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Primary education

Join our Primary Education forum to discuss starting school and helping your child get the most out of it.

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Original poster

KS1 homework

19 replies

sammycruick · 29/10/2014 16:38

I regard KS1 homework as extra work for parents, not kids. No 5 year old is ever going to sit down and just do their homework. We get the following:

Reading: 10 min every day
English/Maths homework: Combined total 30mins weekly
Spellings:10 min every day
Number bonds: 10 mins every day

Totals: 30mins a day + 1/2 hour at weekends for a year 1 child.

Does that seem normal to you all?

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CatKisser · 29/10/2014 16:43

I regard it as parents taking an active role in supporting the school in your child's learning. The things you've listed are the absolute foundations of Maths and English learning.
Personally I hate the hassle of setting/marking homework - but I can spot the benefits. It's also another handy line of communication between parents and school. It's meant to be a partnership.

MrsExcited · 29/10/2014 17:05

Teachers see your child for 15% of the time over a year. Is an extra 2% where parents are asked to take part unreasonable?

Is it that you don't like being forced on the type of things that you do with them what you don't like. Or is it that you think this is too much?

My feelings are of the 12 hours they are awake this isn't a massive extra and should be fun learning together in the direction school guides. I also tried to mix it in to every day life, so walking to school working out number bonds from car registration plates and house numbers, putting the spellings into sentances and quizing as we wrnt through the day. Reading was part of the patten of going to bed from the off, we just swapped to the school books( this was tedious throughout KS1).

As i said these are my own feelings, am not judging anyone elses.

Galena · 29/10/2014 17:35

I'm afraid my daughter is Y1 and is quite happy to come home, read, do spellings and so on. She is abnormal though, I'm sure! I view homework as a chance for us to work with the teacher.

junkfoodaddict · 29/10/2014 19:25

sammycruick sounds like exactly what my school (teacher!) imposes and many staff don't agree with it. Don't get me wrong, homework is fine but our Head INSISTS that Y1-Y6 has exactly the same amount of homework (1 piece of Literacy, 1 piece of Numeracy, spellings, number bonds) to learn every week and of course home readers. When a child has just turned 5, it really is too much to expect when they've spent 6 1/2 hours at school and possibly an hour at breakfast club and up to 2 1/2 hours at after school club.
I would tell the Head that you're not against homework and you're fine with some of it, but you are not going to 'beat your child' into doing it all if something at home crops up or if your child is too tired or too turned off.
I have a toddler and dread him going to school and faced with so much homework. i work full time and when I get home I want to play with him, talk to him and basically relax with him NOT sist him down at the table and insist he do his homework - especially when time is very precious these days with parents being 'encouraged' back into work.

FlowersForAlgernon · 29/10/2014 19:29

If you work full time it is an awful lot to expect.

Teachers don't seem to appreciate how little we see of our kids.

Of course I don't want to spend my limited time with a tired child doing hw.

TheEnchantedForest · 29/10/2014 20:13

Number bonds and reading - completely normal for a y1 child.

I would have more of an issue with learning spellings in isolation but if my child's teacher set it, I would do it.

nonicknameseemsavailable · 29/10/2014 21:14

Yr1 we are asked to do 20mins reading a day, spellings mon-fri (no idea how long that is supposed to take, in practice it is about 2 minutes - 10 spellings), topic work probably taken us about 1-1.5hrs but it is for the entire term.

Yr2 - 20mins reading a day (well no time specified but as yr1 was 20mins I assume that), spellings daily - 15 spellings, small amount of maths or English at weekends, about 30 mins? and then topic work, similar to yr1 for the whole term.

I don't mind, my problem is remembering the spellings. We haven't actually been asked to do number bonds or tables but we probably ought to be doing them. My children seem to be ahead though so it isn't doing them any harm us not practicing them at the moment so unless we are asked I will leave it.

I can see the point about working parents and after school clubs etc but when else are the children going to get to practice these things, the time they are in school simply isn't enough to reinforce all of it and to do the amount of reading practice they generally need.

Flexibilityisaghost · 29/10/2014 22:21

It seems like a lot to me. DS is Y2, and brings home reading books, which we read most, but not every day. He gets spellings once every couple of weeks, and has had two lots of maths homework this half term. That seems like plenty to me. He comes home from school tired and in need of some down time. We do a fair bit of maths type stuff at home, but only because he enjoys it. I can see it being a constant battle if he was made to do half an hour of homework every single day.

Eva50 · 31/10/2014 11:23

I think it's too much. Our homework is given out on a Monday to be handed in on a Friday. I did ask if it was possible to have it over the weekend but that is not school policy (I do appreciate this causes a problem for teachers marking it). I was getting home at between 6pm and 6:15pm, after collecting ds3 from ASC, cooking and eating a meal, getting 3 children to and from their activities and supervising homework.

