Teacher asked me to ‘support his learning’ - should I write back and explain??

[Janus]

I have a boy in year 4, aged 8. Homework for English for the past few weeks has been Alice in Wonderland, my son has hated it! 10 questions each week on falling down a hole, growing big and small, knave of hearts stealing tarts etc!
Last week’s was awful and was all about her falling down the hole and one question was

What does Alice mean when she says ‘Reaching the heights I am now would be an impossibility’.

Erm, I didn’t know the answer!! He’s 8, he didn’t know the answer! He has cried every week we have done this homework. We have no communication book any more as our school didn’t think we needed them so I wrote on this question ‘X doesn’t know how to answer so I’d have to answer for him’ and then left it blank.
Getting homework back the teacher has put
‘Please support his learning!’
I sit every week and do this English with him, maths he’s much better with but I will help if he asks. This week the homework is finally on the Victorians and he has loved answering these questions.
I hate that she thinks I can’t be bothered to help. Would I be wrong to write a note and stick it on this week’s homework saying something like
‘I just thought I’d reply to your note of last week. X has found the Alice in Wonderland homework very hard and this has resulted in tears each week. We both honestly didn’t know how to answer that question so that’s why we left it blank. I don’t want you to think I don’t support his learning, I sit with him every week and make sure it’s completed and never late.
I’m a bit angry to be honest. One question in the whole year we haven’t done! We’ve completed every other piece of homework, often handed in early but never late.

I would request a meeting to discuss this instead of doing it by notes in the book. You’re much more likely to get the situation resolved by talking.

Surely most people would struggle to believe that an adult can’t understand the sentence you’ve highlighted above and help a child through it. Maybe just ask to speak with her and explain that you can’t help him with reading comprehension as opposed to not wanting to?

He has 2 teachers so I don’t know which one wrote this. And really it’s done now, it was a bloody awful question and we’ve always done every piece of homework. I just feel annoyed she (whichever one!!) thinks I’m not supporting my son.

Jesus thanks Regina for pointing out I’m stupid!

I’m stupid too. I would have to waffle to answer that but I’m an adult and could scrape an answer together. I wouldn’t expect an 8 year old to be able to.
I would ignore what the teacher has said and just carry. Alice won’t be the subject forever.

@Reginabambina Wow what a nasty comment. I would also arrange a meeting with the teacher OP. The way the comment from the teacher was written does come across as rather rude but may have been lost in translation. Probably better to have a meeting in person.

Go and talk to the teacher. It does sound hard but it should be building on things they have already covered in class.

We had a similar Alice comprehension piece recently - the actual answer was in the paragraph or two before the excerpt in the hand out - it only started to make any sense once we looked at the book. It took more than a few 'WTF is this?' in the class whatsapp before it was sorted.

So basically all you had to do was read the hand out and the book which one would expect?

Ask for a meeting. No need for that sarcastic comment from the teacher 🙄

They aren’t reading the book! The handout was randomly handed out, they aren’t reading or discussing it in class.
Yes, I could have waffled but wouldn’t have been confident that I’d got it right.
Thanks again to Regina, you’ve had me in tears with your reply, hope you feel good this morning.

@june2007 Sounds like you'e struggling with comprehension yourself. OP did read it all but there was a question her DS struggled to answer. Homework is meant to be to consolidate work already done in class. It shouldn't require intense parental involvement (nothing more than organising a quiet time and place for the homework to actually get done) so OP is doing plenty to support her son.

We are only on KS1 comprehension but in my experience the answer is always in the text. DS has ADHD and is quite impulsive and really doesn't like the answer "you need to read it again to find out" but usually that is the answer...

Regina is talking rubbish. Understanding the question semantically is easy, what on earth the question MEANS or is getting at is beyond me. I could waffle an answer also but it’s a silly question really and absolutely bizarre for an 8 year old. Teacher was not fair in their response to you and tbh I would probably ignore it, because if they’re going to write such an unfair comment so bluntly I doubt they’re going to listen well and it might be more frustrating. Some teachers just ain’t great!

@Janus

Ignore that nasty poster. There's a particular breed of MN poster who like to feel superior by putting other people down. It was a confusing question (and I have a PhD albeit not in an English related subject).

I will help my DC to try to get them to understand the homework and get to the answer themselves, but if they don't have a "lightbulb moment" I'm not answering the question for them. To me that is supporting their learning -- if they aren't understanding something even with help then their teacher ought to be aware because it impacts other teaching and learning that will be going on in future.

(I assume that they are looking at an adaptation rather than the original, because that line isn't in the original. Nor does Alice think or say anything resembling that thought in the falling-down-the-hole scene in the original. And thinking about "the heights I am now" when you're thousands of metres underground is a bit weird even if Reginabambina thinks it's entirely coherent.)

Ok, so it really helps the teacher to know Mummy can do the homework...... and here was me thinking it was about checking the children had understood what had been going on in class, and reinforcing proir learning, and discovering gaps in learning for the teacher to go over the following week....

@Janus I've told a teacher before now that I can't do DSs homework. It has been enlightening doing some SATs prep with him where the answers to these comprehension questions have been provided. Having been given the answer, I can see how they have arrived at it, but in a month of sundays, I wouldnt have come up with it myself!

why are 8 year olds getting homework for a book they aren’t even reading? insanity.

also supporting DC with homework is one thing, doing it for them when it goes over their heads is utterly pointless.

@Reginabambina - out of interest, how would you help a child understand that sentence?
It's a really tricksy, complex sentence. I can see how many adults would struggle with it.

Apologies, that does come across as unnecessarily harsh, I just meant that it probably never occurred to her that you wouldn’t be capable of helping. I’m sure all teachers have dealt with rubbish parents who aren’t interested in their child’s education so she probably got annoyed for that reason. Just explain to her that you couldn’t help him, it’s better that she knows that he might need support at school with reading comprehension tasks and keeps on top of it instead of both of you getting increasingly frustrated with one another.

Can’t help with your query, OP, but I’m with your DS in finding Alice In Wonderland deadly dull.

No idea what that sentence means. That she’s full of shit, probably.

Go on @Reginabambina tell us what the sentence means.

@milliefiori is it? It seems pretty straight forward. Just pick out the key themes (impossibility and height). What else could it possibly mean?

I have A level English Literature and did first year degree modules but I'm very rusty.

I could probably answer that question but I would not have been able to at age 8, or probably even at age 12 and I couldn;t have explained it to an 8 year old. My 16 year old son would struggle with it (though not my daughter who got Grade 9 GCSE.