Junior homework - do they do it totally alone

[DualCycloneCod]

i am anti homework tbh in primary schools and it hink in secondarys chools it often lakc purpose and is a n tuter waste of time and resources

BUT in primary schools how many of you let the kdi do it TOTALLY alone ( these are kdis hwo have no learnign issues)

not hcekcing
no correcting handwriting
no redoing
no helping

MY argument is that most parents hlep

From your second link, Cod, this jumped out at me
"Ironically, it is the parents who end up being treated like children, no longer being trusted to get on with raising their families without outside intervention in the form of contracts and ultimately the threat of sanctions."

Exactly!

yes liek a test of parenting
where as oyu get utter nuttter parents - totally un schooly who haev brilliant kids..

Am helping dd (SATS year) a bit to catch up with what she missed when she lost a whole term of maths last year due to lack of disabled access (school has since pulled itself together). Can't say I resent doing it now with the help of her very good + conscientious teacher- though I certainly resented what happened last year

Ds (7) likes to have me around when he's doing homework and chatting to me about it, but that's more social, I certainly wouldn't be doing his posters for him.

But on a more general note, this is an interesting thread. I read an article in a Norwegian paper recently that suggested that the changed ways of setting homework is having a negative effect on social mobility and that I do believe. If you think about it, in the past homework was about using material supplied by the school (books etc) to reinforce the teaching given by the teacher during school hours. Anyone who had the brains and determination had the same chance. And even determination could get you a long way.

These days a lot of teachers seem to set homework that is totally dependent on parental resources- computers, days out, a good home library etc. And not infrequently on presentation done by the parent.

Both my Dad and my maternal Granddad came from very disadvantaged backgrounds and managed to get out of poverty by working hard at school. I am sad to think that that option would have been a lot harder for them today.

Am also not sure that the current emphasis on presentation and IT skills is doing our children any favours at all. They come to university and think all that it will ever be required of them is to download other people's work. Or get somebody else to download it for them. And then they can't understand why they get into trouble for plagiarism.

Ds1, yr3, has homework and parents are expected to do it with them. We've had letters to this effect and the children are always being reminded to get their parent's involved.

I often wonder, if I refused to help (and it usually is stuff that needs adult help) who would get chastised, me or him?

I think if parents had a 'homework diary' they could write down what they've done with their child e.g painting, making a database, going to the museum, that would be much more useful and manageable for most parents. The teacher could say. 'Right we're doing Egyptians this term, please do one thing linked to that,' and the parents could do something with their child that the child would enjoy and actually learn something from. Some of the homework that my ds's get is so bloody boring and it's all worksheets and writing.

i liek that idea

I loathe it. We get it every night.

Also some of it is just TOO hard. Like ds2 had to make a poster about a rock. He said 'I'm going to do Pumice', I said 'Great'. Then we stared at each other for a bit, and he said 'What do you know about Pumice?' I said 'Nothing' - so then we had to google it and all the rest.

Grrrrr.

If they have anything AT ALL, surely it should be just going over what they've done in class? We shouldn't be researching bloody pumice on the internet should we?

I don't get it.

We try to do as little as possible for dd age 7 (yr 3). If we help a lot I write that into her book so it's clear it was us helping. And if she won't do it I write that in her book too.

I find it quite useful to see her homework as she's a vague child and without that I would have no idea really what she's doing at school.

I was taken aback when another mother told me they "usually do" their 9 year old's homework for him as he finds it too hard.

I'm not so keen. It doesn't feel right, to me, to have to report back to the school any out of school hours activities we have been doing. Our time out of school is our time.
Helpful to have a diary that lets you know what topics are happening in school for information but not obligatory to follow up at home.

lol hundred. I don't like the rocks topic one bit.

dds do their own homework but will ask if they are stuck. I help them if they are stuck.

I hate the idea of homeowkr too

I nag. And nag. And nag. Until I'm fed up with the sound of my voice. But unless specifically asked for help - ie how do I do this sum, or what's another word for XXXX, and not 'mummy can't you just write it for me' - I don't get involved once it's started. I used to check and fix things but I don't anymore. Life is too short and they need to learn consequences of doing a crap piece of work. I say 'they' when actually I mean DS#1 - DD just gets on and does it beautifully with no nagging and minimal help.

I think the mantra has to be "It's your homework not mine". I will remind them to do it though. And to put it in their bags

I sit with my dd, remind her about spacing out her words, otherwise it all looks like one word... she gets variable amount of hw, sometimes it seems quite a lot, maths/writing/reading, other times it is just reading.

I sit with my dd when she is doing hw, school encourages that, but as she gets older I would expect to just look at hw after she has done it...

I do not like hw, dd likes some of it, but a lot of it is very tedious,repetitive and not really about learning - they should at least be interested. Last year my dd was at a different school and she got hw every bloody day and over the weekend, way too much, she was 5 then, in primary 1 (scotland), six and a half now....

she only got reading this week, so the teacher has no correcting to do over half term?

Oh god I always check it.

And I nag about doing it.

And I often have to talk it over with DS1 (who is in yr 4 btw) when he says he doesn?t understand it. This is more often with literacy than numeracy. I was amazed on Sunday when he just sat down and wrote a poem for his lit without any fuss or input from me. The numeracy h/ever, being visual (triangles) he had a total block on. I virtually had to tell him the answer. Maybe I could just let him hand in a blank piece of paper. But in fact (and as long as I make it clear in a note how much help he had) I think it is fine if I help as it shows up what he can and cannot do and what he can do given support.

lol at Buda boy's poster and teacher "knowing which are done by parents".

