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...

No, my daughter is in YR2 and she could never do this. I could do this with her sitting next to me...but not sure she would get much out of it.
This looks like something a yr4 child should be doing, at least by the standards of our local primary school.

Just to give you some context about my dd, she was assessed as a 2b for reading and a 2c for writing after yr1.

The homework my yr2 dd does get is:

1. List of 10 spelling words to learn over the course of the week (usually 4 or 5 letter words.)
2. Three short books to read to me after school each week
3. One math worksheet per week (never difficult, often involves colouring or sticking and gluing.)

I doubt DD could do a good job of 1 and 3 but she could do 2 well. might ask her to have a try after school

my 6yr old is only in yr1 so hasn't done some of the stuff yet but she has been told about capital letters, fullstops at end of sentences and apostrophes (she likes apostrophes and always gets them right for some reason). Some spellings like dolphin and see she would manage but not some of the others but as I say she hasn't been taught anything like that yet.

the book one - she could certainly do verbally and I think she would be able to get some of it across on paper but she does like writing.

dictionary - yes but she likes words and we got her a dictionary for her birthday which she likes looking through. I think a lot of schools get the children using dictionaries before the end of yr1 from what my friends have told me so I think some children should have some idea of how to do that. out of curiosity though does it specify a type of dictionary? otherwise they will all just have any page number because the teacher won't know the one they are using.

I think if I was you I would let her try it on her own, if she doesn't understand the question then do the 1st bit with her of number 1 and show her (write that you did that as an example) then get her to try the others. If she can't do them then the teacher needs to know that.

number 2 I would perhaps ask her to tell you and then once she has done that ask her to write it down and leave her to it.

the 3rd one, again see if she knows how to do it, if not then do the first one with her explaining the process and then let her do the other ones.

she had 2 & 3 - the teacher gave parents a question prompt sheep for 2. It just needs to be a conversation to check they have understood the story.

1 looks too advanced for Y2 and my age Y3 would struggle I think this early in the year.

sheet rather not a sheep!

Very constructive post, SoundsWrite, thanks!

My DS would have struggled with these in Y2, and would complain, procrastinate and try to avoid the work now in Y3. It certainly wouldn't be something he took in his stride. MN often makes me feel like I have given birth to the least-able primary school child ever.

DS1 could have done that earlier than Y2, there is no way DS2 will be able to do that in Y2.

If they are not being taught those things in class yet then they should not be getting homework about it IMO. The way I understand it is that homework should be given to help consolidate what they have already learnt.

I am very interested in your responses, and surprised at how many say their kids couldn't do question 1. I would have thought some could and some couldn't but in this thread it seems to be about 80/90% couldn't.

I am surprised because last week I was helping out in Year 1. It is a school in a very mixed area with a very wide range of abilities.

Class teacher had 3 or 4 sentences on the board, with mistakes in capital letters and full stops, and some spelling mistakes. She didn't have the whole class, may be top half or two thirds.

They could all find the mistakes in the sentences, including spellings that I didn't think they would get.

and that is year 1.

So I just wonder if they are doing more in the classroom with this than we are generally aware of, it seems to be something they have to target.

As to homework, our homework is differentiated, so the question isn't whether any Y2 child could do it, but whether your dcs group have done it in class and can do it.

Dd and ds1 would have found the spelling/proof reading section do-able.

nightlark - my ds has fought, prevaricated, complained and kicked against homework since he was in reception. Doing anything with him outside of school was horrendous.

and it took him forever to become a fluent reader, at the end of year 2 I was tearing my hair out. The penny dropped with reading in year 3 and he is now doing well in school, but homework is still a battle.

When I was teaching we often found that boys blossomed later, typically y3 or 4

There is hope!

Sorry, I have just re-read my last post and the tone is not what I wanted to convey, what I am trying to say is that I think they do this in the classroom and that it is a much more familiar exercise than we think (we would have never done anything like this when i was at school)
I certainly wouldn't expect them to get them all right, but think they could probably give it a good go. And again, this may be for the top group only.

Steppen, thank you.

