Sorry if this study is old or this topic has been done to death but is there really any benefit for home work?

[Italiangreyhound]

Sorry if this study is old or this topic has been done to death but is there really any benefit for home work?

www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/rethinkinghomework.htm

www.abc.net.au/news/2012-10-24/study-finds-homework-has-limited-value/4330514

happychild.mobi/articles/what-is-the-value-of-homework-research-and-reality

My dd is dyslexic, 10 year old, and is really struggling at school. Home work is a total battle and pretty much has always been so.

She hates it, resents doing it and often ends up in tears. Tonight I was the one in tears.

Is it all for something or just a massive emotional waste of time?

Any replies very gratefully received.

Thank you in advance.

There was a researcher who looked into what was important to academic achievement : John Hattie.

At primary level he saw no beneficial effect.

15 mins yes. It doesn't take more than that. Perhaps the problem is the type of homework that is being set for your dc. And sometimes I don't get back until 5 or 6. Still time to eat, do the homework and play.

I dislike homework and say that every year on the feedback form. unfortunately every year it is pretty evenly split between parents who say they get too much and parents who say it's too little.

Gile the actual homework may only take 15 minutes, but the real time it takes up looks something like this:
30 minutes: me: nag to get on with it.
15 minutes: child finding urgent things they must do first.
10 minute: Look for suitable pencil
5 minute: sharpen pencil
55 minutes: complain how stupid the homework is and how they'll never finish it.
5 minutes: me: point out if they haven't done it then they'll miss out on something else.
15 minutes: homework done...

So it actually takes 2 and a quarter hours.

at 15 mins.

I want that school.

Try maths along the lines of designing board games or and writing instructions and literacy home work on top of reading on top of a reading journal to write about books on top of a termly project. For yr 1 kids. 5/6 yr olds.

Really? Design a maths board game in an evening? Crikey. That seems a bit much. Can your dc actually do that by themselves? Mine would need quite a bit of help with that, which defeats the purpose of being their homework. I wouldn't be impressed with that. Ours is reading book each day, (done in morning after breakfast) , plus maths / english homework 3 x a week and a spell test. But the homework is completely set at dc's level so they get on with it themselves (unless theres a problem). I just check it afterwards.

I don't think much of all the "project" type homework. It always involves parental input, no matter how much you try to leave them to it. And frankly, I don't see that my children get much out of it. I wonder about spelling tests too. My children memorise the words easily, and then forget them in a few days.

What I do like is a worksheet with ten straight forward maths questions to help them learn number bonds, times tables, subtracting across zeros, etc. Or a worksheet where you have ten sentences and underline all the nouns, etc. I think an extra 5-10 minutes running through something straight forward that helps drill in the things that require rote memorisation and practice is useful. It's also straight forward for the teachers to mark. But this seems to be out of fashion and frowned upon. Instead we get too much open ended, esoteric stuff that seem pointless and eats into the children's free time and reading time. We often spend more time pondering what the teacher actually wants, or the directions, or find odd scraps around the house than actually engaging with the subject matter.

I posted earlier in support of homework. My DCs primary school set the rule that homework takes 20mins up to end of Y3 then 30mins Y3-Y6. Whatever is set, child needs to put in 20/30mins of effort, if they haven't finished it in that time so be it.

And we have never had to create crappy creatures out of coke bottles. Most times it's an extra maths exercise consolidating what's been learned that day or discussing a story plan and writing down some ideas & wow words to use in a story next day at school, sometimes it's designing a cover page for a science topic. All relevant and mostly low stress stuff.

Perhaps the difference between those in support and those that hate it is the schools ethos around homework?

Sorry for all the typing errors above

Just thinking, homework shouldn't be the only way to know what is going on in school. I remember brining home marked spelling tests and math quizzes to my parents on a weekly basis in juniors. They felt satisfied that they knew roughly what was going on from these, and I think I would too. I wonder if this has disappeared because schools have to save all the papers for inspection or something like that?

brining = bringing (I did it again! )

That is exactly the homework my dc get Holiday. Its very straightforward. Thats obviously not the norm then. I feel lucky now!

The best run school I knew sent kids home with a note each week of what was being covered in class. in R and Y1.

Then you could ask about the topic, do a quick bit of mental maths or ask about the sound a particular letter made and either be satisfied it had sunk in or do a bit of reinforcement if you wished. However it was the school that did check learning and do something if the child wasn't getting it so it was not left to parents.

