Is this proper English homework?

[optimist66]

My DS1 who is in Year 3 completed his "English" home work, last night. Sorry, it's not called "English" - it's called "Literacy". He is at a state school.

His home work was about the use of "onomatopoeia" words. These are the use of words whose sound suggests the sense of what is happening. DS1 had to design an advertisement for a cereal.

Am I wrong in thinking that this is a weak and namby pamby way of discussing use of sounds. Where is the greating traditional way of discussing the rules of Grammar - complemented by an indepth building of Vcabulary and Comprehension skills.

He is on the top table, and a level 3b

Am I expecting too much, as I always see homework of weak substance given to him?

Exoticfruits and all

Yes, it is really easy to be opinionated in MN than RL. But tone of language is not easy to convey in written form, and for that reason I will observe this post rather than contribute further. MY apologies for my brusqueness.

I respect the opinions of all posters and I recognise that we will do what we can for our children. For me it is loveing and nurturing them, developing their soft skills and concentrating on the 3Rs.

I am still un-convinced about the onomatopoeia homework.

Bye

I love First Aid in English and often dip into for my class but I don't see anything wrong in giving the children homework which requires them to use taught knowledge for a practical purpose by designing an advertisement.

I teach Latin grammar at university level and I cannot for the life of me see what is soft about onomatopoeia.

Can't wait for these students to reach my seminars. In fact, I have noticed an improvement over the last 15 years: 15 years ago, I used to have to start by explaining that a verb is a doing word, these days they do know about adverbs and even participles.

cory
That is good news!

For what it is worth we call the subject English not Literacy

THE PARTS OF SPEECH
Every name is called a NOUN,
As field and fountain, street and town

In place of noun the PRONOUN stands
As he and she can clap their hands

The ADJECTIVE describes a thing,
As magic wand and bridal ring

The VERB means action, something done -
To read, to write, to jump, to run

How things are done, the ADVERBS tell,
As quickly, slowly, badly, well

The PREPOSITION shows relation,
As in the street, or at the station

CONJUNCTIONS join, in many ways,
Sentences, words, or phrase and phrase

The INTERJECTION cries out, 'Hark!
I need an exclamation mark!'

Through Poetry, we learn how each
of these make up THE PARTS OF SPEECH .

"Can't wait for these students to reach my seminars. In fact, I have noticed an improvement over the last 15 years: 15 years ago, I used to have to start by explaining that a verb is a doing word, these days they do know about adverbs and even participles."

That sounds about right - I'm nearly 32, and am only really starting to get to grips with all of that stuff now my DS's are learning it at school!

That poem is awesome! :o

I remember a project we did in year 9, when we were studying advertising etc. We had to do an advert for an 'unattractive' product and use all the 'tricks of the trade' that we'd learnt in order to make it attractive. I chose deodorising foot spray. We also had to write an essay explaining what tricks we'd used and why. It was a brilliant project, and certainly not 'soft' - this was a superselective grammar school BTW. The HW described in your OP seems like a diddy version of that and actually rather good - heck, I'd LOVE it if my DSDs got HW that decent, but no, it's all worksheets at their school :(

Of to google this First Aid thingy now.

new first aid in English

The Nine Parts of Speech

Three little words you often see,
Are articles ? a, an, and the.
A noun?s the name of anything
As school, garden, hoop, or swing.
An adjective tells the kind of noun ?
Great, small, pretty, white, or brown.
Instead of nouns the pronouns stand ?
Her head, his face, your arm, my hand.
Verbs tell of something to be done,
To read, sing, jump, or run.
How things are done the adverbs tell,
As slowly, quickly, ill, or well.
Conjunctions join words together,
As men and women, wind or weather.
The prepositions stands before
A noun, as at or through the door.
The interjection shows surprise,
As ah! how pretty --- Oh! how wise.
The whole are called nine parts of speech,
Which reading, writing, speaking teach.

Plink, plank, plonk
Splish, splash, splosh
Onomatopoeia
Is a load of tosh

Thanks, it's a shame it doesn't have that 'look inside' feature that some books on amazon have - what kind of stuff is in it?