I think both your points are valid - they do loads in class at a higher level than I imagine (though trying to get that information out of a 7 yr old boy is virtually impossible, you just get a very small insight at parents' evenings), and it is a whole different ball game doing work at home when tired and / or distracted by small sisters running around.

I am still waiting for reading fluency with DS (now Y3), and several people have told me versions of 'many boys do not thrive at primary'. It is very disheartening though, and MN often makes me more despondent, so thank you for your kind words.

Steppe - you could well be right - trying to find out what DD has done at school is like getting blood out of a stone and she can certainly read and spell things that I thought she couldn't.

The question the OP asked was 'could your child do this by themselves'.

A lot of people are saying 'Yes' - then saying if they helped them, did it verbally first, explained the meaning of some of the words etc. So actually, the answer is NO.

The bottom line, I think, is that the OP needs to talk to the teacher and see what level of help that teacher is happy for the children to have with this work & take it from there.

What they can do 'in the classroom' (when it has just been explained to them what they are looking for/need to do) is not the same as 'what they can do at home' when they are just handed a sheet of homework and are left to get on with it.

Some schools like the children to do it entirely by themselves, some schools look upon it as further learning with parents. If you don't know how your school/teacher views it, you have no idea what's what.

I think many Y1/2 children could have a go at Q1 but the others are fairly difficult for average Y2 I think.

I may be harsh on my DS2 as he is only Y1 at the moment but he can only write about 1 or 2 sentences at a time (very basic ones at that) and spell phonetically built words or very high frequency ones so I find it hard to believe he would breeze through those Qs in a years time. He is above average in the class and progressing quickly so you never know.

There are DCs in Y3 that would struggle with those also so I think the variety of abilities at this stage is huge. I find it very difficult to get my head round what is expected of children each year as my DSs are so different I have no way of comparing (in a nice way not a horrible competitive way).

I agree with Chipping, they are 2 entirely different things. Friends of mine who are teachers say you can tell which children have parents who given lots of input into their homework and which ones mainly do it by themselves. They are not saying either is wrong but they would prefer to know if a child is finding it too challenging to tackle alone. Other teachers may feel differently of course.

It could have been a piece of homework to see which children are happy to be challened.

nightlark - IMHO it isn't that boys don't thrive in primary, more that they can often be late starters. You are right at the beginning of year 3, he is 7. This is actually the point that I would expect the penny to start to drop. It sort of happens over year 3.
In the meantime it can be very stressful. [smile[

or even

Thanks for all the responses guys (sorry I haven't been on sooner but I don't get time in the day to log on - although I have been taking sneaky peeks at your responses on my phone when in work )

Being a complete homework novice I was really just after some feedback on what other parents thought of the homework which has been set as it looked quite hard to me. It looks like a bit of a mixed bag with some DC being able to do them & some not. My DD1 I guess is probably somewhere in between. She made a good stab at the proof reading question but did miss out loads (in particular the 'there', 'their' questions along with some of the harder spellings (whale) and some commas). She needed some prompting on the book report & had to be given some suggestions as to how the characters made her feel) and to be honest we haven't attempted the dictionary one yet so I don't know how she'll cope with that one (although my feeling is she'll struggle as, even though she knows her alphabet song I don't think she has a solid enough grasp of alphabetical order yet).

As to frequency of homework, she's had 2 book reviews (with her reading books), & 4 worksheets in the last 2 weeks. HWK 1 in the original post was part of a longer worksheet with 10 questions in total & HWK 3 was also part of a longer worksheet where she had to rearrange 8 groups of 4 letters in alphabetical order (and there were also more dictionary words to look up than I listed). In addition to these 2 worksheets, she's also had a maths sheet where she had to calculate her doubles using the diamond method and another sheet where she had to write out the alphabet in both upper & lower case. It's quite a culture shock for poor DD1 (and me) going from no homework to this.

I guess I need to have a chat with the teacher to see what's expected of DD1 (and me) but unfortunately DD1 catches a school bus so the only time I get to see teacher is at parent consultations. This also means I don't get to see other parents in the playground either to compare notes/concerns or get advice so to get some feedback on here is fab .

