Another (Reception) homework one.

[Froggyonaplate]

Hi! Just a quick question about your kid's homework. Basically, do you sit with them and make sure they get it all "right" and teach them the concepts that they haven't got yet? Or do you leave it wrong so the school can see what input is needed?
Ds is in Reception and gets a fair bit of homework, daily reading and spelling plus handwriting sheets, phonics and maths sheets. He's generally fairly good at his work Amd only needs a small amount of supervision but when he does make a mistake eg been asked to fill in missing numbers on a number line he wrote a couple as 81 and 61 rather than 16 and 18.
Thinking of and writing out a list of ai words he did a ll at the end instead of one,

Both occasions I've explained it, rubbed it out Amd we've tried again, but is this right or should I be leaving his "own work" there to see what he has and hasn't grasped?

I don't agree with homework for kids below year 5/6.

I worked as a TA and the teacher at one particular school didn't even have time to look at what she had (to) set. I was given 10 minutes to mark 30 books with 4 tasks in each. I could really only skim and stamp. This was a massive shame as some of the kids put in an amazing amount of effort.

At another school the kids got a page each of English/maths to complete. Their answers were marked as a class (each child had a green pen) and this was by far the more successful way.

I most cases though, teachers set homework because they are made to.

I sit with mine and do it with her. I explain the concepts and help her to understand what she's meant to do and supervise her reading, etc., but I don't tell her the answers per se. She doesn't really get anything where there can be 'right' or 'wrong' answers, but I do try to help her to problem solve so she can work it out herself. If she truly can't, then yes, I just leave it as is. Not so much because I want to the school to see she is writing her 'd' as a 'b' but just because I want to support her, but not just give her the answer. I work in education myself (though as a lecturer at the university level, so totally different), but I use a similar approach as I would with my own students. If I can see she isn't getting something, I talk with her and ask her questions about how she figured out how to do that and try to provoke her to think about it a different way. She does know usually if I do this, it's because she isn't getting it 'right.' And she wants to, so usually she'll talk with me and I'll try to help her think about it differently so she can figure it out herself. So yes, I do help her to learn and think through a problem when she's struggling with it, but I wouldn't make her 'correct' something if she truly didn't understand or didn't want to. I just leave it and figure we'll figure it out next time. But the teachers do plenty with them at school so they don't need to know where they're struggling at home. I think it's probably pretty obvious. If she has an trouble with any one thing though, I might make a note of it on her homework sheet, which we fill out once a week, or in her reading diary.

Blimey your reception children get so much! Ds2 gets a 'family challenge' every Friday which is stuff like looking for different animal prints, a listening walk for different phonic sounds, drawing a picture of his idea of a healthy meal, drawing round the family feet to show different sizes etc. They also get a reading book and letter shapes to practice. I guess more able children might get more but I don't remember my brighter ds1 getting any more than that.

Thanks for the opinions everybody, I suppose it is a lot really, he's my first so nothing to compare it to really.

I had to smile when I got his homework folder tonight, I'd left one piece of homework for ds' dad to do with him, he didn't 🙄.
Anyway, homework came back with each piece stamped with. a "wonderful work" smile. Including the blank and one from dad's house!
Hmm.... So probably not worth stressing about then 😀