is it normal not to get feedback on or even marked homework back?

[SantaIAmSoFuckingRock]

ds is in year three. last year his homework was a sheet stuck into his homework book with the bullet points instructing him. he did the homework and the next day when he had the next homework you could see the teacher's ticks or notes about what he needed to work on/correct. the whole term's homework was there in the book to see what progress he had made

this year (same teacher) his homework comes on a loose sheet that we never see again once it goes back into school. we get no feedback at all. there have been a few times where i have struggled to understand what is being asked of him and we did the best we could but i have no clue whether we were close to the mark or not. i think i'm going to go and speak to his teacher after xmas but i dont want to do this if i'm being precious. is it normal to not find out how they are doing homework wise? i have no concerns about him and last i spoke to teacher she said he was very bright and capable and i'm guessing she would get in touch if she had any concerns but i'm just finding it a bit odd.

It is up to the individual teacher. I can't see any point unless it is marked and handed back. I would just go and have a friendly word about it.

IMHO, homework is useless as no teacher can rely on it. There will always be children who won't do it, and lots of kids who do do it have a LOT of parent input. As a teacher, I base absolutely nothing on the homework. It is just fodder. There's no way to know how much the child has really done independently. Lots of parents are very competitive and think they can change the teacher's perception of the child.

I tick and put a smiley face on homework, but it means nothing more to me than that.

Santa, please, if you're going to write lots of replies in this thread, can you use correct capitalisation? My head jars every time I come across an incorrectly capitalised sentence.

thanks exotic and juniper. i think i'll chat with teacher after xmas and see what her views are on the importance of the homework. if she thinks like you juniper then i'll just forget about it and go with that. ds never seems to mind not getting any feedback so if the teacher doesn't place too much importance on it i'm happy to go along with that. as i said, i'm sure she would get in touch if she had any concerns. thanks.

Maybe she disagrees with homework and just has to set it. I disagree with homework, but since it had to be set I tried to make it interesting and had a special homework book. I know from my own DCs that you like some feedback on how they did.

My DS ( also yr3) gets homework most weeks from a work book. Which we do get back with feedback in it.

However there is the odd time he has a one off worksheet and we never get any feedback on that....

tbh i hadn't really given it any thought until the first time he got a homework that neither of us were sure about. i tend not to get involved in correcting his errors when i see them as previously he would have gotten it back and i would have sat with him as he tried to work it out but i realised that he wouldn't be getting it back to show him which was wrong or where he went wrong IYSWIM so thought i'd ask if i should bring it up or not.

Thanks Juniper. Your post has just confirmed my suspicions that there is probably no point in helping my DCs with their homework - whether it is done well or poorly makes no difference. It annoys me that we get so much homework and have to spend a lot of valuable family time doing projects that none of us would choose. It puts extra pressure on family life and I really come to resent it. I really like it when teachers take the time to set interesting homework as it makes it less of a chore. I appreciate that many teachers think homework is pretty pointless and only set it due to pressure from parents.

One of the DC's teachers usually gives feedback. Another teacher never gives any. They are 8 and 5.

I know our school does value homework. We have two styles of homework at the moment as last year there was a new teacher who brought a new idea with her, she taught my daughter so they had it last year and this year it's being trialled in a few years and carried on with my daughter's year. When we had worksheets we weren't getting feedback on them and people have complained about it, especially when it's things like maths which has changed since most parents were at school so they had to struggle to help - we're also not getting feedback on spelling tests and neither are the children! The new style is a book that they stick a little square of paper on the next page which is a suggestion to what they want you to do and the children have free range what they do for it. For example one was about instructions and my daughter made chocolate brownies which we photographed and she wrote the instructions on then took the brownies into school.

A recent one was acrostic poems, she decided to use her name and write about London (their topic at the moment). We encouraged her with some sugestions to build each line but she worked out the letters for herself and did most of it on her own. She included photos from our trips to London that went with what she'd done and decorated the letters. She got the work back with no feedback at all, no smiley face or anything. The brownie homework had got her two golden signatures so she's really upset she got nothing for her poems - I'd share them so you could see how good they are but being based on her names is obviously a little outing (especially as it's an unusual name).