DD is year 2 and working above expectations, she would struggle with most of the first one though could manage capital letters, full stops, and some of the spellings if she'd been taught them, adding magic e (or whatever it's called now) on hillside etc.

She would struggle with the book review, but manage to write two or three sentences at a push - she now has to do a minimum of two a week on her school reading books.

She could manage the dictionary one with no help but would probably get bored/frustrated as we only have a massive adult dictionary at home to work with :o

She's also been doing lots of work at school about arranging lists into alphabetical order, and has been asking me to write down groups of words for her so she can do it at home too

op - send in a note and ask if it would be possible to speak to teacher by phone as dd gets the bus.

You sound like you are getting a lot of homework, regardless of level. Ours get normal reading, spellings and times table, and then one piece of literacy and one of numeracy per week. Ask how long she expects homework to take. If she says 20 minutes then dd should work at it for 20 - 30 minutes and then feel free to stop and write on the bottom how long it has taken. If it is too hard and takes too long, she won't know if parents don't tell her.

We had one teacher who set a diary for every half term and holiday. Just before easter I saw her and said I am really sorry, but if you set a diary for easter holidays ds won't be doing it, and explained just how long, drawn out and stressful doing the diary had been. She had no idea, she thought it was a simple few minutes per day.

steppemum - agree with you about holiday diaries. My DD enjoys writing and will make up little letter to family members etc on her own. BUT give her a school set diary and she cries and won't do it at all. Becomes a scrap-booking exercise for me sticking in tickets and leaflets and then cajoling DD into writing the odd sentence or doing the odd drawing. If a child who enjoys writing is so difficult about it, it must be a nightmare with one who's a reluctant writer in general.

Hi Noominoo

This is tough for a 6/7 year old (Y2). I would have had to support it, but I think I would have asked myself if this is something that ultimately I want my DC to know - if the answer is yes then I'm afraid it is down to you to help teach them the skills to deal with this.

I have invested a lot of time on this kind of thing (because we have wildly varying homeworks - way too easy to way too hard) and because lack of maths homework has meant I've got heavily involved in teaching calculation skills/ techniques.

My gut instinct is that if you are confident that other children are doing this to (or the entire class) and that this work is deemed appropriate by the teacher, then it is worthwhile trying to help your child.

with homework 1:

Have your DC read the sentences and see if they notice anything. Praise like mad anything they get right and then have them look again for things they may have missed. The idea behind this homework (Homophones) is a good one - there are letters/ blended letters that sound the same ('f' & 'ph' in dolphin/ dolfin) and you have to learn which is right. Sometimes helps to learn about about the word origin as this helps explain the spelling (e.g. www.thefreedictionary.com/dolphin - which shows that the origin is latin/ greek where the 'phi' or ph is used as opposed to 'f' which doesn't exist in the Greek alphabet).

the origins of words is really useful: brilliant video on why there is a 'b' in doubt here: ed.ted.com/lessons/beyond-the-shadow-of-a-doubt-gina-cooke

with homework 2:
Your child may be better able to discuss this than write about it just now - but you can help them develop skills to do this as the year progresses (especially if this is a regular, weekly exercise)

with homework 3:
Using a dictionary (alphabetizing skills) are really useful and your DC might enjoy hunting words out in a dictionary.

Alternatively - if time/ patience is short - free on-line dictionaries like www.thefreedictionary.com are really useful (and again give extra info like word origin and first use in English that abridged or children's dictionaries might not).

If you're at a state school I'm absolutely jealous. We have hardly anything (indeed no homework or school books home for all of September) and now just starting a slow trickle of work for DD2. DD1 has had regular homework but she's in Y6 and the school are terrified they're going to end up below flow target for combined English/ Maths so are putting in a lot of extra effort.

I'm afraid even in our rather mediocre state school, helping with homework is kind of the norm [or indeed sourcing your own resources to help]. However, if you make it part of your family routine, it can become a lovely time together. I also find it really interesting to see my DDs way of thinking (not my own) and funny ideas and am pleased as punch when they finally 'get' something they have been really struggling with.

HTH