Would your Y2 DC be able to do these?

[Noomininoo]

DD1 has just started receiving homework for the first time (only had weekly reading bbooks in YR & Y1). The problem is that she seems to need quite a bit of help with it. I don't know if this is because she's not used to doing such formal worksheet type homework or whether the homework is pitched at too hard a level for her. I don't even know if they are supposed to be doing the homework by themselves or whether the parents are supposed to work through it with the DC to reinforce what they do at school.

We've always been told she's doing very well but unfortunately, where we live there is no formal assessment until the end of Y2 so we've no idea how well (or badly) she's doing in relation to her peers. I've got a parents evening in a couple of weeks where I plan to ask the teacher all these questions but in the meantime, I was wondering if you other Y2 parents could let me know if you think your DC could manage these questions by themselves.

HOMEWORK 1
Proof read these sentences using correct spellings & grammar:

1. Dolfins and wales live in the see

1. I saw some sheap with there lams on the hillsid

1. their are three yung Berds in the nest in the tree

1. at the zoo we sor jirafes elefants penguins and aardvarks

1. Could i have a drinck askt meg

There are others as well (10 in total) but I won't list them all. Would your DC get all the spelling errors? Do they know about capitalisation, commas, the difference between 'there', 'their' & 'they're' etc...

HOMEWORK 2
A book review which asked her things like 'how did the characters make you feel?', 'would you recommend this book & why?'. Would your DC be able to articulate these without guidance from you?

HOMEWORK 3
Look up these words in a dictionary & write it's page number next to it 'stable', 'chess', 'plate', 'kettle' etc. Do your DC have a firm enough grasp of alphabetical order to do this unaided?

Any advice gratefully received...

My yr2 DD has had homework 2&3 from your list and was able to complete unaided but the dictionary one took her quite a long time as she was having to recite the alphabet a lot! The book report type homework she was doing in yr1 but she was in a mixed yr1/2 class.

Homework 1 she could correct most of the spellings but I don't think she would pick up there, their, they're or commas yet.

DD1 not in a million years, she's dyslexic, she couldn't have read the questions.

It's a long time since DD2 was 6, but I think she'd have spotted a lot of the mistakes even if she didn't know the replacement spelling, Giraffes would certainly have been pushing it. I don't think she had had there/their drilled into her until later.

Book report, yes I think so because she could do L3 reading papers by the end of Y1.

DD1 could have answered those questions perfectly if you read her the passage, and let her speak her answers, but not a chance by herself.

Dictionary, I don't know, a basic kids one perhaps, but not an adults one.

Oddly DD1 would probably have made as good a stab at this as DD2, with much sinking of the alphabet song, but it would have taken forever to do more than a couple.

Very interested to see what any teachers think.

1. No that is hard for y2
2. Dd yes, ds no.
3. Hard. Maybe doable with a large amount of time.

as a general principle, they should be able to do homework supervised, but not needing a lot of help at this age. It should be follow on from class work.

In your example

1. should know full stops, capital letters, make a good stab at spellings and have ago at speech marks. But this would be a top group exercise I think. I think my dd2's group will be doing this by end of year 1.
2. book review, yes.
3. not difficult but time consuming (and assumes you have an easy dictionary in the house)

My DS could easily have done work like this - his school was preparing for 7+/8+ entrance into selective preps and one would need to at least do work like this.

My Y4 d2:
HW1:Not all of it. I know this as she has just had something very similar as HW, and her spelling is poor.
HW2: Only with prompting from me.
HW3: probably not.

HW1 no, maybe the odd word but not all

HW2 not fully on her own. This is her weakness and we work on it. I think we would talk about the book first and then let her do the rest on her own

HW3 yes, I think she would. But only if it is a children's dictionary not the full blown Oxford one.

1. Probably. DS had some similar puncuation homework the other week.

1. I would have had to get him started. But I know they do similar questions in guided reading anyway.

1. I'm not sure if he could manage the dictionary. I might test him over breakfast....

I have two in Yr2 and would say they'd both pick up the odd spelling in the first lot but not many. They're better with capitalisation and full stops but I'm not sure they'd actually notice IYSWIM. Let alone their/they're etc.

HW2 and3 they could do without much input. They've had a fair amount of homework throughout, but getting a lot more now.

The book review, yes. The rest - no! Absolutely not. DD2's homework this week is to identify 3d shapes and describe their properties and to talk about Manchester (their topic at the moment, city vs village life) as well as spellings and reading.

My DD is in Year 2.

1. She would have a good stab at this but she wouldn't get them all - spellings maybe but not punctuation.

1. This would be ok.

1. I doubt it.

She gets weekly homework which takes about 45 minutes to do on the weekend as well as spellings, timestables and reading book x 3 a week.

She does her homework independently but I sit with her as she does it so if I see she is really going off on a tangent then I can point that out!