Ds3 was going to Beavers, a sports club, swimming and piano lessons in the evenings. We gave up Beavers, swimming and the sports club because it was all too much to fit in but now all his hobbies and interests are sedentary which can't be good. There is also very little time during the week for outdoor play.

I have now given up work to be a SAHP for a few years but not everyone is lucky enough to have that option.

Galena · 31/10/2014 13:17

We have 6 tasks given at the start of the half term for completion over the 6 weeks. You choose which order and when you complete them.

Cloud2 · 31/10/2014 13:19

I think it might be too much for some parents with more than one children. The best way is to make it not compulsory. So it can benifiet for the children if their parents have time.We have to admit these work will reinforce what children learn at school.

DS2 school don't have any homework except reading. We had been reading together everyday for reception and year1. And we didn't do formal math homework, but just take all sorts of chance to ask him math quesions, like simple addition by playing monoply,playing card to caculate the winner etc. For spelling, DS2 likes writing, he would come to ask me how to spell a word, I just ask him to try to make it out using phonics, then I correct it, he will then remember, these oftern happen when I cook, we have magnet letters on the fridge, he will use these to make a word, I then corect it. This helped DS2 very much, he moved from bottom group( he is summer born) in reception to top group in both math and English in Y1.

InfantTeacher · 31/10/2014 19:14

I hate the idea of 'homework' at KS1! (or even KS2 for that matter). KS1 children should just be reading every night, maybe with a few spellings to learn in Y2. Reading apart, I think 'homework' has very little benefit to the children. Schools sometimes give it out just to placate the parents who think it is necessary. Ban homework I say!

LittleMissGreen · 31/10/2014 20:38

I think 30mins a day is too much in KS1. We get a homework to be completed over a week - set on a Friday, expected in on a Thursday. Being a working parent I appreciate having a weekend to get it done in. If I wasn't I would be happy to get it done on a school day as we'd be home by 3:30 rather than 5:30.
It has 3 criteria - a minimum, an expected and an extension so depending on DSs ability on the particular homework he works for half an hour rather than having a specific task to finish. I tend to just leave him to it and just keep an eye that he isn't getting distracted.
He does have 'spellings' that practice the phoneme he has done that week in school, but so far he has known them all due to the work done in the lessons.

LittleMissGreen · 31/10/2014 20:39

Just realised I missed out reading - I don't think of that as homework, but more a time that DS and I enjoy sat down together sharing a book.

simpson · 31/10/2014 22:34

DD (yr2) has to read 4 times a week (we do every day), she has 10 spellings with a test on Fridays & numeracy & literacy work every week with longer project type work for the holidays.

She also has to do 30 mins maths whizz a week (through school).

DD's homework for literacy & numeracy also has an expected level to be done & then 2 extensions which can be done, but don't have to be iyswim.

Parents have to write in the child's reading journals 4 times a week. But from KS2 then they are expected to write in it themselves.

Mashabell · 01/11/2014 12:10

If you work full time it is an awful lot to expect.

It is even if u don't work full time. It's quite insane.

In Finland children don't start formal schooling until age 7 and don't get any homework until age 11, yet beat the rest the of the world in most things in nearly every international comparison.

I know that they have the enormous advantage of having a totally consistent spelling system which enables them to learn to read and write in a 10th of the time taken by speakers of English. Even so, it is ludicrous to push children as hard as they are made to work here.

If this goes on, we'll end with even more obesity than we have already.

Quangle · 01/11/2014 22:57

Too much IMHO. Single parent with two children, working full time. I have spent most of today overseeing homework and I'm not happy about it. We have very little time together as it is and the homework looms over our weekends. Just reading with both of them every day is 40 mins a day and we only have about 90 mins together most nights. plus all the other hw we have to get through. DS is in Y1 and he's had about another two hours of work to complete this week. It's a huge burden for a family like ours.

manchestermummy · 02/11/2014 08:31

We've had two years of struggling to fit in, but now in y2 we seem to have got into a bit of a better rhythm, and dd1 is more amenable to doing it now.

Our school for English homework has a matrix where the children can chose their own task. We have found this very positive and if we are particularly busy one weekend we can pick one that might be 'quicker' than a 'research'-type task).

Ask the school how to support the homework. We really struggled last year. As well as everything else, they were also getting online tasks. I discussed this with the teacher who hadn't quite appreciated that if a child is at after school club time is seriously limited at home. This work was to be done in the week. The teacher agreed to allow dd1 to do some at school if time permitted (she is higher ability so sometimes does finish work quickly), and would remind the children that they could work at after school club.

Seemed to solve it.

Now in y2, btw, reading is a bit of a non thing as now she can read well, her school reading books take virtually no time.

She does swimming, piano and violin and still has time to play and chill. I think we are getting there with balance!

Bitlost · 03/11/2014 20:38

Another evening ruined by year 1 homework here. I am French and frankly if my daughter spoke the language well enough I'd move her to French school right away. I am really starting to hate this stupid system where kids do too much too early. Rant over.

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