Tonight I tried an experiement and let dd (7) do homework on her own!

[KTk9]

After what seems two years of worrying about where my dd is at with her school work and moving schools in September, to a school which we are all really happy with, I had a bit of an epithany today and yesterday!

Usually I have to coax dd to do her homework, and then tend to hover and help out, until it is a standard I am happy with (I have been known to actually re rub out things she has rubbed out to neaten it up! .

However, I have been reading threads about how much we should help with homework and what teachers on here have been saying about children learning to be responsible for their own work and decided last night to just see what she would do if I didn't nag. Well, I am astounded - I didn't chase her last night and after returning home from school and a snack and drink, she turned off the TV in the kitchen and got her homework out - well you could have knocked me down with a feather!!! She then proceded to do all her maths homework on her own, only asking me once to check something - there were two errors that I could see, although I didn't say anything, as she was so proud of what she had done. Sure enough she had the corrections home tonight.

Tonight, she did the same and completed her sentences on her own, changing from past to present tense, the sentences were a bit 'weak' and could have had a bit more to them, but it was all on her own, so I left it and wrote 'independent' on the top, so the teacher would know I hadn't helped.

I am so thrilled she is taking responsibility for her work, I only hope that I did the right thing by not interfering, but it actually feels quite liberating!!!!!

Long may it continue.

Ktk9 -

Sounds great! And what I'm really pleased to see is that the mistakes are corrected by the teacher and sent back home so your DD can learn from her mistake and get it right next time around.

Wish our girls were at your school - we just get initials and a sticker regardless of whether the homework is neat, correct or complete. I'm pleased it isn't like that at every school in Britain.

Started doing the same thing with DD1 this year. She has gone into Year 3 so there is greater emphasis on them doing it themselves. When it is marked, she has to initial them comments to show she has read them and knows what to do to correct it. She then has to do actually do the corrections and initial them too. I often write little notes to the teacher, especially if it something I know she has struggled with, or I will go and ask the teacher how a particular thing (usually maths!) is being taught as DD struggles with it (and so do I) and I don't want to confuse her by explaining it totally differently. Teacher loves me

Quite right. Surely the point in homework is that they learn to work independently!

That's great :) I totally agree that it MUST be done by the DCs (and that f the child is not capable then the teacher should be told) - how else are they supposed to track progress?

I work in a library that runs regular homework clubs. You would be amazed how many DCs are running around while their parents are doing the googling/typing/printing etc - half the time the DCs don't even know what HW the parent is doing for them! Not my place to say anything of course and I help them with a smile but my gosh it pisses me right off and totally baffles me. How on earth do they suppose that's helping?

Our neighbour used to come round of an evening to use our computer/printer... to do her DS's university essays.

Oops - better have my post back for corrections - I meant IF the child, not F the child

Lucy have you seen a book called Maths for Mums and Dads? It's on Amazon, often recommended on here for helping parents keep up with primary maths HW.

(as in to support their DCs and to understand what they are doing, not to do it for them obviously!)

I, too, have been following the homework threads with interest. My Y3 son is reasonably diligent about doing his HW (fortunately, he doesn't have much). I do review it, however, and, if I spot mistakes I tell him "I've seen x mistakes -- see if you can find them and correct them". If he can't find them, I usually guide him a bit more til he finds the mistake and corrects it. I write a note in the hw diary saying "I asked him to check his work to find and correct mistakes" or something like that. My thought has been that it's better for him to note and correct errors soon after doing the work as he probably won't care about it when he receivers the corrected work from his teacher. He receives different subject hw each night and, as for as i know, doesn't see the correction until the following week when he receives the subject notebook again. Perhaps I should check whether my assumption is correct. If I knew his work would be corrected and shown to him the next day, I wouldn't worry about checking it myself.

That's great to hear.

Sadly when I tried that with DD1 (Y4) and dissapeared upstairs to bath DD2, I came down 25 minutes later to find that she'd written one sentence and was sobbing .

Interesting. My dd is in year 2 (still aged 6) and usually manages her maths homework with just a little prompting but needs a lot more help with the literacy homework.