Ds is in year 1 but doing well, and working with some year 2s for some aspects I think.
He wouldn't be able to do homework one.
Homework two - he could probably have a good go at telling me but couldn't write it down.
Homework three - yes he could do this I think.

Not sure how old Y2 is Ds2 is in Primary 3, which is also the third year of school, and is 7.

1. No definitely not, but he is probably heading towards a dyslexia diagnosis.
2. No. Verbally yes if I read the questions to him.
3. Pretty sure not.

DS1 is in yr 2 and could do

1. but it wouldnt be 100%

2. verbally he would do well

3. with support from me as has never used a dictionary before.

Of the 4 YR2's I know very very well...

B1 - No - not even with help (other than actually telling him what to write and requiring a lot of Gin

I have just asked my Yr3 DD to have a look at part 1. She is good at literacy and reads loads. She picked up all the spelling errors except there / their and she spotted all the punctuation errors. A year ago I thought think her response would have been fairly similar but I don't know whether she would have spotted the missing commas and perhaps the f to a ph in elephant. My DS who is Yr4 would definitely not done nearly as well in Yr2.

Tasks 2 I know they could both of done but with varying levels of accuracy and description.

I can't remember whether either or them did homework similar to task 3 in Yr2, they have both definitely had homework around using a dictionary and they both knew the alphabet but there would have been a lot of singing the tune to themselves!!

Please ignore the typos above...I thought think her....

Not sure tbh. The second one she would need help with. She would get some, not all of the first. Would get pull stops capital letters and some of the spellings. As for three I would hope she could although it would take explaining and me being there to encourage her on as she likely would loose interest the first time she couldn't find a word.

My Y2 DS would be able to them yes, I think he'd struggle a bit with the second lot of homework, but he'd get there with a bit of guidance. I don't really know how well he's doing compared to other Y2s though because he's only just started school after being home educated, he's working above top set but I'm not convinced that it's a very good top set IYSWIM. I'm hoping parents' evening will shed some light for me too!

DS2 (yr2) would get a lot of the spellings, but they have spent every homework in year 1 just looking at the different phonemes that make up the same sounds and learning which ones for which words. I doubt he would know their/there etc. Punctuation - maybe not commas.

Book review - probably not - he is autistic so can't describe his own feelings, let alone anyone else's.

Dictionary homework - definitely could do this, as he looks things up in the indexes of fact books all the time. (DS1 is in reception and could probably manage, although would take him a bit longer)

DS would have a stab at 1 and would probably enjoy it but not get all of it correct - perhaps 1/2 - 2/3 right (but surely the point is to see what they get right, not to produce 100% correct work?).

He would manage some sort of book report - especially as you have leading questions to help structure responses. Answers wouldn't be in depth analysis eg character felt sad because she fell over. I would recommend this book because it has a happy ending and is funny. I would have thought that that was sort of homework that DC would just do at their level - some going into more detail and others writing short answers, dictating, drawing picture etc.

Dictionary task would be achievable. They did some of that in class in year 1. Much singing of alphabet song, but doable and a useful skill to learn.

It seems a lot of homework in one go though - how long do you get to finish it? Any more than one of those tasks a week would be a bit much in my amateur opinion!

Hi Noomininoo, there's not much point in asking whether other people's children can answer this question because, to a large extent, it depends on how well they are being taught. Having said that, I'll address your question 1. First, the task isn't very well framed, as the sentences also need to be punctuated!
To expect your child to work out somehow the spelling system for herself after a diet of 'reading books' is simply ridiculous. Here's the problem: by the end of Y1, I would expect that the children at your daughter's school would have been taught all the common spellings for the sounds in English. Therefore, some of the misspelt words ought to be fairly easy to deal with/teach. For example, the words 'sea', 'sheep', 'hillside', 'birds', and so on, are frequently misspelt by children of this age. Nevertheless, you can very easily say to your child, "This," pointing to the spelling , "is a way of spelling the sound /ee/ but in this word we need this spelling." And at this point, you show your daughter the spelling. You could also talk about the difference in meaning between the two heterographs 'see' and 'sea'.
With other words, which might or might not be causing a problem, (Again, it depends on what has been taught.) you can use the same technique. In the word 'dolphin', for example, point to the spelling and tell your daughter that it is a way of spelling the sound /f/ but that, in this word, it's spelt , as in 'pharmacy'. Similarly, in the word 'wales', we spell the sound /w/ , as in 'which', 'why', etc. And, point out to your daughter that, in English, there are different ways of spelling sounds and that she needs to start noticing which specific spellings we use in specific words. When you're reading with her, you can point out these and say, for example, "There! You see. There's that spelling of /ee/ again."

How about maths? I thought ours was fairly tricky (Primary 3 so kids are 6 and 7)

We have had angles (right angle/obtuse/acute) and adding and subtracting 2 digit numbers mentally.

I think they are quite tricky but would say that the school are anticipating you giving a bit of help, especially with 1 and 3.