Subsequent schools have had homeworkitis and have been far worse schools tbh.

Holiday - I would love to see this. But yes, all workbooks stay in school. Not generally a bad thing but seeing them just twice a year means I loose around 3-4 months to know that something is seriously wrong.

Last year we had a steep decline in maths, going from Exceeding Expectations to making silly mistakes and the teacher didn't say a word until February half-term and then again nothing until we got the bad results of KS 1 tests in July. That is not good enough.

Currently, 3 weeks into Juniors, the homework feels like homework where I can see if DD is doing what she is supposed to do instead of "write down 2 number sentences" when I had no idea if she was supposed to do Tens or Hundreds.

I've always been broadly supportive of the idea of primary schools setting homework as it seems reasonable to reinforce concepts taught at school. However the new system introduced by my dc's school has made me question the whole concept. I bloody loathe the whole thing, despite thinking it seemed a good idea when they first started doing it.

Basically, they are given a whole half term's worth of homework in one go and expected to hand it in at the end of the half term. Usually it consists of a bunch of worksheets and a 'project' to do.

I thought the whole point of homework (if there is a point) is to support what they're learning in class? With this system there appears to be little overlap between what they're doing at school and the homework - how can there be when they're given 7/8 weeks' work in the first week?!

Twice now my dc has been set totally inappropriate homework for his ability which we then have to discuss with the teacher and ask for it to be replaced (which doesn't happen). I doubt most parents would bother and it will be a whole half term before the teacher will realise the mistake.

The project always involves extensive parental input, and it is not clear to me what they are supposed to be learning from it.

You also have to really keep on top of where they're up to with their pack of work. Instead of having a nice routine where you know they will get x homework on y day and need to complete it by z, there's now a big window of opportunity to do it or not do it. The amount of work to do (7 weeks' worth) seems overwhelming to a primary aged child and so IME they find it difficult to get started. And if you don't get started early on in the term you have a huge amount to catch up on by the end of term - nightmare!

My biggest objection is that it's supposed to get them ready for homework at secondary school, but the local secondary school doesn't set homework this way - I don't know of any secondary school that would do this!

Would be really interested to hear what other people think of this.

I think homework of course is benifit for children's academic achivement. It's only the balance we need to look at. For infant school, maybe just read books with parents, do a few fun math games everyday for 20 minutes. But from year 3, there should be structured homework for 30 minutes a day.

The reason for the homework is for children to practice what they learned at school and also find out what they hasn't grasped at school.

When I was at school, not at this country, we start school from 6, and have homework everyday to practise what we have learned at school. We hand in next day, teacher will mark it and return to us. Then you check what you have done wrong and redo it. This not only make sure you get everything right, also , we do forget what we learned, this will reinforce it.

I don't mind it as so far DD quite enjoys it. She's at junior now so they've stepped it up a bit, we shall see how that goes!

I think she does gain a bit from it, when it's a research type thing she's liked finding out about particular people etc and does seem to retain it afterwards. I think she also enjoys feeling a bit grown up TBH.

This will be the first time she has had spellings, I think she will take that in her stride as she loves writing, and I'm hoping it might give her a kick up the bum when she gets a bit careless when writing - but then, I've read (on MN) that spelling tests don't really translate into better everyday spelling... Hmm. We shall see.

I was pleased to learn yesterday that maths homework (one small piece every fortnight) is individually targeted, so that's much better than everyone getting the same worksheet which according to threads on here happens in some schools!

So while I know there aren't overwhelming benefits to it, DD at least does enjoy it and it's only a small part of the week, so I don't feel strongly against it. She still spends most of her time running about, climbing at the park, building lego or playing restaurants etc so I don't think the homework impacts much on it really, at the moment anyway.

Yes I have to say yr one and two was ridiculous for homework but they have had it since reception. The stuff she's bringing home now in yr three has so far been really easy and something she can actually do herself for the first time since reception. But I'd still rather not have it at all. It did make me wonder what they did all day if all the homework was actually needed to enhance anything .

