Learning logs - argh!

[Jk85]

Learning logs are the only homework my DD yr4 is sent home with. My DD yr1 is sent home with the learning log, book and spellings each week.

For those of you who don't know a learning log is supposed to be a personalised record of your child's learning process. A task is set each week usually based around a topic they are doing in class and they are to complete this and hand it in to be marked.

In theory this sounds fab but in reality it is more a case of the kids going online to search for as many pictures as they can to fill the page up and write as little as possible. The topics set - although interesting - I think are not actually aiding the children's learning. Examples of the topics are fair trade, ice, family, religions etc.

I am now beginning to get quite annoyed by them especially as DD yr 4 is starting to fall slightly behind in maths and would much prefer 'proper' homework to be set.

Should I broach this with teachers? I know from speaking to a lot of other mums that they feel the same.

Thanks for reading this rather long rant!

I would address the maths problem separately because it's an unrelated issue. If you know that your daughter is falling behind then at the next parents evening bring examples of what she is doing and what she ought to be doing and ask the teacher what she plans to do about it.

In the case of the learning logs can you not encourage your daughter to stick fewer pictures onto the page and write some more? If the children write instead of sticking pictures it will assist their learning even if it's practice of prose style, research, planning and composition. Doubtless the children already know this and are trying to avoid it, hence the sticking of pictures instead of writing!

Our school uses the term 'learning log' as well, but what they mean is somewhere to place & record homework assignments. In theory you could also put in any additional work (stories your child writes, or class work which is taken home and further work is done on it, etc...).

It seems your child's school is focusing on out of school research/ writing tasks. I'd quite like this as we get 1 maths worksheet a week (usually at a fairly easy level for DD1, but clearly the same sheet to all 30 pupils) and that's it.

Could you make these assignments more interesting yourself. With ice - could you experiment with water level? Does ice water have a lower or higher water level once it melts. Photograph the ice water at various stages and report. Fairly straightforward, factual and easy to observe. This is an opportunity for you to help your DC think about how Could you find out about crystal formation in snowflakes? There's tons on the web by just typing in ice KS2 on google. For example the 3rd answer on my computer came out TES: animals of the ice age (British Megafauna is really interesting and of course the film Ice Age was also great fun).

Sadly as we have none of this, I'm trying to achieve this at home without ideas being sent from school. So from my perspective I'd love homeworks like yours, but we're supplementing poor maths teaching at our school (ranked lowest quentile locally & in the nation for KS2 on school data dashboard from OFSTED) by subscribing to Mathsfactor and doing around one hour of maths homework outside school each week.

HTH

Oh no - I hate learning logs too. A complete waste of time at our local primary (which we have since left). These were the only 'homework' set too.

"show what you have learnt about electricity." My ds would write about 3 sentences. DD would sit there for 30mins saying "nothing" or "I can't remember". Then she'd draw a picture and create a collage out of scraps of paper. Teachers comments were "you learnt a lot about electricity".

All my dc's learning logs showed was the dc doing less and less each week.

A real cop out from the teachers I thought.

Try and get them stopped if I were you.

Mine do learning logs and I quite like them tbh as they can do as little/much as they like.

You don't have to let her just stick pictures in.

Re maths ask for extra support or what you can do at home to help her?