giving home school books (text books etc...)

[rrbrigi]

Hi,
I would like to start a discussion to find out opinions for parents and teachers about giving home school books (I mean the books which the children work in each lesson).

As a parent I think it would help me a lot if I could see what my child learnt in the school each day. Specially from math, English and science.

My child is ready to learn with me at home around 60 mins a day. But the problem is I do not know what to practice.

I think it is useless to practice the fractions at home (because I think he needs practice on that bit) when they learn the long division in the classroom. I think if I could practice the same thing with him at home as he does in the school, it could help him to improve his math way better than just random practices every day. But just practicing something on mymaths won’t deepen his knowledge, in fact it could make him confused, because they did not learn that in the school yet, or the work is too easy or hard. They got homework once a week from math (1 A4 paper maximum), but it does not reflect the whole week maths lessons. We do random practices know, but I do not think it benefited him at all, just took the time from him to do something else.

It also would help me to see what he does in school for English. For example, if he needs to write a story at home seeing his English book I would know the quality of writing he would be capable of and I also would see his teacher comments, so I would know what should he include in his story. Or I could see which part of the grammar they are learning in the school, so we can practice that at home. I think there is no point of practicing the power verbs at home when they are learning about adverbs in the school.

From Science is the same. If I would know what they do each lesson, we could see videos from the same thing, or reading pages on the internet about the same thing, it would help him to catch his interest in Science and deepen his knowledge.

It would be better for the teachers as well, because I do not think I am the only one who would help her kids to learn. Parents could spend the daily learning time with their kids more effectively and as a result kids would have better understanding about the things they learn.

I just feel that without his school books I do not even get the possibility to support his learning on the way he deserves. If I could see what he learnt in the school each day I strongly think as the time goes I could even improve his GCSE mark as he would get without this support.

So my question is:
Teacher why do not give the school books home?
Parents what do you think, would you like to see your children school books every day to help them in their learning journey?

Thanks for reading it.

Arkadia I teach children who go to bed hungry most nights this is the reality for many families

soap, I don't know.
I think mindset is actually very different towards education in my country.
I didn't grow up in especially affluent area, there were lots of working parents, and still, losing textbooks were very rare. Forgetting happened occasionary, but never to the point that distracted learning.
The thing was, preparing for next day is buried to your mind from very beginning of the start of the school.

Mrz, that's very interesting. I think my country's system hasn't changed so much from my childhood days. Saving club is what we had as well. (They have big residential in grade6, but we start pay into it from grade1, etc.)
For textbooks, school don't provide them, gov. does, which makes a huge difference to the school budget.

mrz, in all honesty, I don't believe that that is the reality for MANY families. Undoubtedly that is the case for some, but not for MANY. But that is a different discussion altogether. To say that 33% of children in Britain struggle with poverty and 20% of mothers (the fathers obviously went to the pub) skips meals to feed their children makes you wonder what the benchmark is. That looks like UNICEF writing, but still... VERY questionable.

Irvine, pray tell, where is it that you are form?

Mrz is spot on there regarding plonking new ideas from other countries without considering cultural differences. Too much of that goes on though obviously we should always look to learn from different approaches.

In any case (again...) that is a different matter. Where I am from (and where Irvine is from) it is the norm to have textbooks (provided by the government at primary level) from day 1 and it is the norm that children provide for their own stationery. To this day I find it absurd that the school pays for pen and paper (and photocopies), but what the heck... if that's the way it works :)
Again.. mindset, NOT budget.

There are two aspects to this:

• Textbooks. We do not use a textbook in any subject where I work. As a teacher, I have access to a bank of textbooks, and a bank of online resources, and a bank of purchased electronic resources. Each week, or each term, or each half term, depending on subject, I and my colleagues plan a scheme of work / short term plan, showing what National curriculum objectives we are following, and then detailing what resources - if any, as in English it is common to read a real book, analyse a real book using a visualiser, then write based on that real book - are best suited to meet those objectives for the mix of children we happen to have in our classes. Yes, some of these may occasionally be a page from a specific textbook - but it is rare to use the same textbook for more than 1 lesson, as the next page just might not be suitable - the class might need to move faster, or slower, or their learning might be linked across subjects e.g. Maths linked to geography or history. Each year we revisit these plans, discuss what worked, maybe replace some of the resources, maybe not - but always being flexible based on the needs of our classes.

