can't be 'polite' and good any longer....

[swallowedAfly]

ds goes to a village primary with all the subsequent over-reliance on parents wealth, education, time, etc. re: assuming sahms are the norm, money is plentiful for fanciful trips and activities, we all know how to sew up costumes at the drop of a hat etc.

that's fine. i chose to live here. however....

homework is way over the top in terms of quantity and right from day one of school. one part of homework (there is loads) is the 'learning log' which is pretended to be something children could do indepndently and consolidates learning. except in reality it is not, by a long shot.

i've put up with it and put up with and felt enslaven to doing it until today when i've had enough. this week for ds (6yo and one of the most able in his year) it says, "show me what you've learned about number bonds up to 20 and what patterns you can see". then there's a blank page.

i don't know why (because this is far from the worst that's come home) but today i've had enough and found myself writing on the page that i have no idea what the learning objective is, what outcomes they're hoping for or how the hell they see this as differentiated. i've also asked how they think a parent with numeracy or literacy problems would tackle this task and whether they would actually set this as a task in class to 6yos and expect a meaningful outcome.

there is no context, no structure, no literacy support, no prompts nothing. same as ever. sometimes the tasks don't even relate to anything they've been learning.

am i totally unreasonable or would you after a year or so be fed up too? i am (if it's not obvious) an ex teacher and i know what education is supposed to be about and this is not it. homework should be meaningful. how could a 6yo read that question and face a blank page and do something a teacher could look at and assess to see what they've learnt? they couldn't.

on top of this learning log (given on a friday and expected in by tuesday) daily reading and signing of reading book is expected plus other bits and bobs. he's 6! he's been getting this since 5 at a point where some kids couldn't even write let alone face a blank page and an open ended task and produce something yet they'd get in trouble if they didn't. this is just a test of parents surely? and an unfair one given it assumes knowledge and literacy that some parents won't have?

sorry for long random rant but help! i'm not playing this game anymore and i'm ready to speak up. it's a joke.

How do you think the parents of children with SEN feel?

Non differentiated, open ended tasks for unsupported homework. These children might have severe fine motor skills, concentration or processing issues.

See now why parents begin to become very vocal or at least frustrated?

Remember this OP?

all of this angst at teachers because they're the ones you actually see is not on. do people actively blame nurses for the state of the nhs or the fact that their dad needs an operation and isn't getting one just because nurses are the people they see?

I think your own words might have just come up and bit you on the bum...

why write anything in the sodding book? ds can read - he's a great reader. that should speak more volumes than whether i have time or inclination to sign a parent test book on a daily basis.

(btw - I'm not illiterate and I'm degree educated, I just don't know the first thing about number bonds. I'm sure I would educate myself via google should I need to though!)

Everyone in dds school has sloped whatever the kids have done themselves. I think its bizarre doing your kids homework.

Well you could say why not even have teachers write in the book. It literally takes 5 seconds.

Just laughing at the 'numerals 2 foot high on a piece of wallpaper'. DS - very bright, poor fine motor skills - used to do his spelling homework like that, and take it in like a scroll. His teacher and I were VERY happy when we got it down to an A3 piece of paper (bless her, she used to photocopy up the sheets every week to the maximum size possible).

On the food homework - DS had that one in Reception. DS wrote (huge, of course, with thick marker on wallpaper, I think the thing ended up 6 foot long). One of his friends did it by drawing pictures. Another cut pictures out of his mum's food magazines and stuck them on a sheet of paper. It was fun.

Couldn't but laugh at teatimesthree's "surely his teacher needs to know that?" Surely his bl**dy teacher ought to know that already, before setting the homework...

Let's face it, number bonds are boring. Making a ridiculously open-ended question out of them does not make them creative and interesting. If you don't know that number bonds to 20 add up to 20, then you really don't know what number bonds are. If you don't know that when adding 2 numbers together, if you want them to add up to the same amount every time, then if one number gets bigger, the other one gets smaller by the same amount... then you don't understand numbers, or adding up. There is nothing interesting or creative in any of that, really, and to cap it all, the teacher is not going to know from a 6-year old's homework what the child understands from going through their homework, because the teacher does not know who actually completed it - the child or their parent...

"let's face it the food diary wasn't about ds' literacy skills it was a nosey at what you feed your kids."

I get why you are fed up, but you sound really really down on the school. I think it's massively hard to put a brave face on it for your ds if you are so fed up with the whole set-up. Have you thought about investigating other options, or is this the only school local to you?

Sounds crap homework

Ds2 & ds3 would both have hated it.

Food diary would have been ok, but I doubt it'd been that accurate we'd have done it last minute from made up memory

You are definitely over thinking this, and letting yourself be sucked into the competitiveness and feeling the pressure as a result.

