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.

This is precisely why, as a teacher of many years, I hate giving homework out. The principle of homework is that is consolidates learning done in class. The reality is that it causes all sorts of trouble at home when parents battle with children to complete tasks they're not too sure of themselves, or when children are tired, or when the task is too hard / easy /boring.
A pp mentioned a parents whatsapp group where homework is discussed. This is a classic example of why homework is mostly a waste of time.
The only homework I would want children to be doing regularly is reading. Not a boring Biff and Kipper book, but something they enjoy in order to develop a real love of reading.
OP, the teacher was rude!

Onceuponatimethen my dad helped me with my science homework to the point of pretty much telling me what to write (he's not a natural teacher, he'd rather do everything himself) and I got 1/10. He's a scientist. Our teacher was actually a PE teacher being forced to teach first year (year 7) science due to a gap in the timetable. She presumably was teaching and marking exactly to a scheme of work written by someone else.

Homework should be done by the children, parents helping too much is usually a hindrance especially if the parent confuses things by knowing more than the teacher about the specific subject being studied I never asked my parents to help after that - my postgraduate educated dad told me school is a game, where you win by doing as required not by actually being right

The question is impossible to answer out of context because of the 'would'.

The teacher was rude and patronising.

I would have messaged back and said "I give up, what was the answer?"

Spoke to the teacher, she tried to tell me all boys are a nightmare..

That’s simply not true!

So you get dismissed as unsupportive and ds gets short shrift because he’s a boy..?? Meanwhile the teacher sets homework on a book that hasn’t even been read .

Is it possible to opt out of homework in the U.K. these days, for primary age pupils? That's what I'd be doing, absolutely ridiculous to expect an 8 year old to do homework, never mind such homework that upsets him to this degree.

You sound like a wonderful mum.

I would write the note. I wouldn’t be wasting my time having a meeting with the teacher over one question in one piece of daft homework.

Is it possible to opt out of homework in the U.K. these days, for primary age pupils? That's what I'd be doing, absolutely ridiculous to expect an 8 year old to do homework, never mind such homework that upsets him to this degree

Mine often doesn’t do his, he’s autistic and sometimes he just can’t cope. School have said this is OK.

This is great!

It’s a real illustration of how sometimes the smarter you are the harder it is to answer.

Alice in Wonderland is a novel about pure mathematics. The excerpt - to my eyes - is a pretty deep joke about infinite series. I suspect the teacher does not have a doctorate in Algebraic Number Theory and I would have my work returned red-penned.

“I don’t know” is a valid and respectable answer

It's a question for an 8 year old. They don't want you to discuss the deeper hidden meaning of AiW.

They just want you to explain what Alice said in terms that an average 8 year old might actually use.

You don't need to have read the book. If you don't know the answer yourself, encourage your 8 year old to look up the words they don't know.

Janus I wouldn't have a clue how to answer that either. If he can't answer it then he can't answer it, and the teacher's job is to have a look at the homework and the parts he can't do, he'll then need further support from her (not you!) to understand. If he's left it blank then that should be a good indication that the homework was pitched badly for him.

Sarcastic comments about supporting learning doesn't help either of you understand what on earth the question is looking for and isn't very pleasant to read either. I'm not surprised you're upset

Why are people making a big deal about them not having read the whole book? Presumably each week's homework is an extract from the book and the questions relate to that extract, just like in SATs reading papers.

ItWill very interesting!
Just to clarify, I didn’t give him the answers but he picked what I would have picked (multiple choice) and we were both wrong and I still have no idea why!!

You don't need to have read the book curiouser and curiouser

I think for some books it wouldn’t matter a jot because the passage is self contained and plain English

The language in Alice is quite confusing even tho I like the book and often quote from it

If I recall correctly, It’s impossible for Alice to reach the height she’s already at because she’s falling down a well at terminal velocity at the time, so by the time her brain processes the idea “I’m here” she’s already ten feet further down. Like much of Carroll it’s a mathematical joke. Doesn’t help the OP, but just thought I’d add it.

It’s ok supporting your child with their homework but she wanted you to complete it for him. What’s the point in homework? It’s to cement what the teacher has taught them that week. It shouldn’t be a test for the parents! Completely pointless and she’d be getting a piece of my mind calling all boys lazy. I’m usually one to stick up for the teacher but she sounds appalling.

Why are people making a big deal about them not having read the whole book? its a confusing story to comprehend without having read or heard it. It can be confusing even if you have. I remember it being one of the books our teacher read to us at the end of week and thoroughly enjoyed that, but to expect 8 year olds to comprehend random excerpts of classic literature without any background knowledge seems crazy.

Homework is supposed to consolidate what they’ve learned in class, so its failed on that score too. Its clearly not inspiring a love of reading or language either, wonder how many children in that class will want to pick up AIW in future after such a shambolic introduction to it.

I’m an ex-teacher and even I have an issue with some of the archaic and obscure language used in comprehension tasks.

An example was ‘incommoded’, for a Y5 homework. I have an English degree and a wide vocabulary, but suspect that many adults wouldn’t have the meaning of that word on the tip of their tongue.

‘incommoded’ when your bum gets stuck in your commode? (said in a Frank Muir voice, with Call My Bluff music playing in the background).

Who ever worded that question should be taken out and shot. I've read the book. The whole book. It makes fuck all sense to me. It's not a case of not knowing the answer, I cant even work out what its asking him!

@user1495884620
Your first answer is right up my street. But then I remember answering ‘school days are the best days of your life. Discuss...’ with, ‘well, it depends on what the rest of your life is like’.

I have an Oxbridge EngLit degree. I hate Alice. It pretends to be a book for children whilst having all sorts of show off clever me jokes running through it. There are multiple ways you could answer that question, from the velocity answer to an answer about the general impossibility and puzzling nature of wonderland to the much more literal growing and shrinking using the potions answer. But my child (few years older than yours OP) tells me that what you are supposed to write is exactly what is in that section of the text even if it doesn’t really answer the question properly. So really the question is less about properly understanding the text than being able to correctly identify the part of the text that this quotation comes from and parroting it back. I once saw my child was deducted a mark for using a simile for the actual word in the text, eg writing scared when the text said frightened. It’s a total waste of time in my view; like so much of the Nat curriculum it’s designed to be measurable rather than stimulating or engaging.

Lost it has some great quotes though!

I had to teach 'You are old, Father William' and 'The Walrus and the Carpenter' to a large class of business studies students at an Indian polytechnic in 1990, a few months after I finished my A levels. They were lovely, very earnest young women who did not want to tell me what their first responses to the poems were despite my urging but waited with poised pencils for me to explain the "correct" interpretation.

That was a weird and surreal memory I haven't thought about for ages...