Do I push back on homework ( year 1)

[Tista]

Seems to be getting reading ( 4 x week), maths, spelling and something else (1x week). We obviously joined school in lockdown never been inside or had chance to find out about approach ( we asked, ). Would you raise it or is it normal? Seems overkill and I know is not legal compulsory.

Normal.

Unfortunately normal.

After lockdown and attempting to home school two kids whilst both working full time, DH and I made the executive decision to not do anymore homework.

The kids just do it in school time anyway instead of pissing about on the Ipads.

Normal.
Reading is the one thing I won't ever skip, I've seen first hand how blindingly obvious which children read at home and which children don't - even without opening the reading record. Missing a day or two here and there because they are tired is fine, but not ever doing reading at home really does slow down progress as they just simply don't have time at school to hear everyone read individually very often.
Maths is often just to gauge if they get and have understood and can use the skills at home later on what they've already learnt in class and then the teacher can see by the homework whether they need to go over it again or move on.
Spelling and the random projects they do personally I find a bit pointless, the children hardly ever use the spellings they learn in their literacy work and the random projects they do can be so time consuming sometimes all for very little gain. We still do it though - more because I know full well it's only going to increase as they get older so just instilling good habits now.

Yes normal. Agree with @Chocoholic900 prioritise the reading and do the rest if you get a Chance. In yr1 I had a convo with my DD teacher where I basically said all the homework they were setting wasn’t doable with two working parents and she was really understanding and said just focus on the reading. I’m hoping as they get older they can do some of the homework independently as not sure how well squeeze it all in once she gets to juniors. 🫤

I'm a primary teacher and unfortunately it's normal. Reading homework is really important. The rest really isn't and the research suggests that it has little impact. We give it out as an optional extra as some parents really want it but we make it clear that it's optional.

Normal - I find the reading tricky to do in the week as we both work, and by the time DS gets home it is often 6pm and he is too tired. But we do read at the weekend.

The rest of the homework is just shit like watching YouTube videos, and we either skip or watch depending on DS’s level of interest (it is often videos of somebody reading aloud books they have read in school, and if he likes the book we watch, if not we don’t).

Ours don’t track homework or reading (DS had the same book in his bag for an entire half term last year), so we mostly get library books anyway.

Why not homeschool since you have a much better grasp of the curriculum to be covered and child education building blocks than the teachers?

Push back

www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/does-homework-help-or-hinder-young-children-10484928.html

@Becles

Why do the teachers expect parents to basically homeschool regardless of preference, and regardless of lack of qualification or experience?

When teachers assign homework in core areas of the curriculum on a nightly basis they are telling parents that they are every bit as able to do the work of a teacher as they themselves are.

Your comment seems to imply that parents who question what teachers require should stay in their lane, but what the teachers are asking is that parents get into the teachers' lane.

You can't have it both ways.

Normal - do the reading, have a look at the spellings and maths but they are less important than reading.

You will likely be surprised how little the maths is

Normal. Reading will only be 10 mins a night. Spellings we would quickly go over at meal time, luckily in yr 1 they were all phonics based, and in our experience the other stuff would only take 10/15 mins at the weekend.

good points thanks. Yes we focused on reading in reception ( 4 x week) and did the rest of it if it wasn’t daft stuff and tbh we had energy. We read every day. It does make me wonder why the curriculum needs kids to do so much out of school - . Appreciate class sizes are big but if the basics need homework every day then somethings bit off? Sets lots of kids upto fail .

Reading and a minute or two oer day anything to do with maths facts (moving from being able to count up / count down to add / subtract two small numbers to knowing that e.g. 3+4 = 7). Basically things that require 1:1 attention - limited in the 1:30 of a class - or far more repetition than the crowded curriculum allows for. There are lots of ways of doing the Maths fact - dice games, cards, practical work with cars or toys, physical hopscotch etc etc.

The rest is optional and always a balance between those who would like none and those who demand loads.

I was about to say how I think homework is really important and not to push back…. until I saw the amount!

In Y1, we get one piece of written homework (often a page or two of maths worksheets or a couple of spellings - usually a 10 minute job) and a phonics book over the weekend.

To me it’s nice getting to see what they’re up to in school, but if it became a “chore” to my child because there was so much I’d be less pleased!

It's normal.
Some parents see homework as a sign that the school is academic so some schools set it to keep the parents happy.

At primary, I think the reading is worthwhile. 10 minutes a day quickly adds up to tens of hours of practicing a skill that helps in all subjects and life in general.

It depends how long it’s taking. At that age we used to do 10 minutes reading every other day, spellings every other day, on the days they didn’t read, and a maths worksheet, again 5-10 minutes which was done over the weekend. My kids were fine with this, so we’d sometimes do extra maths/English with them as they enjoyed it.

Some things just need to be practised, like reading, number bonds, multiplication facts. It’s like any skill, riding a bike, swimming, playing an instrument, most people have to put the time in to get better/ quicker/ faster/ more confident. If the practice isnt done at home then the schools will have to factor it into the school day, which in early years (and beyond) should be spent learning new and interesting things.

Yes, kids whose parents don’t help (and the reasons why they don’t are many and sometimes mind boggling, though the one that always annoyed me most was “ not having the time”, really? This is your child, find 10 minutes to read a ten page book ffs ) are set up to fail, which is why many schools spend money they haven’t got on catch up and intervention in years four and five.

There is a meta analysis showing primary homework has no positive impact on primary attainment. I’ve managed to get two schools to change their homework policies on the basis of this. I think teachers don’t really want homework (I know I didn’t!) but they feel under pressure from parents and ofsted.

100% this. I am on the fence with the value of written homework to be submitted and despise the random projects that are more work for the parents than the child.

However it is impossible to underestimate the importance of spending 15-20mins a day on a combination of reading, number bonds/multiplication and spelling high frequency words. These are the things that can't be crammed in a short time and short revision each day reinforces the knowledge.

That is nothing. We were doing much, much more than that although school started early prep for 7+.

The thing is, reading every day shouldn't even need to be set as homework, it's just something school-age children should do every day at home. So why would you want to push back on it? It's hardly that difficult to get a child to read to you while you're making dinner, or for 15 minutes before their bath, or whatever. And if they're really reluctant, or struggling so much it takes ages, that's even more reason to do it.

Our school expects the children to read daily (normally their choice of book from yr2 onwards) and sends home spellings once a week to learn for the next week. No other homework or projects. The neighbouring school is the same. It doesn’t have to be normal to do homework at 5….

Actually, the analysis by the EEF shows that homework that has been planned to match with what is being taught in school, and is therefore building in opportunities for retrieval, does have a positive impact at both primary (up to +3 months) and secondary (up to +5 months). Homework had little impact when it was poorly planned and not connected.

Reading is not part of "homework" as the term is commonly used either. All children should be reading for at least 20 minutes a day, 5 days a week. The impact of this is enormous and has been quite clearly tracked and evidenced over time as the children age.