To not want to spend time at weekend doing this sodding homework?

[eleflump]

I know I probably am BU...

DS is in Year 7, and has to do a project on castles. He has to do research on various types of castle - do labelled drawings, write about them, all ok.

Except the last task - to make a model of a concentric castle. Which needs to take at least two hours.

I work full-time, DH works full-time, and next weekend I am also working Sunday, which leaves me Saturday to do everything I need to do. And Christmas is coming.

I was crap at art projects at school, thirty-odd years later, it hasn't got much better. DS is crap at art projects and won't have a clue without me trying to help him.

I am going to need to go and buy all the stuff to make the bloody model...which will take up more time.

I thought I had left all this behind at primary school!!!!

Oh - another thought...how the bloody hell is he going to get it to school on the bus?????

Why don't they do this stuff at school where they have the time, the resources, and (presumably) people who know how to do it?!!!

YANBU

DS just had to make a model of a plant cell. Did it in lego. Job done.

*NB if you are un?lucky enough to receive a letter about making a model home from French shortly after the May bank holiday from me and you don't think it's appropriate please do approach me to discuss it constructively (no pun intended)

Fortunately for us, my DC's French teachers make better use of their time. However, when DC were asked to make a model of Scotland I told the school (constructively, of course) that they would be required to provide all necessary materials, and within a couple of days, parents were offered a range of Scottish-based options. Quite amazing what can come out of a constructive discussion.

I don't have kids yet, I have one on the way though. I am a design and technology teacher. I do not like setting (or marking) homework and I don't see much point in it at ks3. I don't think many teachers do. I do it because the powers that be demand that I do.

Sometimes it really hard to think of interesting homework that is relevant and will be a quick to mark. I've never set a construction type homework though, but probably plenty of boring ones!

For students in secondary, parents should not be helping much at all and you certainly shouldn't be spending much money on projects. There's nothing wrong with making models out of cereal boxes or whatever. I don't agree with the comments about secondary schools having the equipment to make the models etc. Yes the art and DT departments do, but we have our own budget and can't give resources out to other departments. Also there's nothing more annoying than being interrupted whilst trying to teach by a kid with a note asking for 40 sheets of black card.

To whoever said they would prefer to do the French theory work at home and model at school... The thought of that makes me stressed! Everyone is different though.

By the way we get plenty of parents complaining there isn't enough homework with others saying there's far too much. You can't win.

With all due respect Sophie - it's impossible to make a volcano or a viking ship out of a cereal box without additional equipment.

Sorry but I would find that piece of French homework really annoying as well. They could just as well imagine their model and do a presentation on it, spending more time on the language than the model making, and including more interesting and elaborate language as it doesn't have to be within the bounds of something they can (be bothered to) make.

In fact if it were given to me I would probably be an annoying smart arse and present an unadorned matchbox in the conditional tense: "here I would have preferred to have a colonade of marble but I couldn't afford it; here there would have been a sauna, but my parents forbade me to use fire" and so on. Would you mark that high for language, or penalise the student for not being arsed to make a proper model?

It penalises children who don't have home lives that facilitate that sort of work. Hanging language learning on having a home environment in which you will be encouraged or tolerated to spend half an hour a week building a model is really unfair. One of the brilliant things about language - and one of the reasons why there is such a fantastic wide range of literature from people of all backgrounds - is that words cost nothing. Slaves have written, people have written in prisons. Why the flying fuck would you tack this material constraint onto the practice of learning language so that they can only access the language through this obfuscatory, irrelevant and unnecessarily material barrier of a built model?

This is EVERYTHING I hated about school. it's never about the actual subject. It's all about some keeno irrelevant game playing that makes the teachers feel good because you look so earnest and compliant. fuck that noise.

In my day it was all make a poster over and over again. Same thing, parents who can afford go art shop buy proper materials paints, get mummy to drive the monstrous item to school get an A. Got no money and all you have at home is sheet of A4 paper and pencils C. Knowledge of castles same in both.

That's the thing. You spend a day at work and your kids a day at school and instead of cooking dinner and doing homework with them, you have to rush to the shops -no several shops - to find the relevant stuff. Everyone's over tired hungry and grumpy and then you have to start on said project. It's a nice idea but it never quite works like that. I'm sure if I didn't work and my husband was home early and I didn't have another child to think about I might not mind. I do want to support my child's learning and I think that's why parents go along with it because we feel guilty and feel like disinterested parents if we don't. And should I be that involved? I certainly don't remember my parents being that way and my father was a teacher so it was as if he didn't know what it was all about. It was different back then I think

To make a volcano you could cut and fix the card into a cone and secure with tape. Mix up flour, red food colouring and water then hey presto, lava! Viking ship could be done I think - you'd need tape, maybe a wooden skewer and paper for the sails. I do see your point though.

I think people who just aren't into crafts would struggle, as I would struggle with French.

To be fair if I set a construction homework I would explain that they could use a cereal box for so and so etc and stress that there's no need to go and buy anything. As I said though I've never actually set one!

Oh forgot to say you'd need to add salt to the flour - will help it set!

shudder my kids are 2.6 and as yet unborn, so I have YEARS of this shitty craft let's-set-homework-for-the-parents-they-might-not-interact-with-their-kids-otherwise ahead. I am genuinely already dreading it. Sadly all the grandparents live at least 200 miles away so can't be delegated to them either.

I think it's unfair to colonise home time in this way. DP and I both work full time and I really resent the amount of time that we are with our children that is spent doing things they have been told to do by school. It feels like they might as well board and be done with it. (Ok that is an exaggeration.)

