dd1's homework (year 4)

[Marne]

Dd1 gets a lot of homework and gets quite stressed out about it.

Tonight she had to find 10 words (in the book she's reading) that she does not understand the meaning of and either google what they mean or ask a parent.

Dd1 is a bit of a brain box (not bragging but her vocab is huge for her age) so we found it very tricky to find these 10 words, there were a few that i wasn't even sure the meaning of but dd1 happily educated me . In the end we gave up and just picked 10 random words out of the book and wrote the meaning (which dd1 was not happy about as this was not the task that was set).

All the homework she gets seems to be similar to this and each time she ends up upset as she gets confused at what is being asked of her so a 5 minute bit of homework turns int 1 hour of sobbing . Dd1 has Aspergers which does not help, she's tired when she gets home so getting her to do homework that is not interesting or is too easy just makes her stressed.

How long should we spend doing homework? how much should a 8 year old get each night? she's getting 2 or 3 pieces most days (including reading).

I give my Year 4's:

x1 piece of maths homework
x2 piece of lit homework

No more than an hour at most to do all of this.

Is your teacher giving your child homework every night? This is excessive. It's even been proven that homework does not make a huge difference to the academic progress of children! TBH if I could, I wouldn't even bother sending homework home, because it's hard work to differentiate, so I end up spending quite a lot of time finding x3 suitable pieces for maths and lit each week! Plus then I have to mark it!

You might be interested to know that legally I have to set homework...but as a parent, you don't have to get your child to do it...! If it's upsetting her, have a word with the teacher. :)

Most nights (she had most of last week with no homework because of tests, not sure what tests?). She rarely gets Maths, mostly lit (similar to tonights), music or science (design a music word search or similar), work on the computer (she brings home a memory stick) and a few bits of Art, lots of colouring in, designing a leaflet type stuff. Sometimes it takes her 2 hours to complete though she is easily distracted and works quite slow.

Maybe its because she's not finishing her work in class? We have parents evening when they go back after half term so will ask the teacher. Last year she only got maths and spellings (once a week) so i think its a bit of a shock to the system for her.

She's in a mixed class of year 4's and 5's but works mainly with the year 5's, i think the teacher forgets that she's only 8.

Marne - I think that sounds excessive, tbh. I am not surprised she's finding it tough.

I also have an 8 yo in Y4 and he gets homework twice a week, certainly not every night. As a rough guide he gets

maths - on Wednesday to be in on a Friday (guideline 15-20 minutes)
literacy/project type thing plus spellings - given on Friday due back Tuesday (guideline 1.5 hours though can involve a lot of prep/research so can take longer depending on the specific task set).
plus reading.

To me, 2/3 separate pieces per night sounds a lot - too much - even for Y5! I know homework can really vary school to school, though. I have a friend who teaches Y6 in a different school to DS1's, and she tells me he gets more challenging homework than her Y6's

Definitely worth having a chat with the teacher, I think. It must be horrendous for both of you spending up to 2 hours per night stressed about homework( my DS is also aspie and would seriously struggle with what your DD is having to do).

Thank you, i will have a word with the teacher. She was ment to have 3 lots last night (lit, geog and reading) but the teacher forgot to print the work sheet off so she only had lit and reading (which was hard enough).

Her teacher is new to the school and quite young, i have a feeling a lot of the work does not get done during the day (as her would rather do the fun things like music and sport) so it gets sent home to do .

My 8 year old has no homework other than spellings at the moment.

My Y4 DS gets 1 piece of Maths and 1 piece of Literacy once a week and has a full week to do them.

The Maths takes him around 5 minutes, and the Literacy anything from 5 minutes to 20 minutes.

Half term they usually get a project but none in full holidays.

Marne - is it compulsory? If she's getting it as there's not enough time to cover it in class, I'd be asking the Head some questions, tbh.

It is very wrong if she is getting stressed out every night. [hsad]

My Y4 DS gets homework on Monday which has to be completed by Friday.
Over th week he is expected to

• read daily for at least 10 minutes
• practise spellings daily (normally about 15)
• complete a page of handwriting practise
• write 6 sentences using spelling words
• one sheet of maths which normally takes about 15-20 minutes
• practise times tables daily

we're looking at about 45 minutes every weekday night. I think it's too much. On the plus side he has nothing over the weekend.