Mine's an older copy

Parts of Speech
Sentences - simple - complex
Alphabetical order
Apostrophe
Apostrophe as an abbreviation
Capital letters
Punctuation
Diminutives
Small Quantities
Proverbs
Colloquialisms
Popular phrases
Derivations
roots
prefixes
suffixes
General Knowledge
Spelling lists
test in comprehension
phrasal verbs
verbs
adverbs
adjectives
word building
nouns
compound words4pronoun
conjunction
prepositions
correction of sentences
right word in the right place
addition of clauses
replacements
analogies
opposites
homonyms
homophones
similes
etc etcetc

Wow, that poem is old! I remember it from that book 'A London Child of the 1880s', has anyone read that? And the writer thinks it's old then!

Shows some of the good stuff doesn't date, I guess.

Mind you, it does irritate me that my students would know a conjunction joins words together, but they gawped at me in complete incomprehension when I tried to explain that 'and' is inherently dissociative: it demonstrates that two concepts require a conjunction and are therefore not distinct.

They just didn't get it, and that's not poor grammar, that's the result of never thinking about the applications of words.

I think studying adverts can be a great way to recognize the tricks language can play.

'are therefore distinct', even.

Wordfactory swoons at the discovery that Cory teaches Latin.

I bloody love Latin. DC love Latin.

I am always banging on about how it helps metacognitive skills.

The next person who tells me its a pointless dead language will be thrashed.

Yes it is proper homework. It's also a much more fun way of getting him to use and apply what he has learned in school.

Learning Latin should be core curriculum.

It's amazing how the etymology of many words is Latin.

I love the Basher books on English - the punctuation one is brilliant.

I did Latin in senior school - I managed a 2 at Standard Grade

aro, paras, parat, paramus, paratis, parant

is the only thing I can remember - and I don't even know what it means any more

Latin is awesome! It was compulsory in yr7 and optional in yr9 but I dropped it as I wanted the other option. Sad about it now, I may do an OU course or similar one day :)

Onomatopoeia is one of the big 'things' for GCSE- top of the checklist. He's definately getting a headstart in National Curriculum English...!

I do agree that he'd be better off learning real, hard grammar. But he's only in Year 3- is homework so important at that age, as long as he's getting plenty of other intellectual stimulation at home/school?

I just don't see this as a zero sum game - I agree that onomatopoeia will help develop understanding of literature and poetry at a later age. Alongside this by all means teach the essentials of verbs, nouns, subject and object, adjectives and adverbs. My DD is doing all these in Yr3 (also state school). Add it all together and that is how you tap into the richness of the English language - not by concentrating on hard grammar to the exclusion of all else.

Sounds good to me. As part of SATS children have to learn to use literacy in different ways. My DS did lots of posters and brochures. These are things they are more likely to do in later life.

Mrz

The problem with that "poem" (which of course is not a poem, merely verse) is that it teaches purely by rote and therefore does not address any of the implications or exceptions it raises ("well" being used as an adjective, for example - or, indeed, the fact that "the" does not normally rhyme with "see".) And there is also the type of half-comprehension addressed by the Russian play "nedorosl'" where the student thinks "door" is an adjective when it's on its hinges (because it's attached to hinges, a noun) and a noun when it's lying on the floor!

Actually - and I never thought I'd say this - literacy is probably a better name than English for the subject taught at primary school, as it is about decoding written (and spoken) language much more than it is about English specifically.

As for learning Latin at school - I fully agree with whoever said it helps metacognitive skills. I als oagree, up to a point, with the etymology argument, but find it odd that people who pursue that line of thinking never press for the teaching of Anglo-Saxon or medieval French, which would be of equal use from that perspective. I therefore always assume that more than a little snob value is playing its part alongside these more legitimate concerns.

I press for the teaching of Anglo-Saxon and medieval French!

I studied Chaucer in the original in the sixth form at school and we all loved it - completely surprising our teachers who thought it'd be too 'foreign' and hard.

I've also done that project where GCSE/A-Level students go and teach the top class at primary school Latin - again, they loved it. I think lots of people really enjoy languages when they're not directly useful. As with the focus on 'hard grammar' (who he?), I think it's a bit of a mistake to think language and literature are only worth studying if you can make them as boring and functional as possible.

Chaucer is great, isn't he? Especially for playing with sounds.

Terrible at spelling though - I say strike him from the syllabus (ditto Shakespeare for the same reason - couldn't even spell his own NAME consistently FFS.)