WIBU to tell the school I am no longer facilitating topic homework

[Paperweightmover]

subtitled, talk me down from a paper mache ceiling.

Once a term DD gets a topic homework, they have to do research and build something -out of Twiglets- The class has an open hour and any parents that can bunk off work early go and see the finished masterpieces, the children tell the adults what they have learnt.

I find it all very stressful even though children are supposed to do the work un-aided. DD in Y4 has very little idea of how to do research and I don't see how I can give no support. So I fond appropriate web-sites, we talk about why they may or may not be a good source of material. She then spends hours making stuff out of toilet rolls.

She learns very little from this work, apart from how to glue structures together. This may be useful for STEM subjects but tells her little about ROmans or whatever.

Today I went into class to see all the unfacilited homework to see once again lots of "stuff" that can only have been made by parents. So, not only is DD not learning anything , she also feels let down as she hasn't created a life size sarcophagus or a representation of the Great Wall of China from lentils.

Would I be unreasonable to say to the school I am not playing anymore. I will be ignoring any project type homework in future. I will quite happily spend the time reading with her or teachinhg her the times tables the school also seem to expect we teach her.

Of to do some paid work so I can afford the copydex, but will be checking back in when I have calmed down.

[megletthesecond]

Fancy topic homework always involves me having to go to Hobby-bloody-craft for suitable materials while the dc's dick around behind me .

[Paperweightmover]

I know Irvine, it's difficult being a parent. It's nice to have somewhere outside of real life where you can vent and people are either helpful or keep quiet.

[LineysBum]

I fondly recall the 'fact sheet' full of basic historical mistakes that accompanied DD's homework many years ago, requiring us to build a motte and bailey castle.

It was like 1066 And All That meets pissed papier maché. I started peeling bits of fake greenery off the Christmas crib to glue onto the mound at one point, and DD begged me to stop.

I was determined. I had the bit between my teeth. I'd show these buggers what a proper motte and bailey looked like if it took the dearth of every Christmas nativity scene in the country.

I think DD probably threw it in a bin on the way to school tbh.

[reetgood]

Aw I loved this sort of project when I was at school. It gave me free reign to do my own ‘investigating’ eg research. There was so little opportunity to do the kind of learning I liked to do (self led and loadsa research) in school and seems there’s even less now. I remember the stuff I created (and the ideas behind it) more than the doing exercises in books, too. When I got to university and realised that basically everything was a ‘topic’ I was very happy.

I recognise not every child (every parent?) likes this mode of learning, but it IS learning especially if you’ve got a fairly self directed child. The different options for output sounds like a better idea than ‘everyone create a model’ though. Surely having topics gives people with different skills a chance to shine? Not sure how you stop parents doing it all though!

[Paperweightmover]

Copying of texts is a good way of practising handwriting, it's just gone out of favour with the child centred educators.

Maybe it is as dull as fuck but it won't take long and it won't happen if dd hates the idea. I used to quite like copying. I'm a bit fed up with everything having to be fun.

[ChippyMinton]

My PFB was quite keen on projects, and made some half-decent models etc. Which his younger siblings recycled when their turn came around. Not sure if the teachers noticed - I imagine that papier mache Grecian urns and motte & bailey castles look very similar year after year.

[Paperweightmover]

My dd is also very artistic but this homework is supposed to be about history. It also stops us using the time to do actual art or go to the Tate or hang out in an artists workshop-all stuff we could do if we didn't have the Twiglets based history project.

I'm off now, I've vented. One day when I rule the a World you'll all see.

[notafish]

My children's primary school was the same. We never got anything useful, like maths consolidation work or English worksheets until they expected us to cram it all in during the two week Easter holiday the year of SATS. We also got more than one 'research' project a term. I complained and got told that the children enjoyed it. My child didn't. She got very stressed over these open-ended types of 'research' work as she wasn't mature enough to pace herself and do a little bit each week and was actually overwhelmed by the whole thing even with me assisting her. There would always be tears.


