Homework in p1?

[Judyinreallife]

Just wondering if anyone has a child in p1 and what sort of homework they get? Just feel like my child gets far too much. Its given out weekly but works out at more than one piece a night. On top of that theres reading to do everynight. One of the tasks this week was to write an acrostic poem?! I mean come on, my daughter is only 4 and a half! Surely they do enough in school and should be burning energy at home, not sitting doing more. I'm all for working with her on letters and stuff and I love hearing her read but half the stuff on the sheet feels like homework for the sake of homework.

I loathe this current trend for setting loads of homework for young kids, is there any research available about how much it actually enhances learning?

Ds is 5 and in Reception, he has personalised home learning targets which are to hold his pencil in a tripod grip whilst writing his name, to form numbers 1-9 correctly, to sound out and spell 4 letter words like went, mend, send, spit etc and to learn to recognise the main biff and chip character names by playing a pairs game.
It's open ended as to how much work he does so we just do a quick ten minute blast then move on. That's working well for us so far.

“is there any research available about how much it actually enhances learning?” No but plenty to show homework in Primary has little or no impact (that’s very different to parents supporting their child).

Yeh thats exactly it. I want to encourage my daughter....especially with the stuff she struggles with. I don't want to sit and do homework myself. I don't think acrostic poems are suitable for age 4 because it will involve too much parental help to the point where I will mostly be thinking of it myself. Then when she comes to write it she will be writing words that she's never written before using letters she's not learnt. They also sometimes give them homework like reasearch bla bla and write a sentence about it. Is a 4 year old honestly meant to Google something, read it and write a sentence on it? If so my daughter is way further behind than I ever realised. I wouldn't mind if she was given specific stuff that she should be capable of and I could support her with that.

My approach would be to read her a simple acrostic poem (four lines).
Ask her to think of a (short) word she wants to make an acrostic for.
Ask her to write the letters at the start of each line. Any letters she can't yet write you write in with light, dotted line for her to trace over.
Talk to her to get her thinking about how she might complete each line.
Check which of the words she can write and write in the words she can't with light, dotted line for her to trace over.
Hope this helps.

It could a fun thing which you and she do together over half term.

That sounds like way way too much. For half term DD (reception) has been given a picture list of different autumn leaves and asked to see if she can find any of them over the holiday and a single sheet with pictures and words and she has to match the ones that rhyme. Seems was more appropriate.
We’ve just moved over from NI and I know that her friends who have gone into P1 seem to be getting a lot more

because it will involve too much parental help to the point where I will mostly be thinking of it myself

The evidence for homework does support that sort of homework though. Parental involvement and conversations with the kids activities is what has some evidence, not the kid practicing things they can already do solo.

Reading to and talking about things with a child is where all the positive evidence is, but of course I wouldn't bother with the homework if you don't need or want direction in what to discuss.

Thanks for the tips guys. Just to say I am in Scotland so I am not on half term so this is stuff we have 4 nights to complete. I also work so some days dont get in till after 6. It averages at more than 1 task a day, acrostic poem is just one of them. Also your typical letter formation practise, writing words 3 times, 6 pictures to draw and a maths task. Don't want my child being the only one not doing their work so we get through it but its hard to enjoy when there's so many tasks.

That does sound a lot of work!

If it’s taking that long you really need to talk to the teacher. At this age I’d expect a child to complete the weeks worth in under half an hour.

That sounds far too much.

This is what is in the handbook for ds' old primary school:

"In Primary 1, 2 and 3 homework will be limited to between 15 and 20 minutes each evening, building towards 30 minutes approximately each evening for the upper stages of the school."

School has an excellent reputation and according to ds, he was way ahead of kids from some other primaries when he went to secondary.

In fact, the school only does that amount of homework so that parents are involved as part of the three way "partnership": child, school and parents.

Having said that, our homework used to take closer to half an hour or more when ds was in P1. It was "just" reading, but he didn't actually learn to read properly until towards the end of P2 (but school was great about it - he just wasn't developmentally ready - and he was in the top set for English from S1 - S5) so he was learning the books by heart and it was a real battle. In P2, at the school's recommendation, we backed off a bit so that he didn't get put off reading.