A homework argument already

[WhyCantIuseTheNameIWant]

Ds has started at big school now. Year 7. Bus trip, several villages away.

They get homework every night. Nothing new there...

But the maths teacher has set homework today. Due in tomorrow. And we have spent all evening at the school "parents q&a evening"

His after-school time went roughly...

4:00 bus arrives in our village
4:15 meets me and dd in park
4:30 has ice cream with a friend
5:00 in the car to go back to school
5:30 snack before meeting
6:00 sat in hall
7:30 driving home via chippy as nobody has eaten
8:15 home and he tells me he has homework
8:30 shower as he stinks
9:00 finally gets out of shower
9:30 packing PE kit etc for tomorrow.

I know he is a boy and takes forever to do things, but a poster. For tomorrow. On parents evening night?

We all had to go and sit in the parents eve thing. As it explained how school works. It's website. Sickness procedures. Streaming. Etc...

Both me and ds need to know all this stuff, apparently.

[bimandbam]

Homeowork is shite. Dd also started y7 last week. Backing bioks and making folders and all that sort of thing. A name tag for French seemed a particular waste of her time.

I don't object to tham having to do homework but it's not just the dcs it affects. It's the rest of the family too. Fine I suppose if you can see long term educational advantages but not so if it's an arts and crafts faff.

We have a few after school commitments we can only do in daylight (ponies and riding) and I begrudge having to lose that time to bloody homework or have her sat after tea slogging away again.

[WhyCantIuseTheNameIWant]

Seems like a war is breaking out!

The park is right by the bus stop. We often meet there, with toddler dd too.
It's nearer than home!

He is a skinny thing, nowhere near overweight. I still have to buy him school trousers with the adjustable elastic thingies in the waist.

It would also help if he changed his shirt every day. Or at least every other day! He has at least 6. And they are all clean...

I put a note in his homework book, saying we were at the meeting so it wasn't done.
But it will be done over the weekend.

First offence... From now, he will have to apologise himself!

[BertrandRussell]

i would remind about clean shirts and deodorant. I would probably remove dirty clothes from his room so he can't put them on again. They do need a bit of support still at this age.

[RachelZoe]

I was with you until

I know he is a boy and takes forever to do things

My boys don't take forever to do things , they were more than able to sort their own homework without me knowing about it too, why did you need to know about his homework so it could get done?


To your actual point, I have no problem with things like actual maths or science type things being set for the next day, anything creative like an essay/English/poster making etc for the next day is silliness.

[balletgirlmum]

Dd does go to ballet school actually at the moment. But that's not an option for many children

Ds does sport.

Luckily his selective school appreciate that children are rounded & have lives outside of school too

[Artandco]

Surely homework is a planned activity though? Mine have had homework every night since first day of reception. I wouldn't book them in for any activity if it left them with no time each evening/ afternoon for homework. Homework is key to education I think as means they review and continue what they learnt each day so they are up to date and understand before more learning on the subject the next day

Surely homework all set different days each week and all due different times back is more difficult to remember what's due when then know what set today needs to be done today

In future op talk to your son and explain how stuff needs to be done each night and how it will make it easier for him to remember. If he tells you them you can help him schedule it in ie say he can have hour in park, but needs to do homework straight after. He didn't tell you until too late, but a poster could easily have been done on arrival back at school whilst he had snack and waited for lecture to start. Or could have Been done in 10 mins before shower. Poster is basically title, few headlines, a couple of lines of text labelling pictures

[Artandco]

But op said they were used to homework given daily and due daily

[00100001]

Wow. I would live to live in your worlds... where I work, there's stuff I have to do "for tomorrow" handed to me at 4.30pm on a Thursday. Maybe it will be Ok for me to say; "Oh sorry Boss, I have a planned activity, of a yoga class, plus I'm meeting my friend for coffee, so this will be handed in on Monday, not Friday"

[00100001]

jeepers - in year 7 the maths homework would be out 20 minutes long, if that.

The boy had PLENTY of time to do the homework, but instead pissed around in a shower for 30 minutes, faffed sorting his own (already packed) PE kit, and left it until 8.15 to even mention anything about homework.

HE could have done it at any point after his dinner. He could have done it in the morning before school. Bloody hell, he could have done it in the bus in the morning! He could have done it in the spare time he ahd arriving at school and going to first lesson/tutorial. Buses (generally) drop off erly enough.

[00100001]

OK, I''ll just leave my job then...

[Artandco]

It would also be expected in my line of work. Here clients expect a max of 24hrs initial turn around. So if someone contacts at 5pm, I would need to review, plan and have an initial plan drawn up that I can give before 5pm the next day at latest

[teacherwith2kids]

"Next day homework is not done in our house if it clashes with an activity. End of."

As I said above, next day homework is ONLY set for the first term of Y7, to get them into good homework habits. They are, during that period, always of a sensible length to do overnight - write a paragraph, read a chapter, learn 10 words, do 10 maths problems, that sort of thing. They become longer from the second term of Y7 onwards, in for the next lesson in that subject so usually a few days.

The great thing about DC's school is that the homework timetable is absolutely rigidly adhered to, so there is never 'surprise' homework.

For DD in particular, if we had adhered to 'next day homework isn't going to be done if it clashes with an activity', she would have done no homework at all in the first year of Y7, as she danced every night. Later in Y7 she added school sports fixtures as well ... we narrowly avoided county selection, thank goodness. However, caught between the devil - a school, and parents, who expected a reasonable amount of homework to be set, and a reasonable amount to be done - and the deep blue sea - a serious dance teacher who takes an extremely dim view of missed lessons (and has a string of 3A* at A-level type ex-students to demonstrate that you CAN balance a busy dance life and good academics), DD has developed extraordinarily good prioritisation and time management skills. Tbh, it is that transferable and extremely valuable life skill that will probably be the best and most lasting legacy of her dance years, along with a streak of stubborn perfectionism and a belief in hard work.

Faced with a poster in for the next day, DD would probably do the thinking / planning either at lunch / break (homework club / library) or while walking home, the initial writing in a concentrated burst between coming in from school and her first dance lesson, and the 'decorative' parts either in the dance school changing rooms between lessons, or at the very end of the day / early next morning when not up for 'thinking' but quite able to colour.

Yes, you can say 'she's still a child' and 'she needs downtime' - and yes, she hibernates on Sundays and during the non dance competition holidays. But the lessons in self-discipline, organisation, and responsibility that all this is teaching her go WAY beyond the learning from the content of the homework.

i do think that secondary homework is generally different in nature from primary homework. In a typical primary lesson, there is usually a plan that goes 'Teacher teaches new skill, class practises it together, children do a task that practises that skill more independently, lesson ends'. Any homework is 'additional practice' and tbh is often 'makework' as a result.

In secondary, my observation is that more of the lesson is taken up with 'teacher teaches new skill / imparts knowledge, followed by a small amount of practice'. The independent practice that embeds that skill fully is in the homework, and without that, much of the curriculum is only superficially covered.

[teacherwith2kids]

On next day work - I have 64- 96 books to mark every night, and 5 lessons to tweak the planning and resources for, based on the previous day's work, every night, with a hard 'start time' of 3.30 pm, and a hard 'deadline' of 8.45 the next morning.

Can I say 'no, can't mark those, I have a meeting with a parent, a parents' evening for DD, and have to drop off and pick up DS and DD at separate activities, oh, and supervise music practice x 2 plus discuss DS's French homework?'. No, it just has to be done....

[Shiningdew]

But there's a point to marking books.

There's no point to most homeworks!