It's fantastic that your child is self motivated, and is happy to complete these tasks, but in my experience there will be at least 5 children in each class who had no help from parents and so don't do their homework (however much they'd like to). There are another 10 children with pushy parents who force homework against the child's will cue tears . There are another 8 children or so who agree, begrudgingly, to complete the task. Then there are the rare few who actually enjoy homework and do it by choice.

However interesting or mundane I make the task, we will always have parents complaining.

I hate, hate, hate everything about homework. I give my year sixes 2 pieces per week but the whole system is a joke and a faff. From some less able kids I get back pieces I know with absolute certainty they have not done for themselves, while a persistent 4 or 5 don't even bother to do it.

I do make sure I thank and praise those who really put in an effort, and every week in merit assembly there is a homework award.

I spend bloody hours marking my class books to a high standard, so unfortunately homework only gets a quick going-through in class and a clearing up of any misconceptions.

my daughter made a poster about mini-beasts with her dad at the weekend. it was a spider diagram (geddit?) and she was so pleased with herself, she wrote all the Latin family names out herself. she also included a resin paperweight of my husband's with a huge disgusting horrible preserved milipede his friend got him from Africa. the TA said she wasn't impressed, she only showed the teacher the paperweight as TA does homework. it was a little late but they've been asking for her homework. Mum showed both pieces to the deputy today and he was over the moon with them! he's asked to keep the photo of us on the London Eye for a little. he's not impressed with how TA has been, he said work like that should be encouraged.

spoke to her after school (I'm in hospital) and she was called to his office where the poster is now on his wall for the rest of the year and she had two golden signatures was nice to hear her happy about school for a change!

I think my only comment as a parent is that if homework is sent home I take the view that the teacher thought this piece of work would be of benefit to my child. Perhaps I'm wrong but I see it as a two way street. The teacher has gone to the effort to plan this piece of extra work/ practice for my child and it is my child's obligation to do it and learn from it.

Sometimes it's dead easy - done in 5 minutes.j

Sometimes (like a recent photocopied comprehension sheet A3 - 1/2 with text and 1/2 with questions/ language exploration) - it took 4 hours over a weekend to complete. DD2 is a very slow write (so that probably added an hour) - but this was a ridiculous amount of homework and also left me confused whether DD2 had some serious issues because it took her so long. Ultimately found out through the grapevine that teacher hadn't really thought through what she handed out and hadn't realised it involved so much work.

Personally I like my girls doing a bit more (out of interest, because it is assigned, or by shear accident - i.e. because of a family outing/ event). I see it all as good learning opportunities.

I personally find StuffezLaBouche's view understandable but very jaded. Maybe I'm just very old fashioned - but I don't think practice hurt anybody. Isn't the solution to make it clear from the get go to all parents/ carers that the children must be allowed to do the work for themselves. Sure explain and instruction or the meaning of a word if there is confusion. Discuss what they might do/ help them plan what they will do out a bit. Dig out a protractor from the bottom of your desk drawer/ pencil box. Provide paper, pencils, rubbers, refreshments - but let your child's brain cells work.

I'm always left feeling slightly conflicted when I read these varied views on homework. Of course no parent wants homework to take over their lives (unless it is making up for failings at a school, which I fear is our case). But I also do feel practice, working through how to do things, then getting up speed/ facility with method/ technique and then doing it automatically with very little thought isn't a particularly bad thing.

I'm pretty sure nobody complains about a child putting in 30 minutes a day practicing a musical instrument or 1 hour a week at a swimming lesson. So I'm slightly perplexed why a bit of extra reading (assigned or optional), a bit of extra math (assigned/ optional/ maybe in a magazine quiz), maybe keeping a diary, writing a story or researching a topic is somehow 'bad' when assigned but good if a self-motivated act.

forgot to mention DD2 is age 7 in Y3.

PastSellByDate - speaking from experience, with some parents there is nothing you can say that will stop them doing their children's homework for them. They will deny that they do it which makes it tricky to prove.
I'm not sure if I've missed something but what a bitchy comment, learn&say considering you didn't even add anything to the discussion.

I started following the thread, but when the replies were equally as badly written as the original posting I gave up. I can't read people's writing if they don't even put the minimum of effort into it.

if that was aimed at me I'm in hospital, in labour at 29 weeks, and using the MN ap. frustratingly I can't see what I type and it only capitalises certain things.