.

And on that note I am of for a paddle down the river.

In the main title is says 7/8 year olds.

Just for the record.

(and having read the slanging match further down the thread, if it matters, DC's school is a fairly high achieving independent school - which clearly can manage with longer school days and no homework)

Quite. And if you can't even read very well (which many can't at 7) then you don't have a bloody cat's chance.

I have read with Ds1's class. He's not the worst reader, not by a bloody long chalk, and at least half the class would have struggled with the homework set to the OP's child.

Whatis the point of setting homework that an average year 3/4 class would struggle to do without their parents doing what I do, and using their child as a slow and inefficient scribe?

Nobody seems to care who does the damned homework, as long as it's done. If it's not done, in many schools, there will be punishment. So they leave us no chioce.... either do it for them, or let them be punished, because they are not capable of doing it themselves.

Ds1 did no homework throughout year one, as they were sending him spelling words he couldn't even read. If they had punished him, I'd have removed him from school.

The ac6tual reason I do Ds1's homework 'with' him is to alleviate his anxiety, not to avoid punishment, as he doesn't get punished - none of them do. But some schools do punish!

Teachers are supposed to be professionals and as such they are meant to take into account family situations and the needs of individual pupils, not just churn out worksheets and homework tasks for the sake of looking productive. Therefore anyone who feels homework is getting in the way of family life for under-tens simply needs to speak to the teacher, and/or stop the homework after the appointed time (eg 20 minutes) and write a polite note to the teacher underneath the homework explaining that this is what you have done so they can judge the time it takes your child to complete the work. You also should be giving the teacher some indication of your own contribution to the homework, so if you are doing 80% of it, then say so. It needs to be a two-way communication process.

It's of no consequence what other children and parents are doing, or whether they are 'enjoying' it, or whatever - if you are not, and you find yourself basically being a home tutor doing most of the stuff yourself and parent and child getting stressed about it, the homework situation has Gone Too Far. Take it from me. And if you get any grief with classroom teachers it's always possible to make an appointment to explain the situation to the head teacher. And if the head teacher is unsympathetic as well, you're probably looking at a dodgy school with less than capable staff, whatever you are paying to go there, or however the school presents itself in marketing terms.

Be brave and do what is right by your own kids. You will know in your heart of heart whether your children are truly benefiting from the tasks set, and you should take it from there.

PS If homework isn't being marked or looked at, that's just plain rude, so that should be a cause for concern as well. I always say to my teacher trainees, "If it's worth setting, it's worth marking".

Nobody said you could research without reading, chips, hence why its quite clear you misunderstood that and everything else

My children go to a high achieving academic school too and I still think it is ridiculous homework.

You have to be very savvy to do research on the internet. It's not just a case of being able to read or even type in a word. As has been pointed out, many adults struggle to get the hard facts online. Wikipedia for example can be unreliable, sometimes plain wrong; but still look convincingly right.

It's not 'dumbing down' to set work that is achievable. You can stretch a person academically - yes I'm all for that - but push too hard at a young age and you will lose a childs enthusiasm. At 7/8 you still have a very long career ahead on the academic front and setting work with an unattainable result is uninspiring and a drag.

Just to follow on from my earlier post my dd is now 12 and in her first year at senior school and I now have the benefit of hindsight, which convinces me more than ever that the hefty project she was given aged 8 was pitched wrongly for the age group and only served to demotivate her.

She now ably manages research type work, prolonged projects, works alone and gets excellent results. She has the maturity to manage it and pace herself and cope. This has been learned over time, not from one great dollop of a project in year 3. She also has the mental energy now at 12 to take things like that on of an evening. She couldn't after a day at school age 8 and her bedtime was 7.30pm. When was she supposed to fit it in?

The project she had in junior school required a huge input from parents (ie me) which is counterproductive to dc and unreasonable to us when many of us already have an overflowing day and other committments/children. I am happy to support school work and back the school but I can only do so up to a point.

I asked dd2 about what she thought of research tasks today.

She said that they were easier to do in school than at home because you normally worked with other people. She did not like using the Internet because most of the information was too "grown up."

She did some research on road safety in class. A lot of the websites were hard to understand, but then her friend found a page written for children and that was "better."

She said that she had never seen anything frightening or yuck on the Internet but she did find a Pokemon site with the word Fuck in it . I suppose lots of teens like Pokemon.

My dd is the same age and considered able (not g&t). She would only be able to do it independently if the teacher specified a source ( like a website or book) and a format (PowerPoint or written on a4). I find that searching for an appropriate source of information to be the most difficult bit.

I think that the time scale is generous if you break it up and do it in chunks.

So in answer to the original post ''no I don't think the task set in the time set is unreasonable''

but some do!

Yet the bigger question remains unanswered - why at this age, cant it wait till later, like it does in other (no less successful) countries.

I suppose some questions will remain inanswered like why do other countries start school at a later age?

unanswered

But that's an easy one - because it's better for the children!

lol.........................

For every report you read that is for it, you can find one that is against it.

Such is life.

I started school just after I was four and I did'nt do too badly.

Kids can start later in other countries because their kindergarten and/or childcare and/or extended family structures are much more established. We closed the majority of our state nurseries down after World War 2, and since then, parents have been desperate to get their kids into school younger and younger in order to get some support with caring for their kids. It has to be all dressed up to look like traditional schooling in order for it to be justifiable in the eyes of the taxpayer, and less like some sort of perk for parents, and the idea of having an Early Years curriculum has whipped things up into even more of a social and political frenzy, with children measured against targets and outcomes as though weighing babies makes them grow. The downside to all this is that very young children are being institutionalised in an emotionally distant way that goes against their stage of physical and emotional development. Which is probably why the OP is having these problems.

FWIW if it was down to me I would abolish infant schools.

Because they have more sense than dressing up babies in uniforms and hot-housing them, only for them to achieve less than countries who don't?

Perhaps you could spell better and follow through an argument if you'd started at 7.

There actually isn't a lot of evidence for starting kids at school at the age of 4 (I can't think of any, actually). Only evidence about the provision of high quality nursery education helping children from disadvantaged homes do better in later life.