My 6 year old would manage both the food diary (did you really have to sit and spell all the words for your able ds?) and the number bonds. But ten she is comfortable with doing what she is capable of doing by herself, as I only get involved if she is particularly stuck.

We also have a completely open-ended project set each school holiday - each child has a project book, and a loose topic is set each time (eg "the Olympics"). The only rules are that it cannot be more than a double A4 spread, and must be the child's own work. This starts from the first term in Yr1.

Seems like you want to have a bee in your bonnet about this one, tbh.

Who are you a angsting at then Swallowed concerning the 'differentiated by outcome' homework?

I thought teachers were responsible for differentiation?

DS, btw, would have loved that homework, but his completion of it would have been bizarre, as he is wired somewhat sideways. I suspect that not confining himself to numbers between 0 and 20 in order to achieve an answer of 20 would have been the least of the issues....and the wallpaper required to start from the biggest negative number he could think of would have been excessive!

i'm not massively fed up with the school and no need for brave faces. ds is happy at school - it's fine - doesn't mean half of what's happening isn't idiotic though.

rabbitstew - exactly! thank god it is common sense to some.

and yy to the whole really bright yet fine motor skills not great (thought that was just being 6 )

it just annoys me and i think i'm going to go see the teacher and say look sorry but i'm not doing this crap - if you want to send me a note once a month saying what key skills, facts, processes etc you're doing and i can help with that's great and I'LL design the tasks, decide the times, tailor it to ds' ability etc myself. this nonsense one size fits all tick a box shite is pointless.

My DS2 would have loved it too, he has SEN and patterns are his "thing"

Swallowed how do you know the other children's is perfect? Even if it were, any teacher worth their salt would see right through that surely?
We have a "meet the teacher" at the beginning if each year and she specifically asked that parents don't take over as she will damn well know and it won't do our children any favours. She's great. Consequently I don't bother to correct even the most atrocious spellings.

would he have been cool to express that in words written down though spaniel and on a blank a4 landscape page? and would the task being printed in font 8 on a tiny label have been ok?

OK, sorry, I thought you sounded really fed up. Must have got the wrong end of the stick.

I jusy draw a few lines and sit on mn on my phone shes in a bedroom does what she wants. If its big, little, backwards etc thats just how she did it. Job done. They keep writing great work so dont think they are bothered either

-20+40=20. I like it. And a discussion on the Singaporean number bond. And whether number bonds should relate only to sums which a child can feasibly memorise, or whether number bond can actually mean any addition fact whatsoever in the world, including fractions, etc, etc.. In fact, it is superbly differentiated. You could do an entire thesis on it.

Am guilty of drawing lines on the blank pages for her though as she's a sloper like every other 6 year old.

Maybe the next piece of homework will be: "Discuss trainspotting."

it annoys me and i wondered if it annoys others puzzle. not like i am so fed up and down and blah about it just - offs what is the point and actually i think i'm fed up of pretending there's a point sort of thing. also just baffled by the utter shiteness of it given my training and knowing what homework 'should' and 'shouldn't' be.

sorry - a good moan doesn't mean i'm at my wits end or think it's the end of the world iyswim.

i'm just literally what is the bloody point of this other than to tick a box and say 'we do homework' and we have a log we can show of children's achievement (which actually logs parental time, literacy, energy and give a shit-ness as opposed to children's ability/work/effort).

just ... meh

Actually, though, it's not one size fits all because it IS capable of differentiation (in the same way as the food diary is capable of differentiation).

A REALLY bad homework would be a sheet of number bonds to 20 - absolute ceiling, too hard for some, too easy for others. No differentiation at all, not even by outcome.

This one, some children can write some number bonds. Others can write all the 'conventional' ones and describe the pattern in some way. Very able mathematical DCs can extend sideways into subtraction as well as addition, and to numbers outside the '0 to 20' box. And by Y2 virtually every child will know what a number bond is as they will have heard the words most days for over 2 years.

What did your son produce before you got involved (I presume that he usually has a good go at his work independently before you get involved?) When he read it, did he know what was expected of him? I appreciate that in a school with a high proportion of illiterate parents (I have taught in one), if the text was not in child speak it would be very tricky, but once you had read it out to him, did he understand what he had to do? Is it just you wanting the 'more structure' to 'get it right', or was he in fact happy to produce something if it wasn't for your concern about it?

I will add that when I raised it last year his teacher was more vocal than me about the pointlessness of homework, especially the ones which 'check knowledge'...

It was astounding and brilliant to listen to her tirade in equal measures - I did the homework with him as he's 9 and have a view to secondary but she let me do what the hell I liked and always loved it