Year 2: imaginative homeworks

[MommyG]

Hi,
how imaginative are your children's homeworks in literacy? My ds homeworks are like -

• thinking of monsters nice and bad, and describing each of them.
• writing poems on each letter on ROAD SAFETY
• sound poems( many of them.. for animals, vehicles)
• describing a picture and also how you would feel if you were a part of it etc.

I feel they are too imaginative, and many a times a homework for me rather than him.

What do you think? Are your children's homeworks the same, and how do they cope with it?

We sometimes get something like this, but not very often.

Recent homeworks have been:

• matching words which have the opposite meaning

• grouping words according to the sound that they share (e.g. ai, ay and a-e words)

• using a dictionary to find interesting words and put them in alphabetical order

• writing a description of a person or object of their choice

This week's is a brainstorm - they have to thing of an object and write down lots of random words that have something to do with it, then highlight the ones they'd most like to use in their writing. But they don't actually have to do any creative writing. They tend to do that in class, not at home.

Hmm.. that sounds quite straightforward and useful.

Too much of creative work and what I can see happening is that even if he reads a passage and I ask him some questions, he makes up his own bit in between something that he has imagined..

Do you think I should speak to his teacher about it? Or just leave it at that as, all children are doing the same after all in class.

I think I would speak to his teacher, in your position. Not in a complaining way, but more to say that you feel he finds the imaginative stuff difficult and does she have any suggestions for helping him, without ending up doing it yourself?

It's unlikely she's going to change the homework, but she might take on board that things are a little unbalanced (and possibly a little skewed towards girl-friendly, creative stuff???).

I think that imaginative homeworks are good for year 2 children. Rather doing it for him, I suggest you break the homework down into managable chunks.

For example with the following homework: "thinking of monsters nice and bad, and describing each of them"

Have two pieces of A4 and in the middle of one piece of paper write "nice monster", this technique is a spidergram . Ask your son to verbally describe a nice monster and write his ideas down on the sheet. You could get a series of lines (legs of the spider) coming off the spider with the words at the end of the line. If he likes drawing then ask him to draw a picture of his monster in his book.

When you have done this, sit your son down and set a timer for 20 minutes and ask your son to write about the monsters. (Make sure he has been to toilet and is not excessively hungry or thirsty first.)

Don't ask for 100% perfection. The idea is that its his work. Spelling mistakes, forgetting about finger spaces, punctuation, capital letters often happen at this age. Praise him, if he makes a serious attempt, even if it is not as neat and beautiful as when you sit there breathing down his neck.

If he refuses to comply with sitting at a table for 20 minutes then I suggest that you punish him like any other form of disobedience. With my son who is also in year 2 I ban him from watching TV or playing on the computer for the rest of the day.

We are lucky in that my son has a week to do his homework. In the situation of my son's homework not getting done on a particular day, I would try again on a different day.

last years homework (when they were in Yr2) was usaully a worksheet of some description.

Maybe 1 in 5 or 1in 10 was an "imaginatiive" piece where they had to design a missing poster for Golidlocks, or write a poem.

Usually they were finishing sentences...and stuff.

reallytire...I think that the Government recommendation for Yr2 is 1hour homework PER WEEK, whcih includes spelling practice and reading. 20minutes on one activity is therefore a bit excessive.

My son has never had spellings and only gets one reading book a week. According to my son's school spelling tests are a total waste of time. He has less home work than what the governant recommends.

Usually he gets his numeracy homework done within 10 minutes and his literacy done within 20 minutes without a problem.

[bad mummy emoticon] my son does not read his school books every day, although he reads plenty of stuff from the library.

I spoke to his teacher, and rather than change the pattern of homeworks, she has asked me to brief him for 5 minutes about the homework, and then give him 15 minutes to complete his homework by himself - however good or bad he does it.

Then maybe sit with him to go through what he has written, and correct the punctuations etc.

Until now, I used to sit with him throughout his homework - so the homeworks were really good.

Lucky you, DD year 2 only ever gets spellings for homework that she can already do! Is homework generally common in year 2 then? I didn't realise we were so unusual!