• Workbooks. I teach upper primary, and teach at least 4, often 5 lessons per day (depending on whether e.g. the afternoon is split into two shorter subjects or a single long lesson of e.g. Science). Every book has to be marked between each lesson of the same subject. 1 day a week I do have a couple of hours of non contact time. On other days, a 45 minute lunchbreak is my 'in school hours' marking time, for the 93 books over 3 subjects taught that morning. There is no time between the end of the afternoon lessons and the end of school, hence no marking time. I do the vast majority of my marking after school, either in class or at home, but in any case after the children have left. we have an English and Maths lesson every day, so there is no day when it would be possible to have the lesson, mark in the evening, and then send the child home the next day with a marked book - the next lesson would already have happened, and would be unmarked.

You say you want to see what the teacher has said about your child's work in their marked books. Can you explain when those books will be marked, if they are all to be sent home every day at 3.15pm? Yes, in some arithmetic lessons, children may mark their own answers - but not when the task involves explanation, even in maths. No other subject really lends itself to self-marking. And I teach during lessons, I don't mark.

Dc school had complaints about this & started sending their books home for us to look at wtf?? I'm not a teacher all i can say is that drawing looks neat or whatever. Also feel massive pressure not to damage/forget them!
No, leave the professionals to do their job.

"mrz, in all honesty, I don't believe that that is the reality for MANY families" you might not believe it but it's the reality for roughly a third of families

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/600091/households-below-average-income-1994-1995-2015-2016.pdf

"Middlesbrough has the third highest percentage of children living in poverty in the country at 37 % - just behind Manchester at 38 % and Tower Hamlets in London at 42 %."

"Where I am from (and where Irvine is from) it is the norm to have textbooks (provided by the government at primary level) from day" it was the norm here when I was a child but then we got a National Curriculum with lots of ring binders for each subject (provided by the government)

And to be fair, the last NC (as in, not the 2014 one) came with lots of 'textbook like stuff' in the form of QCA Units of Work ... some of the most boring things ever invented....

I think that's the main issue with textbooks. They are boring, and inflexible, and in many many cases just not very good. they also completely fail to allow linking of learning across subjects. At the moment in my class, Geography, Science, Art, English and ICT, though seoparate lessons, are tightly linked in terms of content - which the children love, and are really engaged by. Exactly which lessons are linked, and through what 'hooks', varies week by week,. and term by term, but it is through the links that children study things in more depth. i'd hate to have 8 different, standalone textbooks, where every lesson is separate.

Arkadia, in contrast my mum (English born and bred, but brought up her kids i.e. me and my sibling in a different country) was horrified that parents were asked to provide workbooks and stationery. School must be entirely free and not cause any costs whatsoever to parents. Or it would not be providing equal chances. Or people would stop sending their kids to school in order to avoid those costs.

Ok so what about uniforms? Well if families really struggle with the cost of uniform, they are given help (often in the form of cheap/free second hand uniform).

So why can the same kind of help not be given for stationery costs?

In any case, our school, struggling like many with finances, has in past years asked for voluntary donations towards stationery costs. I think this achieved less than expected/needed, so they changed it to children being asked to bring their own. So now I have DS asking for gel pens...

Yes, poverty levels are a huge factor. In my country the kind of poverty that would stop you from buying work books for your child is extremely rare. The welfare state, though it has its problems, has a lot fewer gaps in the net to fall through. I have been shocked by the visible levels of poverty in England, and that's without taking into account the invisible stuff.
Poverty does not automatically mean that parents don't care about/prioritise their children's education, far from it. It does, however, create huge stresses, often causing further problems e.g. relationship breakdown, and often steals away the parents' 'headspace' to concern themselves about leaflets sent home from school and such.

cantkeepawayforever,
in primary school we had a 'literacy' book that had reading excerpts in it. And a maths book that had maths problems in it, for practising. One book covered three years. We didn't read everything in the literacy book nor did we do all maths exercises. The teacher picked and chose which were currently most appropriate, and supplemented with lots of other material. The teachers still made lots of cross curricular links. The teacher also was able to determine the speed at which we worked through the various things we were meant to learn, as long as we got through everything by the end of the year.
The text books are updated every now and then, e.g. the maths book I had as a child was criticised for implicit gender norms (where the woman would be working out how much flour to add to a cake, and the man would be determining how much faster one car went than the other, and such like) so it was overhauled. The text books nowadays are glossy and new, interesting and inclusive, and conform to up-to-date pedagogical research. A LOT of research goes into those text books.

In contrast, here in England in 2017 my DS is asked to read every book of each book band before moving up. Many of the books are outdated, boring, do not conform to newest pedagogical insights, nor to NC requirements, and are in part racist and sexist.

Yes, you CAN of course create /use awful, boring, inflexible text books. But you can equally be crap at your job even if you don't use text books.

I just can't get past your first sentence 'We had lieracy books that had reading exceprts in it'..