Ah yes, but how would you really feel if you got NO homework! My kids have had a reading book changed when I tell the school we've finished it but otherwise nothing! nada! not a sausage!
Then I come on here and am aware that lots of (most?) other children have homework. How do you think I feel then? I am an active parent so I do read with them and to them every night. Now we do workbooks and since Nov they go to a tutor as my ds2 is having maths / dyscalulic problems. However where I live there are a lot of parents who don't do anything and I think this explains why 1/2 my sons year 3 class are level 4/5 ORT! when I've spoken to the school about it, they say we don't give homework because most kids don't bother to do it!!!!!!!! So... that's like a valid reason then?
and this is one of the reasons we are moving schools in Sept!
my ds's are yr 2 and yr 3 btw.

How would I feel if primary school gave no homework? I'd feel perfectly fine with that.

dd1 (7, Yr 2) would just not do it if I didn't sit with her

it just wouldn't happen

or she would write all kinds of shite on it

[control freak]

there is no way I would be able to stop myself correcting the 'brij' thing

it would physically hurt me to stop myself

Really juuule? You'd do nothing homeworkish with your kids yourself?
Even though I know one of my ds's is really falling behind?
Even though I look at my friends dc's work, who have regular spellings etc and they are miles ahead?

know what you mean, cappuccino..
ds1 (8) often says,'mum..it's my homework, you know..."

Ds is in Yr 4. We remind him to do his homeworks and are available to bounce ideas off if needed. He normally does it all by himself. We check it with him and if we spot a mistake we point it out and ask him to think again. We don't do any of it for him and if he can't complete something we send a note in to the teacher.
He is getting better at checking his own work though, which is the main thing.

I didn't say that I wouldn't do anything at home to help my dc if they were having problems. I would expect the school to inform me of areas where they were having problems. I would probably ask advice/guidance for what would tie in best with schoolwork.
I don't like homework coming out of school just for the sake of it. If my dc are doing okay in school what is the point? I ask them what they are doing at school, whether everything is okay, talk to them about things. Homework just gets in the way at times.

/shudders
I loathe homework at this age. dd is in year 3. She is bright and works diligently, not dawdling too much over work.

Shes supposed to have 45 mins a week activities. Plus 1hr 45 mins reading to an adult a week. We don't do the reading to an adult. She reads her own books and gets on with it. She asks if she doesnt know a word and sometimes I'll get her to read a bit of poetry or something top keep up her 'reading with expression and not at a zillion miles an hour' But she does read for about 30 mins a day voluntarily. I don't count it as homework.

This week she had 68 questions regarding telling the time. Started off simple then got to. 'If the in the last 8 questions the clocks were 12 minutes slow what would the time be' 'if they were 5 minutes fast what would the time be'. And so on. Took 1 hr 20mins of solid concentration.

Has to write 3 comments in reading diary each week. By the time shes decided what she wants to write, fills in the various bits thats 30 mins.

20 spellings written out ad infinitum. Plus has to tick to show she can do the other 2 groups spellings. She speeds this so I dunno, about 30 mins or so.

Projects are due in. Silly us followed their plan of 'week 4 write out instructions of how to make your card (they had to design moving mosnter cards), use diagrams, would a computer help to make it more effective? Design and draw an envelope net to fit your designed card'
Goodness knows how long she spent on that. She likes 'Publisher' and drawing diagrams using that when you are 8 takes time. I think it was about 3 hours this week.

Plus there times table practice but we do that when I'm untangling her hair.

But its not just school. We thought she might quite like a life! So she does violin with practice (fair enough we knew that just not how much it would impact with school work) about 1hr 15 a week.

And shes doing her First Holy Communion. They have a ginormous workbook with loads and loads of colouring in and filling out details. About 1hr a week. This will finish in May

So scheduled homeworky stuff this week was 7hr 35 ish.

Its absolutely ridiculous. I'd actually like her to have a bit of a life. Looking at this and the fact that she does Brownies (fortnightly on sat morning) First Holy communion monthly on a saturday morning, judo (afterschool club), recorders (afterschool 30 mins), horseriding and goes to church I suddenly feel awful. I've not sat down and worked it out before. My poor poor kid. No wonder she says she has no time to play
Time to re-evaluate what she does I think.

My DS1 is 12 now and has needed nagging, encouragement, support, dictation, all manner of methods of emotional and practical support with his homework over the years. I even tell him to sit in bed and be warm while he does it and bring him snacks if he's looking sad/wobbly. I have a 'just do some for 5 minutes, then stop' method.

DS2 was a dream re spellings and tables, never needed any practice on these at all (however he couldn't handle school so he's HE now). Homework has disappeared until such time as he asks for it and I am happy to create some.

I hate doing homework with ds - I resent having to find the time to do it. mainly because we don't get home until after 6 so need to juggle making the dinner with doing some phonic work with dd (who needs it as she is struggling with P1) and then supervising ds's work. I don't check his spelling homework anymore - but I do help him with maths and anything he is stuck on. I also refuse point blank to do any homework at the w eekends - including Friday nights.

Don't get me wrong Juuule I agree with you and I'm sorry if my post sounded aggressive it wasn't meant to.
To my mind the problem is that it's not a level playing field with homework at the minute in the state system. Some schools are really keen to do loads of homework and lots of sats prep and get good results, then there's schools like ours who do no homework and have very poor sats results the consequence being that no-one wants to come to our school, including good teachers who might also want the reward of good results. Then in turn, my children might suffer when it comes to decisions at 11 / 13