For example, the last literacy homework she had was "Choose an African country, research it and write about it". I would be very impressed if any 6yo could do that unaided - I can't see how it would be possible unless they happened to have a book about an African country which was aimed at their age group. We didn't have time for a trip to the library so had to research it online which obviously required a high level of parental involvement to Google the right words and extract relevant and appropriate info. (I did look for info aimed at kids but the only things I could find were aimed at an older age group.) And then there's also the strong possibility that if you research an African country online some of the information that comes up will be about war or famine and not necessarily suitable for 6yo eyes. So if the school was genuinely expecting children to attempt to do it unaided I think that was pretty daft!

Pastsellby - They always get corrections, whether maths or literacy it is given back with a C on the wrong one, if they can't work out their correction, usually in dd's case it is carelessness, the teacher works it through with them. I noticed today that some of her spellings were corrected and some not, words she should be expected to know were corrected, which I thought was good, but some harder ones she had spelt phonetically had been ignored.

DD also told me tonight that she has to mark a traffic light as to how she found the work, red/hard green/easy etc. Thought that was a good one too.

Melpomene - I agree with you that this sort of homework is hard work for parents! We haven't had this at her new school, but remember at her old one we had to find photos of three toys from today and three from the past, print them out and label them. I did wonder how some children would manage this on their own, or if they didn't have a computer. This is probably the sort of thing that the parents in the library are having to cope with FuzzPP!!!!!!

Tonight we had a wordsearch - not too difficult, managed on her own.

DD is 6, yr and her home work in called Shared Learning. So the parents are supposed to get involved. I am sort of looking forward to the homework she can do herself.

Parents can write the corrections in in red pen if the teachers can't, don't, didn't or wouldn't. There's no point in allowing children to do their work wrongly and to never have it corrected by anyone. What do then learn if that happens?

These days corrections in green pen is considered more PC! :o

Yep, ours is green pen, along with lots of smilies and Wow!!! or, Fantastic etc., sometimes the odd housepoint!!!!!

DD is in yr 1, and we get shared learning type homework, which I think the teachers hope are far more family fun than I find it. There are lots of stuff that requires photographs, obv that involves me taking over, uploading photos and then printing them....or when they sent home socks to decorate, fun for dd, a special trip out for pritt pva strong enough for fabric as nothing was staying stuck on (and they were black so couldnt even get felt tips out!)

I would love the odd worksheet for her to sit and do

I sort of disagree with not helping with homework. Having briefly been a yr 2 and yr 3 ta I know that in some classes it is nigh on impossible for the teacher to give individual attention to most of the pupils, all of which will be at differing levels. I do sit with my yr 3 dd when she does homework. I don't really consider hw to be an assessment tool for the teacher, rather more of reinforcing what has been taught that week with the benefit of 1-1 support to ensure better comprehension.

Well done, OP.

If homework can't be completed independently, it shouldn't be set.

kissingfrogs I and dd's school share your school of thought. Homework is to reinforce and practice things covered in the classroom that week. It is a chance for me as a parent to see what they have been learning, dd is Y2 and 7 in May, I asked her teacher at the start of the year if I should ask dd to look again at words she may have spelled incorrectly or help her with words she asked me how to spell. The teacher told me that I should do this as homework (at least in dd's school) is not looked at to check progress but is a reinforcement exercise and a chance for children to share with parents what they have been doing in class.
I never do dd's homework for her but I do sit with her while she is doing it. If it is something she is very confident with I ask her to show me how it is done or if it is something she finds harder I assure her I am there to help but I won't do it for her. Over the year I have found that dd is needing less and less help and is working far more independently however homework is still something we share rather then something she has to do alone.
I don't know what next year and Y3 will bring in regards to homework but for now our way is working well for us.

Melpomene DS has been trained to go to Kids National Geographic website for any homework like that or science/geography.

there is no way on earth my y3 DS would do his homework if I didn't sit with him & give him one-to-one attention the whole time to keep him at it.