To hate homework and the stresses it brings?

[MamaMaiasaura]

I have always tried to make sure ds has his homework ready for school. At previous school it was spellings every night and reading. Occasionally there was a homewrk sheet to complete (often numberacy). It was a routine homework was set on a friday and due on the following friday.

This new school has the reading, no spellings and adhoc homework. When it is set it is given on a friday and due in on a wednesday. So the children dont have that long to do it.

Ds also sees his dad every other weekend, who is completely useless at getting ds to do homework and forgets it everytime which means ds has to cram it in on a monday night as he swims on a tuesday.

It has been a complete nightmare trying to get him motivated to do it again, resulting in tears all round, his, mine and babies

Admittedly he did have more time today as was off school but it was a large piece of work too and needed research.

He is 8 and i dont remeber homework at this age. I hate that the weekends and evenings can be spent in a really stressful way. It does nothing to compell him to liking school and it makes things tense for him at home.

Maybe i am completely lazy but i feel he is at school enough hours of the day and whilst i agree that it is important to support education (and he reads every day to himself and when he can to us) i really dont ge all this extra.

I was called into school because my DS never did his homework and how importantit was that I police it..
.
I said that perhaps, if it is as important as allthat he ought to arrange an afterschool prep class and I would be only too happy to send my DS.
Never took up my suggestion.
Strange that

I keep intending to get that book, dizietsma. I tried the library but they don't have it. Might have to ask them to get it in.

I am a mum in your situation with a similiar ex p. I had a word with the teacher (yr4 by the way) and she has been brilliant. He recently had to do a rushed "project" which he was stressing over because it wasn't going to be long enough! it was hard to get him to do a lot writing after school so he drew some pictures and wrote some captions, he mind mapped some ideas and did some writing. i wrote in a note saying that when i had him we spent a lot of time on it but he had 2 days not 5 days because he was at his dads and he ended up with the top grade like some of his friends who had more substantial projects and she wrote a really nice comment but how she loved his original way of presenting things. Ds was over the moon.

He was also given spellings on a friday and the test was tuesday so i would have one night monday where we walk through the door at 6 because that is my late night at work and it was oh so stressful! . I explained the situation and the tests are now on a wednesday and that makes our lives so much better.

Some teachers are lovely aand supportive. She said she didn't realise the homework was such an issue for us. so i am so glad i spoke up. May be you will be lucky too!

By the way ds and i love his teacher, because she said his happiness, self esteem, and emotional well being were just as important to her and as the homework he produced. She also said she prefered "quality rather than quantity" which I also thought was fab.

I'm a secondary school teacher and do not like homework either as it is very difficult to police without disputes. I beleive it only really has a place for cw in yr 10 upwards - though I do think kids should be given time to read at home - either novel, newspaper or just books around subjects they like. Top tip - sign off any home work your child has once you are happy they've done enough. I hate my 5 yr old having so much homework and know it has v. little learning benefit if we have an argument about him doing it - so we don't if he is too tired. Yet I feel guilty !! And intimidated by school! We have to keep children, epecially young children interested in and eager to learn and imposing hw in primary is just wrong and often couter productive to this.
Less unecessary pressure on kids needs less pressure from parents as well a schools.

I'm in two minds on this one...

On the one hand, I hate unnecessary homework, where it is given for the sake of it... and I say that being guilty of having done that myself in the past (as a secondary teacher). Some schools have a policy where you have to set homework each week, whether it is needed or not, and that makes me really cross.

But on the other hand, too many students have rubbish research skills, and I think homework projects can help with this. I only teach 'A' levels these days, but we still get way too many students who think researching a project consists of cutting and pasting from the internet . Certainly, in the students I teach, at 'A' level many of them still lack the basic skills of being able to properly research a topic area, how to manage their time etc etc, things I haven't really got time to teach in the overcrowded AS/A2 curriculum. (Especially when you consider I was teaching them the benfits of using paragraphs in their essays last term!) So I can see maybe that perhaps students might benefit from doing this at a younger age, but they need to be taught to do this properly, and taught that copying something out from wikipedia does not consitute research! (Yes, this is a particular bug bear of mine!!!).