Yes bare in mind this has been for 5/6/7 year olds with corkers such as writing up recipes, the board game, projects on endangered animals, and ambiguous maths questions. None of which help with the one thing she struggles with which is times tables. Oh writing about favourite film characters was another one. Yeah sure a at 6/7 year olds can really write in depth descriptions of the character aside from they are tall with red hair

I firmly believe the time spent playing in the fresh air and exercise and an early night would be more beneficial than sending a fidgety kid with a fried brain to bed

As a parent and a teacher I hate homework. Reading, that is fine and important, but everything else....waste of time....
As a parent I spend ages persuading my DD to do it (and she enjoys work) as a teacher it takes so long to set, differentiate, chase up, mark etc...there are many more useful things i could be doing!!

I think reading most days is a good thing. My DD in Y1 would bring home a maths game or puzzle for the weekend which was actually fun and she'd enjoy doing it. Spellings are tedious and seem to be quickly forgotten. More lengthy written pieces just seem to cause a lot of grief for parents and teachers. Art projects are OK if they are aimed at the child and rather than something the parent will tend to take over.

If most parents don't like homework at primary school and it's shown not to have much effect why do schools insist on doing it?

Thank you for all replies, it is wonderful to see your viewpoints and experiences, and to see some people have the same experiences as me and dd.

The point for me is that it is not 15 or 20 or 30 minutes of doing homework it is half an hour or an hour of upset and tantrum on which very little is learnt. How is that beneficial to a child. Sadly, it is not each to their own as I am guessing I will have no choice about whether my daughter has to do this.

I would certainly not complain about other people's kids doing work at home that is easy, quick and beneficial! But for us it is a sad and miserable battlefield with no perceivable benefit. If you have not experienced this with your kids then I think that is great, for you, but it is not the same for us.

Has anyone heard of or seen any experiments where kids had some work for a while and not for a while and compared how they achieved? If anything I think homework may just widen the gap between students, which again is fine, but not in my interests (or more significant my dd's interests) to pursue.

If you have not experienced this with your kids I meant if you have experienced work at home that is easy, quick and beneficial...

ItalianGreyHound, what do her teachers say? Our school isn't perfect, but I feel sure that if you were to explain your situation to the teachers my DDs have, they would almost certainly tell you to just leave it. Our school does have a policy of stopping homework after 20 minutes whether it's finished or not. I wonder if they would have the same attitude at your school.

Thanks Holiday I am meeting them this week and so will ask.

She did it tonight with her dad, my dh, but it was all pictures and no writing so not sure what use it will be to her 'academically'!

Good luck ItalianGreyHound!

BTW, did you see the front page of the Sunday Times last Sunday? The bottom right corner was an article about the security services especially recruiting dyslexics to help analyse data because they often have a special gift for this that other people don't have. I hope your DD can remember that being Dyslexic means being a little different, but not being stupid.

Every year we send a parental questionnaire home about various issues, including homework. Every year we get a similar response completely equally split between opposing views; too much / not enough homework; scrap homework altogether / give more and enforce participation; too easy / too hard; needs to be differentiated / should be identical for everyone to make it fair. Some want daily homework, some want weekly. Some want projects (yes, really!) some want workbooks to plough through, some want worksheets. Some expect it to teach something new with parents as the teacher, others want it to be something the child can do with no adult input at all. We've just had to accept we can't keep all the people happy.

As a teacher I find it can take hours to organise each week's homework to exactly match each child's needs and school based learning experiences. Then some parents don't return it, others have had to face WWIII to get it completed and others have done it for them in the car the morning it is due in because they've been at ballet, brownies, horseriding and gymnastics every evening that week. I do begrudge spending several hours on detailed marking when it is not possible to know how much support the child has had or even if any of it is the child's own work. Comments like "I really like the interesting and varied sentences you have thought of, your handwriting is neat and you've remembered your capital letters and full stops this time, well done. Next time can you use different conjunctions to and - maybe you could try so or but." - is fine if it is the child's work, but to find that the parent thought of and wrote the sentences on the back of an envelope and made the child copy and re-copy it until they were happy with handwriting makes it pretty pointless feedback.
Surely there are better ways of informing parents what their child is doing in school and how they are coping? Especially considering the wide range of expectations.

I'm another homework hater. Dd's homework includes a project each half term that I dread as it's the kind of thing I have to help her with a lot. And maths that's either too easy or too hard and rarely related to class work. I wouldn't mind a few maths questions or sentences related to class work.

Back in the bad old 70s I did maths by working through exercises in a text book. Homework was doing a few more sums at home. Much more sensible in my view, and my mum didn't have to get involved much. Whatever happened to text books?