To think that teachers need to teach stuff and not me.

[caroline161]

DS has just started at Grammar school. Ridiculous amount and type of homework. For example: Learn about Archimedes principle, explain what you have found. AIBU to email the school and say, " I would appreciate it if you could teach him this instead of me and what the f are you doing all day which means that I have to teach him Archimedes principle"

I've just googled Archimedes principle for children and there are lots of links - not rocket science is it.

www.bing.com/search?FORM=SLBRDF&pc=SL16&q=Archimedes%20principle%20for%20children

Christ, OP.

Take him to Eureka! There's a bloody big bath above the corridor which shows the git getting in the water to show how displacement works.

You put a 1kg cube in a full tub of water.
1ltr of water overflows.
The 1kg cube has displaced 1ltr of water.
Conclusion, 1ltr of water must = 1kg!

9 pieces of homework - ha, as a Grammar School kid that was the bare minimum for us really. In the nicest possible way don’t send your child to a grammar school if you don’t want them to have a lot of homework. We had a lot of research projects like this back in my day but we didn’t even have Google to help us through it. Shock horror we had to go to the library and do the research by ourselves and that wasn’t even that long ago. It’s not easy to accept but sometimes it’s important to understand when your child is ready for grammar school and when they’re not.

lulu what you describe rings a bell. I recall Archimedes was not the most straightforward. It is not super difficult but it is easy to muddle up the concepts and important to get it clear in your head.

Oh come on, its nothing to do with not being ready for grammar but tasks being set in an appropiate way. People dont spontaneously know how to do things but have to be taught the skills.

And those explaining the principle are actually missing OPs point about the type of task set.

Pamela Alan wrote/illustrated a book called "Mr Archimedes' Bath." I have read it with five year olds and and have found that they understand the basic principle behind it. Here is someone reading the book On YouTube:

I'm not trying to be sarcastic, suggesting a picture book. Pamela Allen is wonderful, and I used to use her books with very bright GATS children in the last years of primary school to illustrate various things.

Ker-rist.

Leave the poor kid alone and stop with the sly comments about his readiness for grammar school. It's the first month, he's in a new school, getting accustomed to the demands of secondary, and developing study skills.

He and the OP have just got a bit stressed tonight, and then he got more anxious, and then he couldn't do it and so he got more anxious. I remember panicking once over the exact way to present my GCSE maths homework. I redid it three times for no reason because I thought my workings weren't presented quite clear enough.

WoesfromAuntFlo: It’s not easy to accept but sometimes it’s important to understand when your child is ready for grammar school and when they’re not.

OP's son has just started Grammar school. How on earth can you extrapolate when he is not even finished one term.

It’s not easy to accept but sometimes it’s important to understand when your brain is not ready for making logical inferences based on informed judgment.

Just chill out about getting things wrong. Keep your eye on the important goals - being kind, learning life skills, getting solid qualifications, working hard. If you find stuff hard, try your best and ask the teacher for the answer after you have a good go.

Personally I don’t really think Archimedes principle is v helpful. I find it easier to think of density of objects and density of liquids (mass/volume). Basically if you carry someone in water they feel a lot lighter than if you carried them in air or oil because water (due to higher density) provides a bigger upthrust.

Archimedes' principle states that the upward buoyant force that is exerted on a body immersed in a fluid, whether fully or partially submerged, is equal to the weight of the fluid that the body's displaces and acts in the upward direction at the center of mass of the displaced fluid.

Basically the amount you need to push down on say a toy boat is the force that's equal to the weight of the water you are pushing out of the way.

It’s not easy to accept but sometimes it’s important to understand when your brain is not ready for making logical inferences based on informed judgment.

Burn!

Extension question for OP's son:

how much water will Woes displace when she dunks herself in a bath to cool down.

I am agreeing with Numberblock a lot today.

People dont spontaneously know how to do things but have to be taught the skills.

This.

I had to teach my dd to learn. It comes naturally to some and less to others. But it is a skill and a process and that is what school and university is for. Nobody should be written off just because they don't get how to google research or organise their study notes or have an exam technique that works for them right away.

It's not easy to accept but sometimes it's important to understand when your child is ready for grammar school and when they're not.

Are you saying that the LEA placed OP's son in the wrong school?

@Andysbestadventure
That's not right!!! Omg.