I really feel like this especially in reception and year 1. dc1 is in year 2 now and she gets on by herself with the homework she is given. that seems appropriate to me, at her age she doesn't get much and it isn't too challenging so I think the balance is right between school time / family time / personal study time (very little on the latter). When they are younger they need so much help to do whatever they are given that between that, and the inevitable endless stupid costume making, bake sale provisioning etc, it feels like whenever they aren't at school you are scurrying to fulfil school's demands.

If you're (anyone - I'm not aiming at a particular post here) not happy with the homework being set then you need to communicate that to the school. If it's about being given too much, take it up at the next PTA event or email the head of year or head.

I think it's unfair to colonise home time in this way

YY I don't think they would appreciate you sending in a pile of ironing for the teacher to do.

I don't believe the French homework model story as you've described it. You're teaching your Y7 class perfect, imperfect and conditional tenses in the autumn term? My top set son has only just learned the conditional tense by the start of Y10. Anyway I would be furious if that homework were set. Imagine if those children with their advanced knowledge of tenses were using their 30 mins homework a week to learn more French. They'd be using the past historic and subjunctive already.

If you are not a crafty family you won't have lots of spare cereal boxes lying around, and if you don't bake you won't have food colouring. That was always one of the things that annoyed me about school projects, the assumption that you would have all sorts of kit just lying around ready to be made into something. Oh and the assumption that you would enjoy cajoling, bribing or bullying your non craft loving child into doing said project.

At primary we often ended up with crafty dd doing non crafty ds's projects just to prevent our weekends become WWIII. I assume that wasn't really the point!

I wouldn't mind oops's project quite so much as it appears that she is quite flexible about non crafty options, but it does seem a pretty odd use of time to be doing craft work for French homework. Our school does quite a lot of Presi presentations for similar type exercises, but the majority of the work is done in school.

This is exactly why I like French school - teacher dictates, child memorises, teacher set test. Job done. Less work for all involved and all DC actually learn something.

Nooka, I was just playing along/joking by giving one way of how it could be done. Sorry if it didn't come across that way.

I personally feel homework should be set when it would actually help for the next lesson. Homework is often set for the sake of it. Teachers are monitored at my school and I get told off if I am caught not setting enough. I also think that maths and English homework is more important than my DT homework but I still have to set it.

YANBU. I'm a teacher and never set homework like this. So time consuming and doesn't really give an insight into building a real castle so what's the point? I wouldn't do it if I were you. Just send a note in to say your son doesn't have time at home to do it.

I'm clearly in the minority here.

Yr 7 DD had to make a castle. She used scrunched up newspaper for a hill, and some cardboard (probably an old cereal packet) for the castle. Most people have that in their recycling. She did use sellotape to stick it together, and some glue. And some green paint for the hill. Some paper to label the parts.

We could chat while she made it - I was probably cooking tea at the time.

She learnt, and remembered, more from that homework than she would have done from hours of writing, copying diagrams, or being told facts. Different children learn in different ways; that homework really suited her, a more traditional written piece wouldn't have done (but that's what she has to do most of the time).

The best thing was the pride she had in the finished castle. A rather wonky cardboard construction, which survived the bus journey covered in a bin bag, and was put on display at school.

Different children learn in different ways

Precisely - making a model to reinforce learning (or whatever it's supposed to do) doesn't work for all children (or families). Far better to offer a range of activities to ensure the children learn effectively.

Ds1 did this earlier this term. One of the boys made his out of matchmakers, which I thought was very impressive. So did everyone else. As they ate it!

Just asked the dcs if they made a castle in Year 7 and one said yes out of cardboard, they other did a diagram - I did not get involved. I make they plan buying materials, plan for time to complete especially if we have a weekend away etc - to me that's part of the skills homework delivers. One of my friends talks to me about the homework we get - as in her and her ds. It's crazy....dcs need to learn to work independently and in Year 7 they have the space to learn this skill...without jeopardising their educational career.

Ooop's post reminds me of a snarky discussion I saw among some (very sensible) MFL teachers on TES a few years ago, on the subject of what they called "TWALTing"--TWALT standing for "Time Wasting Activities in Language Teaching."

Basically, they were talking about all the weird arts-and-crafts projects, puppet-making, mashmallow-model-building and crayoning that they were pressured to do by SLT and Ofsted because LEARNING SHOULD BE FUN!!

Look, as a great cognitive scientist said somewhere "Learning is the residue of thought," meaning that what you learn from any lesson/homework session is primarily what you spent most of that period of time actually thinking about, during that period of time.

And the thing about making a "my home" model (or a bloody cardboard castle) is that the kid doing is probably going to spent about 3 minutes thinking about history/French conjugations, and about 57 minutes thinking about cutting and sticking and colouring in. When this is multiplied across an entire subject it results in not a lot being learned other than arts and craft skills.

(sorry, seem to have repeated "period of time" there. Need more coffee...)

Anyway, OP, seriously, just don't bother with this. If your son doesn't want to do it off his own bat, just say "fine" and add a short note to the bottom of his written work saying that you will not be doing the craft project because he doesn't need any more practice doing craft work.

add a short note to the bottom of his written work saying that you will not be doing the craft project because he doesn't need any more practice doing craft work.

in my son's school this would lead to a detention - not a problem in itself (don't do homework, take consequences). But it's ludicrous to make kids do craft projects that they simply can't do. A poster above says it teaches skills, well I couldn't make a model of an Amazonian animal. Other than my son's homework I have never needed to be able to. And thinking about what was needed and doing a 3D picture would have had the same educational outcomes, but the teacher wanted to decorate her classroom.