I don;t want to be the one to have to teach my child research skills, although I could. I don''t want to be the one as whatever I say I get told "but Miss said we do it this way". This is why bloody first year undergrads don't have a blooming clue.

Yes, this. I didn't understand how they expected my child to do a research project when no-one in her seven years of primary school taught her how to do research. The Internet is a big, busy place and it's easy for a child to waste many hours as they try to find an example of just the right kind of Anglo Saxon artifact to make out of salt dough. I agree she learnt very little in the process.

Why are so many schools doing this? Where has it come from? It makes me think that some school teachers (or the leaders in charge of setting homework) do not understand children or their capabilities or their home lives at all if they continue to set these types of homework.

[ElfrideSwancourt]

Lots of teachers like this type of homework because it doesn’t generate (even more) marking.

[HarveySchlumpfenburger]

I’m not suggesting that the OP should challenge it, irvine. God knows she’s, rightly, died on enough hills with this school. It just doesn’t seem like a very fair choice.

[Pigeonpost]

Topic homework (half termly here) is a pissing contest for parents. I don’t get involved, my kids do it if they want, I don’t!!

[lljkk]

pmsl @ the recycled projects.

That didn't work with DC... DD didn't get this type of h/w & she's the industrious kid. 2 DSs never did a project. Youngest is currently building a Greek temple out of Hama beads...

[LunasSpectreSpecs]

YADNBU. I hate this type of homework too. I finally threw in the towel when my middle child had a "make a Viking longhouse" task and one parent who is an architect made on with working electric fireplace and professionally thatched roof.

The children learn nothing. But school can take lots of lovely pictures to impress the Inspectors.

[BubblesBuddy]

My children never made a single thing for topic homework and nor were they asked to. It is a bit lazy of schools to do this and I don’t think schools can necessarily teach research skills.

However they can point children in the right direction regarding how to find things out and even read a book about the topic! Now that would be a novelty! What better way to spend time with your child than looking at a book about the topic and writing down the most important things you find out together? Our school library service used to bring books into school that were relevant or deposit them in the local library. Finding out information is a brilliant skill for most children and certainly useful for adulthood. Rather than spending all the time on craft, spend it on reading and using web sites which should also be given by any half decent teacher.

Definitely yes to the questions to the school about the homework. Make them justify what they do. Artistic children may love it but give the others help to improve their skills in other ways and also, hopefully, an interest in the topic which should be related to the curriculum.

[dairymilkmonster]

I am not keen on very time consuming parental craft projects 'done' by the kids. Or posters/powerpoints etc. Posters by reception/yr1 kids with lots of graphics from internet neatly cut out and stuck on beautifully with several paragraphs of perfectly spelt and formed prose seemed to feature heavily during show and tell at a school i visited related to work this week.

Thankfully our school hasn't been too bad on this front so far ...

[MrsHathaway]

My DC recently won a bake off at school. They were heavily supervised obviously but designed and made the cake themselves (9&6) and it showed. Their hard work paid off and they won a rosette and a Nadiya book.

Thing is, there was a separate parents' competition and GOSH there were some talented entries there. Makes me think perhaps schools should cut the bullshit and announce a competition for the best PARENT-MADE castle/sarcophagus/space rocket or whatever.

[Paperweightmover]

PARENT-MADE castle/sarcophagus/space rocket or whatever.

Good idea, and it should be added, Parent-designed too. There were lots of photos showing one child "making" a specific item". If that child designed it then she is a genius.

Thank you for letting me vent, that is really what I wanted to do, I wont make a big deal of it at the school. I have learnt to pick my battles wisely.

Thank you Rafa for your kind words. The school has upped it's game a bit in that department and cuts have meant that RR has less of an impact. Although I could cry when I see the children who were doing well in YR struggling in Y4 and the richer parents looking at specialist Dyslexia schools. The kids of the poorer parents, well we will see.


My problems with this type of homework are;

• it doesn't teach what it is supposed to teach.
  