Not sure when we should start teaching it though...

What the hell are we doing as a nation to our kids?

Have a cousin in Ireland who was astounded at the homework my 4 yr old brought home and suggested that I take it back to the school and tell the teacher exactly where to put it!

Another cousin in USA (lawyer for Unicef) was fascinated at the whole idea of giving key stage ones homework. His own 7yr old has yet to start school. He wanted to know why we were not concerned about the lasting damage we were doing!

No bloody wonder kids are stressed. They should be out building dens. We are right, the government is wrong. Do we really want to trust the mental well being of our children to the same buffoons whose policy making has left the country in such a financial mess?

Karamazov, I'm an FE teacher, too, although it's practical subjects that don't require research projects.

I think research skills would be better taught by having supervised sessions in a properly-stocked library. I remember having something like that at secondary school, but I'm not sure how effective it was.
Leaving research skills to be learnt at home means that many children will take the easy/expedient way out, which, after all, is efficient for them. Also, most homes are not stocked with reference books and not everyone has the wherewithal to get to a library or the know-how to get the best out of one.

It's not just the UK though. Over here (I'm in Belgium) we may not put children into primary until they're six but once they're in it's serious stuff. They have homework and something to learn for a test every day (though are not always tested but you don't know when they will be) plus reading. They also have exams at Christmas and then again in the summer. The marks from the tests and the exams go into their report and if they fail (get below 60%) they have to repeat the year.

My daughter is 9 and is currently learning all the nature and functions of words. She has to know how to dissect a sentence correctly into subject group, nominal groups, verbal group, circumstantial complements of time, place or manner, direct objects, indirect objects and noun complements and then within each of those groups to find the centre, the determinants, the epithets and the introductory words (I think that's all). She then has to be able to draw up a table giving the nature, gender and number, and function of some given words in the sentence. For example that the word "journée" is (in a certain sentence) a common noun, that is it feminine singular and that it is the centre of the GNCCT (circumstantial complement of time's nominal group) of the verb "se promène". It's not enough to know that a word is a determinant either. l' is an elided definite article determinant, "au" a contracted definited article determinant, "ses" a possessive determinant etc. She's also preparing a project here at home on Great Britain with no input time at school at all. She will be spending her half term learning it so she can present it to the class. Small cards are allowed to help remember it but on the whole she's expected to know it pretty much off by heart. And she's the fortunate one because her's just happens to fall after the half-term holiday.

Bloody hell, Brussels! Your poor kid, that sounds like a dreadful trial for her. Y'know, I've always found that the best way to get a kid to learn is to ladle on the stress!

The Homework Myth is an awesome book that puts forth a reasonable evidence based argument that homework is ineffective and actually mostly counter-productive before the age of 17. I urge all parents with concerns about the effect of overburdening kids with homework to read it.

This comment made me

"Colouring in and staying between the lines helps with fine motor skills, which will aid with writing"

When stuck in the prep book of a nearly 6 year old that can write, play the cello, do hama, play the recorder etc.

If you want to aid his writing - give him writing.

I have no objection to homework - but endless colouring tasks are currently making our life more difficult than I think it needs to be.

In fact I said to my Year 5 music students. Anyone found doing extra colouring in when they could be listening to some music, finding out what an Italian term means, or spending another 5 minutes practising their instrument will not impress me. There were some audible sighs of relief.

I think what Brussels says "we may not put children into primary until they're six but once they're in it's serious stuff" applies to France too.

DS is only in the first year of primary but his friends sisters are 9 and 10 and they get an hour of homework a night. This is after school which starts at 8.45pm and finishes at 4.45 pm with an hour and a half for lunch.

It's 5 in NZ and straight into school. Only time they play with toys is for a wet lunchtime.