Would you expect a 10 year-old to complete this assignment?

[ProbablyJustGas]

My niece goes to an expensive independent primary. She is 10 and in Primary 6. This was her homework tonight, due tomorrow, having been given a week to complete it.

[i]1. research info about the artist and write about him or her

1. how did the image (the painting) make you feel
2. write about the medium and the technique the artist has used
3. write about the mood of the image
4. write about the colours used, warm,cool, dark, light, etc
5. describe exactly what the image shows

Artist - David Cameron
Image - a huge gargoyle/griffin on top of a building (The chimera of amiens 1910)

800 word thesis[/i]

She has completed 500 words and is bashing her head in trying to come up with any more.

I think her teacher has pretty unreasonable expectations for this age group. I also think the teacher is going to find several assignments turned in with paragraphs looking a lot like Wikipedia. Am I right, or are my standards just aiming low?

Totally used the wrong msg board code. Sigh. :(

Bloody hell

At 10, I was doing 20 spellings

800 words! WTAF?!

I think the most I ever wrote at secondary was 1000 and at primary.

That's crazy OP, way too much for that age.

my dd is 10 and in year 5 - she could do that - I think yabu

Think that all sounds fair enough. It's only 1.5 pages of type.

I was thinking it wasn't too bad because most ten year olds could explain how something makes them feel and do a couple of sentences about techniques and colours.

But 800 words is pretty ridiculous - most A Level essays are only 1000-1500 words long!

Dd is 11 and in year 6 at an independent primary. She is pretty bright. She would not be able to do that in a week independently without completely cutting & pasting the lot.

I think that's fair enough- it's nicely spelled out with questions to answer.

Nah. There are 6 sections. 125 words each section give or take. One or two paragraphs of 4-6-8 sentences will give her that word count. I'm sure they've been learning about technique and mood and medium and all that guff in class. The research stuff is pretty straight forward for a 10 year old and the rest (feelings blah blah)... well she just needs to crap on for a bit. A week is fair and I expect the teacher will get some high quality work submitted (esp as it's independent school).

as Agent said - it's less than 2 sides of type - dd just did the 500 word R4 essay thing - it was less than 1 side of a4

I think it sounds reasonable over the course of a week and weekend.

Could you take one question at a time? One a day?

I think it would ok for a very able childe but alot would struggle

My DD got almost that exact homework last month. Same thing, different painting.

She also had to use hyperbole, personification, metaphors and similes etc in her writing.

She's 9. So yes, YABU.

I guess it sounds OK if it's a subject she is keen on, otherwise it could prove to be tricky.

Sounds reasonable to me.

Except you didn't realise you were in AIBU.

You are though. Just sayin'

My ds could easily do it (whether he would actually sit down and do it properly is another matter)

but not sure about 800 words. If they do 8-10 words on a line, that is more than 80 lines which in my ds homework book (A4 size) is more than 2 full pages.

That is a lot of writing, ds would struggle to do that.

I think the key is that it was a weeks homework. So in theory she could have done the research bit earlier, and that could have been 1/3 - 1/2 of it. And then done the other bits in stages, so a paragraph on how it made you feel one night and describing the picture another night

ds is 10 and pretty bright, top set etc, but not a fan of writing. I would be happy if he did this in 400 words.

On the other hand dd1 is 7 and I can imagine that she would be able to produce this at 10, because she can pour out lots of crap lots of things onto the page

It's preparing her for coursework which is a big part of school these days.

I went to an independent school and gcse we were taught to closer to a level than the curriculum so that when we went on to a level it wasn't a schock

DS is 9, yr 4. I would expect all the questions and a written response/ summary.

usually they have a guideline amount to do i.e. an A3 poster or one side of A4. They aren't strict about this though its just an indication to parents as to what they're expecting.

I don't think it's that much really - quite a bit for a 10 year old but certainly do-able and all set out clearly and everything

DD would do that, in fact she'd probably enjoy doing it. She's 10 and at a private school, so used to getting quite substantial homework sometimes.

I disagree that it is to much. I also think people have low expectations in general when it comes to children today.

My 8 year old who is by no means particularly academic could write 4 or 500 words on a subject such as this...the image is supplied as are the points to cover.

I guess it's more the word count I find a bit overambitious than the questions themselves. My niece is currently struggling with structuring and fleshing out paragraphs, never mind a whole essay. She's bright, but I think writing-wise she's still somewhere around, "I liked the painting because it was good." I seem to remember having similar struggles when I was that age, and I went on to do an English Lit degree.

No, not in a week.
As a project over 3 or 4 weeks yes DD2 would do it, with a lot of cursing because she hates art.

Might not get to the word limit and would chuck in other pictures for light relief, but yes she'd of been able to do it.

But she was top of her state school at English.

DD1 (dyslexic) wouldn't have stood a cat in hells chance unless I typed for her. This is despite the fact that it's her kind of thing.

She's doing GCSE art and would do that very happily now, but she's 15

You see, I think: write 800 words on this painting is too much. But as someone else said, there are 6 questions and I would guess an introduction and conclusion is needed too. So really 100 words per question.