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Original poster

And the prize for this week's most pointless homework goes to . . .

28 replies

FromGirders · 18/03/2014 16:08

"Draw a copy of the cover of your favourite book"

Will it improve ds's reading skills, broaden his vocabulary, encourage his imagination or his creativity? No.

No, he has not to design a new cover for his favourite book, just copy the one that it has already. So he's now getting all stressed because he can't do white writing on a red background (actually, I've sorted that one, with a white gel pen) and his dragon doesn't look like the one in the picture. At least when they have to do the bloody "make a castle from a cardboard box" they as least have to think about how to construct it!
Can anyone suggest a positive learning outcome from this exercise?
Or comfort me with examples of even more useless homework?

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2cats2many · 18/03/2014 16:13

That is totally shit. How old is your DS?

LittleMissGreen · 18/03/2014 16:22

Shock ridiculous!

Delphiniumsblue · 18/03/2014 16:24

I would query the educational value. At least designing an alternative would be using the imagination.
I can't think of any that was as useless as that!

momofmonster · 18/03/2014 16:28

haha - my ds is only 5 so some of the homework is very basic - but the other week he came home with a piece of paper with a black and white pic of a penny on - his homework was to colour it in!!! Hmm

I mean to colour in a penny - there's only 1 bloody colour for a start!!!

CountessOfRule · 18/03/2014 16:33

Could he additionally design an alternative? Go beyond the homework and do something actually worthwhile to give DS a challenge that he can actually meet and that will stretch him in the right directions.

Original poster
FromGirders · 18/03/2014 16:35

He's 10, 2cats.

Erm, Countess, no, he's left it 'til the last minute as he couldn't decide "which book was his favourite" - I'm sanctioning the bare minimum on this one!

OP posts:
Original poster
FromGirders · 18/03/2014 16:35

Love the idea of colouring in a penny!

OP posts:
msrisotto · 18/03/2014 16:38

With a 5 year old, I can imagine the aim is no more than to socialise them to the concept of doing homework. At 10, this is a waste of time.

DebbieOfMaddox · 18/03/2014 16:44

That's... that's... no, I can't think of anything really positive to say about that at all.

Well, I suppose that the teacher may be planning an impressive wall display on the subject of "our favourite books" and it will all look terribly spiffing once they are all in and up on the wall, but a nice-looking display of student work that has achieved nothing of any value in its execution is surely not as good as a possibly-marginally-less-nice-but-still-attractive display of student work that's required some creative input.

CountessOfRule · 18/03/2014 16:46

Ten years old?! That is dumb-as-toast homework then. I thought you were going to say six.

Original poster
FromGirders · 18/03/2014 17:07

It's to go in his "learning log" so he "has to make a good job of it".
Quite what it shows that he learns, I don't know . . .

OP posts:
simpson · 18/03/2014 17:35

I thought you were going to say reception (in fact the reception class I am in had something similar last week as they have been talking about front/back covers, blurb, spine etc).

Can you boycott??

DebbieOfMaddox · 18/03/2014 17:39

OK, then, no, I'm out of ideas. "Fundamentally misguided attempt at eye-catching display" was the most positive idea I could conjure up. If it's for a "learning log" then it is utterly pointless.

Even in Y1 DD has had to write her own blurb and design her own cover for a favourite book.

ooerrmissus · 18/03/2014 17:44

10!!!!! That's absolute bollocks. Can he use his IT skills to print off a picture from amazon? Cos that would be more useful.

Frikadellen · 18/03/2014 18:38

I can see the point of this homework.

it is to do with considering what book is your favourite then looking at the cover and working out how to transfer that from one paper to another. There is some skill to do this even if your tracing it is about ensuring all of this is done properly and a fair deal of concentration will be needed.

After there is looking at what you created and what the original was

Later on there is seeing what others did comparing and likely some fun.

All in all I think an ok piece of homework.

ArabellaRockerfella · 18/03/2014 19:01

Nice joke Frikadellen!!
It is rubbish homework no 2 ways about it.

spanieleyes · 18/03/2014 19:29

The 10 year olds in my class have ; 10 questions identifying modal verbs, levelled comprehension questions on a text relevant to our topic, 5 levelled maths questions ( from level 2 to level 5A) on this weeks work on decimals, 10 spellings to find a definition for ( we are looking at homophones) and home readers to read daily.
I can think of nothing less relevant than copying out a book cover!!

sixlive · 18/03/2014 20:10

I would question this ask what part of the curriculum it covers.

HarveySchlumpfenburger · 18/03/2014 20:21

Isn't the point of a 'learning log' that they don't actually get given specific homework? Or have I misunderstood them? I though the original point of them was that they get given the objective they are supposed to show they have achieved/understood and they decide on a way to show they have achieved it.

Not that I think there is an objective for this HW. I think it's come straight out of the book of 'I can't be arsed to give HW and can be even less arsed to mark it'.

Quangle · 18/03/2014 21:11

My secondary school homework included colouring in a picture of a treble clef. I was 12. I left the school shortly afterwards.

MrsKCastle · 18/03/2014 21:59

Not too bad if it's art homework- there's a lot of skill involved in placing images and text correctly, keeping things in proportion and accurate copying.

affinia · 19/03/2014 09:45

Fine for years 1 & 2. We get that kind of stuff for 9 year old DS. Get even more annoyed when they do this kind of crap in class.

Menolly · 19/03/2014 16:11

I was going to say it's to get him to think about books and practice copying things and then will probably lead onto talking about their favourite books in class but then I saw he is 10 not 5.

I'm going to go with the teacher forgot to plan homework and it was the first thing they thought of, or there wasn't enough pretty coloured stuff in their learning logs.

007licencetospill · 21/03/2014 04:44

Design awareness? Long shot but maybe it enables them to take a closer look at different types of book design and then think about the different types of stories that you'd expect to sit behind each book cover type. Maybe the next step is for them to design their own book cover to reflect a story they are presently working on? They may have to explore various designs using themes or items in their story.

If a 5 year old was copying the cover of a book I'd say it was more about fine motor skill coordination and learning how to copy shapes - which relates to letter and number writing.

PastSellByDate · 22/03/2014 06:49

SO SO glad you posted this FromGrinders:

This is indeed typical of the type of homework my DD1 gets at her school.

And SO SO PLEASED to see responses suggesting the value of such homework is minimal.

Other favourites:

Write an Acrostic (with no explanation of the term to parent/ child) of your favourite book title

Draw a picture of your favourite character (DD1 decided to write a bit about why they were her favourite character - but it wasn't required.)

She's had this type of thing since Y4.

-----

Oh and how is your homework marked?

We get a tick - that's it. No comment on spelling/ punctuation - which with DD1 are all over the shop. We just get the tick.

-------

And then I'm told after 3 years of homeworks like this that I need to work with DD1 on her reading comprehension and work especially on describing authors use of words, writing style, etc.... (with the school having NEVER sent anything like this home for practice)

plus

No guidance to us on what to do.
No suggestions to us of websites aside from try google Mrs PSBD

basically DH & I seriously got the impression they want us to buy a KS2 L6 SATs practice book for DD1 but couldn't out and out say that to me.

----

Teachers are hard working I'm sure - just not so sure they are at our school. Moreover DH's conclusion - school want her to get L6 and us to do the work to achieve that so they can look good (NC L1 KS1 SATs across the board) - strikes me as spot on.