To think this English homework is ridiculously hard for a 7 year old??

[JulietBravoJuliet]

This is the piece of text they have been given to read. The questions are as follows:

1. Circle the pronouns
2. Underline the adverbs
3. What do you think the insect's message "As I die, and dying live, so he shall also die, and dying live" means? (Remember the message is from the moon)
4. How did the hare changing the meaning of the message? (Yes, it actually is worded like that!!!!)
5. Who do the Bushmen think brought death to all living things?

Now, ds says he's not learnt what a pronoun or adverb is yet; looking back at his previous homework, I can see there's been little tasks on nouns and verbs and I can't for the life of me remember if they are the same? Question 4 is very badly worded and I don't know if it means "How did the hare change the meaning of the message?" Or if there's some words missing!

I'm 35, pretty good at English as a rule, but this has flummoxed me, let alone the 7 year old I have sat here bawling his eyes out because he doesn't understand it :(

Sleepyhead33 he's in tears because he finds concentrating and writing stuff down etc stressful at the best of times and he's stressed that he'll get into trouble if he doesn't hand his homework in.

I'm getting him to do questions 1&2 and sticking a note in to say the rest are too hard.

I think the teacher has made a mistake in giving out this. Is it not intended for Year 7, rather than a 7 year old?

I wonder if the teacher has got this work from the internet and accidentally picked work for year 7 instead of 7 year olds?

I would do Qs 1 and 2 only and send a note in saying it is way beyond ds's level.

My husband says his grade 7's ( not British system) would be making paper airplanes out of that in minutes!

It looks really hard - my 7 year old would really struggle with it! I would send it back to the teacher with a note saying why.

X-posted

Is the teacher on glue?

Yes my dad said it looks like the wrong homework. I don't have contact numbers for any of the children in his English group or I'd ring someone to ask what they've made of it.

I'm a student teacher (secondary English). Definitely sounds like a homework I might give to a top set year 7 (although it's worded badly). I agree with those posters saying you should get him to do the first two questions then send a note back with the rest.

Thank you :) I'm glad it's not just me that thinks it's too much! We've done 1&2 and I'm putting a post it note in about the rest.

I still want to know if I am right

You sounded right Ubik.

It made my eyes hurt. I'm not sure that would be a good excuse though.

It does seem rather hard for a 7yo. I assume the moon dying part is the waxing/waning of the moon and refers to the San afterlife from what I recall of my school lessons.

Yanbu. Stupidly hard. Its not a hot house private school is it?

I didn't know what a karos was. Googling produced things like Greek resorts. I then noticed a result for kaross. Googling kaross brings up several sites about traditional African clothing so it looks like there is a typo on a word that is likely to need looking up as well.

YANBU

That's too advanced.

Our year 3's know about adverbs but I'm not sure they'd know the term pronoun

I can't imagine many/any of our year 3's being able to answer no 3 without a lot of discussion

The vocabulary in the piece is very advanced.

Gosh that is very hard. We have had ones where the questions were incomprehensible through poor wording (particularly a recent one about graphs which I had to try and work out wtf they meant and I plot data most days at work- turned out they had misworded the question so it made no sense). I wonder if it's teachers getting homework off standard sites/textbooks so they don't see whether it fits in with what the class have covered (or makes sense)? I personally would probably write a note saying your child tried but couldn't manage the latter questions, unless it's for over the weekend in which case you have a bit more time to discuss it with him.

Mintyy - no it's a little village state primary school.

No, that's far too hard and I would be willing to bet that there is a 7yo/Yr7 mix-up going on here.