If I put 1kg of gold into a full bucket of water, and I put 1kg of silver into a second full bucket of water then the amount of water displaced from each will be different. It's not about the weight. It's the VOLUME. If I have a cube of metal, then I can work out the volume by measuring it and calculating. But if I have a potato shaped lump of metal, I can't work out the volume by measuring it. If I want to find the volume, I can use archimdes volume discovery and submerge it in a full bucket, and measure the water which was displaced. That tells me the volume, not the weight.
Archimedes used this to test if a crown was solid gold. For example, the king gave a goldsmith 500g of gold to make a crown. The goldamurh came back with a crown which weight 500g. All fantastic... until the king heard rumours that the goldsmith had kept some gold for himself, and replaced it by mixing in (cheaper) silver. How can they find out the truth? The gave him 500g of gold, and he brought back a crown weighing 500g.

They knew that gold was more dense than silver, so 500g of pure gold will take up less space than 500g of mixed silver and gold, because the silver makes it bulkier. But the only way they knew the find out how much space it takes up (volume) was the melt down the crown and form it into a cube, which could be measured and volume calculated. The king didn't want the crown damaged, so asked Archimedes to work it out.
He knew the weight. But he needed to calculate the volume, to check if it was the correct volume for 500g of solid gold. He did this by submerging in water, and measuring the volume displaced. That didn't tell him the weight. It tells him the volume. He then did the same with 500g of solid gold, and measured the volume.
He found out that the crown had a greater volume than the equal weighted solid gold... because the crown was bigger. It couldn't be bigger and weigh the same if it was solid gold, so it has to be a mix of gold plus a larger quantity of lighter metal.

Archimedes princi0al expands on that discovery and goes into buoyancy and upwards force etc.

I apologise, I didn’t see that he had only just started grammar school. In that case yes I can understand that it might take a little while to get used to the different type of homework. When she said he had nine piece of homework I assume that he was a bit later on on his journey. Now looking back and reading the full thread (my bad), I would say that you both just need to take a little bit of time to understand how it all works. Grammar school is tough and it is a good idea to ask for clarification when you’re not entirely sure what a teacher wants from you.
Personally, one of the best things I have learnt from school was not be afraid to ask about anything and perhaps your son could learn from this too. In fact some of the best learners and educated people spend their life asking questions. Sorry for seeming judgemental before I really hope that it all goes well for you guys.

I wonder if it wouldn't be worth for the school to first explain how to do independent research and also outline some rough expectations just so the kids know what is expected of them.

Ultimately, it's irrelevant if the OP is bright or not (not implying in any way she isn't bright!), even the child of a parent who isn't academically able should be able to do his homework. If the homework requires the parent to explain the principles, then it's badly thought out.

9 pieces of homework - ha, as a Grammar School kid that was the bare minimum for us really

Non grammar school child and 9 pieces of homework would be the minimum on the go at any one time. At least 2 a day, a week in advance. I would be very upset if my DC wasn't being given regular homework at their bog standard state school. 🤢

I wish we had access to a grammar school.

Also, in typical mumsnet style, I’m the one that’s been jumped on despite the OP saying that she should go to the school to talk about homework. At the end of the day it is pretty standard homework and it all seems a bit OTT To say that you’re going to go to the school and complain. Anyway, each their own.

Try science of stupid and what could possibly go wrong (documentary style shows) the latter particularly deals with displacement in some of its episodes. A visual of how it works may help?

I do a lot of this sort of research task with my students. I would then in the next class do a spider-diagram on the board, with everyone chipping in what they found out. If people have discovered wrong information (I teach in a different subject area, so I don’t know about this one!) I would say, okay, let’s put that here at the side rather than on the spider. I’d have a lesson prepared where I go through the research topic, and if anyone has brought wrong information with them, I’ll cover how that fits or doesn’t fit.

To me it teaches them research skills, independent learning, and peer-based learning, but also as a safety net, whatever it is will be thoroughly taught by me, usually followed by exercises in class to contextualise it. Again, I appreciate I teach in a totally different area, but I think the principles are probably the same.

Pretty good wriggle out of a sarcastic post @WoesFromAuntFlo

You haven't answered my question though? Are you saying that the LEA placed OP's son in the wrong school?

Extension question for OP's son: how much water will Woes displace when she dunks herself in a bath to cool down.

An object that is more dense than the fluid in which it is immersed sinks.

@xalia yawn. Has the gin run out for you tonight? Not wriggling, just didn’t RTFT and must have skipped your boring acronyms

Woes Can't answer the question then?

Ooh I love being the centre of attention in yet another vacuous Mumsnet post