• although new crafting skills may be learnt these aren't what the school is asking for.
  *art and craft are incredibly important and I dislike the way they are reduced to toilet rolls and paper mache.
  
• it increases the "matthew effect", to those that have are given...A child whose parents are architects will learn more from this than the child who must translate the homework for their parents. I don;t think any school should be increasing this disparity.
  *research skills are incredibly important and if the children learn that "just Google it" is the answer to everything we have a problem building up for the future
  *it makes me dislike the attitude of some of the parents at the school, sad I know but it does. It makes me uncomfortable and sad that some people just have to be best, that they chanel it through their children. It makes me see what the future will be for the children that don't have the social advantage.
  
  So the toilet roles and paper mache had a lot of meaning for me.

[Roomba]

YANBU OP. My friend went into school a couple of years ago and said look, I'm just not doing homework any more - I have four kids in this primary school and it's ridiculous. They don't learn anything. School were fine with this and her kids haven't suffered as a result. I'm a qualified teacher and agree 100% with you.

I thought it would improve in secondary school but it's not much better! DS's French homework this week was to make a papier mache alien! WTF does that have to do with learning French?

[BrieAndChilli]

Saying that DD is very crafty and I’m sure people must think I do most of it for her (she won a cake competition last week and hand on heart I gave her a few tips but she did it all her self from measuring and mixing the ingredients to the decorating) but she just has my crafty creative gene.
So it’s hard for the teachers to know who has had help and who hasn’t as it wouldn’t be fair to DD to assume she didn’t do it when she did!

[Paperweightmover]

at being coeliac so not being able to do homework. So much better than the dog ate it. Although if the coeliac dog ate my homework so much the better.

*coeliac disease runs in the family so I know it can be awful and limiting

[Paperweightmover]

That's great Brie well done her :) mmm I love beautiful cake

You,'ve got to admit the fact you aren't living in a hostel; have use of a kitchen; don't have the gas/electricity going off; have money to buy cake ingredients helped. Not taking anything from your daughter, save me a slice next time. Schools in areas with huge issues of social disparity should be aware of the difficulties though.

And a cake competition is lovely, I just wouldn't expect a child to learn about history from it.

[walkingtheplank]

I made a complaint a few years back. One year, almost every homework that my DD had was something creative e.g. spend 2 hours making a poster illustrating 5 points that it took you 10 minutes to research. We also had the termly project which would theoretically be maths based but always seemed to involve making the Taj Mahal out of washing up sponges etc.

Having had to sign a parent-school contract, I pointed out that the homework did not meet any of the criteria listed in the Homework Policy and that in total, my DD had written a total of 5 lines in her homework book in the first term of Year 3 (as the rest was art).

I might have complained a few times and it so happens that the art projects have significantly decreased.

The school still have art competitions where the mums get to show off their skills. My children walk around the exhibition saying, "Look how clever Jonnie's mummy is" and have even been know to congratulate parents on their efforts. I have no idea where they get their passive aggressive behaviour from...

Last week an 8 year won a national competition with an essay that a graduate would have been happy with - it had footnotes and a bibliography. My children have never been taught to do this but this 8 year old had. The school was very proud of this, despite it being very clear to anyone that an adult had written it (or my children are being shortchanged in their English lessons)! I tell my children that it is better to do your own work with your own thought process and your own efforts because that is how you learn but too often the reality is that the praise and rewards go to those whose parents do the work.

[walkingtheplank]

Interesting you mention cost OP. In year 1, the DS had to make a shoe box house, together with objects inside it. My son made his a wood cabin and did some wood rubbing and stuck that to the walls and then made some furniture with lolly sticks and clay. It looked like a 5 year old had made it.

Day of the exhibition arrives and his was the worst by a very very big margin. I don't think any other child had things inside that had been made. It was all objects that had been bought like Zelfs, Shopkins etc. These things had been stuck down and were therefore unusuable again and I think most must have spent over £20 with a fair few around £40-50. I was flabbergasted. A few people made disparaging comments about my DS's efforts too.