We got Reading, spellings and one piece of maths or English a week tops.

DD2 never bothered with reading (read beautifully from Y2) learnt spellings over breakfast on morning of test and got them right

Sometimes, fussed over anything else.

Dyslexic DD1 fussed massively over reading, spellings and English sheets. If you blinked you missed her doing maths.

DD1 would have absolutely loathed that word meaning HW. Ten sentences to write, that would have taken ages unless she copied straight out a junior dictionary.

Like your DD they'd have been random words. Both DDs vocabularies are good, but DD1 particularly discussed and analysed every corner of her reading books rather than actually read!

DS1 has AS and would struggle in the same way as your DD with that homework and your solution to it. There have been times when I have had to go into school and explain that he has taken the homework too literally and that has made him misunderstand what was really expected of him. This has led to a genuinely confused/apologetic teacher as he is very verbal and they do forget his literalism. e.g there was one time when they had to rewrite sentences adding in the correct grammar. Q2 started "Rewrite the sentences and correct the grammar". He genuinely thought he had to rewrite the sentences he had already written in Q1, as opposed to rewrite the sentences that were about to be presented in Q2.

That's too much. Refuse to do it. Seriously! (sounds like teacher is young/inexperienced!)

Homework is no longer compulsory. One of the decent changes made by Mr Gove.

Our year 3/4s get a set of spellings and a mental maths task. Each set once a week with 7 days to complete.

And I think it is perfectly acceptable for you to write a note saying "DD did not complete this homework because...".
I will not make my children do any homework that upsets them.

link about homework rules

There have only ever been homework 'guidelines', schools can choose to ignore them, just as they could with the National Strategies. You just need to have a brave/sensible head teacher!

DS is in Year 4 and has one piece of homework a week (gets it on Friday and has to give it in on Monday. Takes variable amounts of time. Is either maths or English). Also gets spellings once a week.

DS yr 4 gets a maths worksheet and short literacy or other exercise on Friday for hand in on Wed. 16 spellings per week, given Fri and tested following Fri. Expected to do some reading each day.

I think some of the work she is given is 'optional' (she doesn't have to do it) but she doesn't understand this and wants to complete everything given (even if it means getting upset).

I think the real problem might be her literalism & perfectionism. I have no idea what you do to tackle that with an Asperger's-affected child, but if it is possible to help her be more flexible ,I would take that as my first priority.

DS is in y4 & has a wee bit less homework than OP describes, but he is in a middle-lower set. I think he'd have more homework if he was one of the most able kids (my older DC who were more able had more homework at this age).

Dd gets a piece of numeracy and a piece of literacy each week, they take about 30 minutes each. She has 10 spellings that she doesn't need to learn because she has a photographic memory and they should read and get their diary signed 4 times per week (she reads every day without fail) The school state repeatedly that all homework is voluntary so if she chose not to do any it wouldn't be a problem though she'd read regardless.
That sounds an awful lot tbh and very stressful I wouldn't be pressing dd to do that much even if it wasn't voluntary.

DD (Y4, in a French bilingual school) gets, on average, per week, the following homework:

• 8 sums
• 40 French spellings
• 4 x two pages of difficult reading in French
• 12 English spellings
• 2 English novels to read
• a poem or dialogue to memorise and recite (alternate weeks in English and French)

That sounds like an awful lot. I would have a word with the teacher. Why do they need to do homework in practically every subject - it's not secondary school for goodness sake. 1 English, 1 maths is plenty enough, especially for an 8 year old. She may be bright but she is a whole year younger than the rest of her group. If it turns out to be something like she is finishing off work that should be done in school, then either she needs easier work set in school and/or she needs support to help her concentrate or maybe better explanation on what needs to be done. You need to let the teacher know how much it is stressing your DD out. Also, if the literacy work is too easy eg find words you don't the meaning of I would get your daughter to write a comment about why she did not do it with a further comment by you.

If on the other hand, it's the young inexperienced teacher who is running behind with the lessons, then it's very unfair that she is getting children to do it at home. Whenever that happens to me (it does sometime!), I find a slot to finish it off during the week or finish it off the following week. When you are new to teaching, it's sometimes hard to work out how much you can put into a lesson and what you can expect the children to achieve.