You mean you never read a whole book as a class in English lessons? Never analysed the illustrations, never collected vocabulary from it, never thought about style and plotting and period and the development of character from beginning to end?? Never stayed with a book for multiple weeks, really living within it and developing its themes and creating extraordinary writing based on it?

How sad.

I cannot excuse the reading band rules in your school - that's appalling practice at every level. I presume they aren't even phonics schemes, so are a decade behind good practice in teaching reading? . However I cannot think that it would improve teaching and learning for teachers to rely on a single book of 'excerpts' to teach reading and writing.

However, I would say that what you describe - a teacher using a textbook alongside much other material - is pretty much what happens in most schools now - but won't meet the OP's wish because that textbook may only be used for a lesson or two a fortnight at most , whereas she wants something that is followed religiously, every day, to go home.

As i say, i have, and use multiple textbooks. However because of their multiplicity, and the fact they are strong in different areas, it would be useless to have class sets (we only have 1 book per class).

And again cantkeepawayforever, regarding time for the marking of the books. That's where I see another massive cultural difference.

In my country a full time teaching post in primary school is something such as 24 lessons/week (with a lesson being 45 minutes), so in effect 18 hours/week, in about 38 weeks/year 'work' for a full time job in a country where standard full time is defined as 42h/week, for 48 weeks. Except that it is acknowledged that every 45 minute lesson held will require approx 75 minutes of teacher time before and after the actual lesson, plus weekly/termly planning and assignments that need to be completed during the 'holidays'. And teachers earn much more than here, absolutely seen but also relatively to other jobs. And they wouldn't dream of buying things for their class out of their own pockets - they'd have to apply for funds but if the request was legitimate e.g. material for science experiments, it would be granted.

And teachers aren't required to 'mark' everything. They aren't required to provide 'evidence' for everything. Their pay/career progression is not related to/dependent on their pupil's results. They and their school do not get assessed by any national organisation, there are no national standardised tests, and ergo no comparison tables.

There are of course problems to that too, huge ones in fact, but it may explain in part why teachers have time to actually teach, and are able to send work books home without having to worry about when they will mark them or what to do if they get lost and you no longer have evidence for OFSTED.

(But before you ask where this teacher's paradise is, of course teachers in my country moan away at many things and are great complainers. It just seems to me personally, that compared to English teachers, they do well.)

Cant, I had same sort of literacy textbooks in primary like Big's.(Maths seems different.)
I loved it. We are introduced to lots of different styles and lots of different authors. Explore different use of vocaburary, writing styles, etc.
And I always found original books in school library and read them. In fact, school library had bigger collection of books compared to the library where I live now.
We had separate reading homeworks, which we read whole book and write reviews, etc.

Just for interest - who is with the class for the hours that a teacher isn't?

Apart from lunchtime and break, I am in front of my class from 8.45 - 3.15 every day (hence the issue around marking books, which is not about 'for Ofsted', and all about 'what does each child know and understand, and what do they need to learn next' - thus marking after each lesson for the next lesson). iIf I were to teach only half of that timetable, who is in front of the class the rest of the time?

Of course we did all that too cantkeepawayforever! the 'reading whole books, analysed the illustrations, collected vocabulary from it, thought about style and plotting and period and the development of character from beginning to end' thing. Probably less systematically than in English schools (especially the writing - the teaching of writing was very unsystematic in comparison, IMO) but absolutely we did that. In class, at school. If we were given homework however, at primary level it would have been from the literacy book (not English language however). At secondary level we would be asked to buy the book for reading at home, in order to discuss it at greater depth at school.
We did not have 'home reading books' per se. Children start school later than here (average age probably around 6.75) but by the end of the first year of school they are expected to 'be able to read' e.g. beyond 'lime' level here.

On the one hand, children attend school for fewer hours (so again have more time for parent-supported homework). (Again, this has its own downsides.) And more breaks. And there would be any or all of these: Music teacher, PE teacher, arts and crafts teacher (e.g. knitting). Often a teacher would have 'free sessions' between two lessons taught, when the kids are off to learn how to knit ;)

DD has just started reception this year, and I was surprised she doesn't even have to bring a pencil case to school. I was brought up in France, where we paid for all the stationery and had to bring school books home and back again. I remember my bag being so heavy I toppled over! I hadn't realised that this is the norm here to not have books (I just thought it was because she's in reception) In secondary school we also had to buy our textbooks and any reading books, but they had a scheme where you could resell your textbooks at the end of the year (although I can't remember what happened when the curriculum changed making last year's books irrelevant)

Oh yes, we were frequently reminded to acquire ergonomically suitable backpacks, because lugging all those things back and forth from school every day in a shoulder bag would give us posture issues!

Ah, so the 'Literacy' book was a sort of homework workbook? Not a class teaching tool?