I would like to tell you a fact about my dd1s class re: homework, could you imaine you were me and give me your view please

[TrinityRhino]

at the start of primary 4(this year) dd1 started to come home with sheets alongside her reading
once a week
she would have about 6 comprehension questions per sheet about the book

usually this is given on a thursday
tonight I asked her if she had a reading sheet tonight

she said
'we don't have them anymore,
the teacher said that some mums had said they were too hard and so we dont have them anymore.
the teacher says she isn't going to tell us which mums said it'

I will spill now and say that I am very shocked at the teacher being so indiscreet

I am surprised that the parents were very easily able to completely scrsap some homework and even more so surprised that the reason it was scrapped is becasue some of the parents said it was too hard

surely that would mean that something nneded to change maybe....but to just give up and not do it anymore!!

and we were not told this, I only learnt this from dd1 herself today

I enjoy doing homework with dd1
in the main it seems to have some use
it sparks conversations about things she didn't know.
Also I would have thought that comprehension and checking if they are understanding what they are reading is one of the homework things that DOES have good use

dd1 didn't have any trouble with it, used to look up the occasional word she didn't understand.
tbh I have been thinking that she could have more homeowkr that could be benificial
I like to help her learn. I like to have a feel for what she can manage by seeing her attempt things at home
They have never had a project to do at home and I think she would benifit from the researching involved, the question asking, practise in grammar, the general challenge!
I was actually going to ask if they were going to get some proper homework soon when I went to the parents evening....
no point now I guess

every parents evening she is told she is very bright and easily copes with the work

so scrap homewprk, give them less, make sure they are in no way challenged cause some other children didn't find it as manageable

DS2 is Yr4 - he was 9 last week.

The homework he has say for this week is

spellings - words like, jerk, servant, squirt, church - 10 altogether.

has to learn 11 x table

Homework sheet - this consisted of a listing of months and next to these were whole circles, half circles, quarters - different for each month. These whole circles represented 4 days of sun. Questions were asked how many days of sun were there in June etc. How many days in June did not have sun?

dont all days have sun?

completely not understanding bellas dss homework lol

sorry
intrigued though

Trinity, my dd hasn't even mention that the comprehension sheets have stopped or why(think she is becoming your dd )

Their teacher made it sound like these sheets were quite important, so why she has bowed to some parents without discussing with ALL parents I don't understand but I will bring it up at parents evening.

are you as shocked as me?

for the teacher to discuss the reason with the pupils but us to have no idea?

and things are a little hard so just dont bother

lol - I did not understand it either - was DH that helped him!

Does your dd have a planner Tinity? Perhaps it is worth putting a little note in it to the teacher saying something along the lines of dd has not had any homework for x amount of weeks, are they being given time to do it in class?

that would be an idea bella but tbh
I think I would like to talk to her myself

I have just spoken to dd and she doesn't understand why she can't keep doing this homework (suppose I'll have to try and make up sheets my self for her) only because she loves school and homework

doh, cannot even spell now, obviously I meant Trinity and not Tinity.

Roffle bellavita, Didn't even notice that one

oh purple
that is one of the main points that this is so wrong huh?

dd1 asks for homeowrk, has already asked me to make up mathssheets for her

she said earlier that she was sad she didn't get to do them

can't fathom the teachers reasoning AT ALL

I would be peed off - not becuase I'm a lover of work sheets, I'm not - but because some Parents have railroaded the whole class.
We have had parents try to do this. One group was a 'why aren'r our kids on quantum physics?' gang the other a 'you're ruining my child's childhood with your spelling tests.'
Both annoyed me in the way they tried to impose their agenda on the class.
Both failed BTW - our school aint one to be bullied .

well I wish ours was litchick

have spoken to teacher on phone today and apparently they are to be stopped UNTIL parents evening where all parents will be spoken to about it

Hi Trinity - I'm with Litchick, in that I'd be pretty annoyed to discover that parents were being allowed this kind of influence over the teacher's choice of homework, especially if it hasn't been discussed with the other parents first.

However, P4 is perhaps young enough yet for this type of homework. Now, it's been a while since I was at school , but I distinctly remember first getting regular homework in P5 - then, we'd get a weekly list of a dozen or so words and had to write a sentence containing each word, in such a way as to demonstrate we understood its meaning. We then moved on to writing a short summary of a newspaper article, again once a week, which most of us loved, and it allowed everyone to work to their own level.

I'm pretty sure we didn't do reading comprehension questions (for homework) until P6, when it was a much more meaningful exercise I guess, and could be geared to each pupil's reading standard - the books we got home for reading would contain a set of questions for each story.

I hope you get some sort of satisfactory answer at parents evening, but in the meantime if your DD is keen, perhaps you can try activities like this with her at home.

My view is for primary children it should be reading only so I would be happy with that. Some primary aged children go to bed at 6:30pm. They get home at 4pm. They should be able to play or chill for an hour, have their tea and possibly a bath and then go to bed without the added worry of homework imo.

I'm not a fan of primary homework - any homework or home work either to be honest - but DD has never found it difficult - 5 min job - so every parents' evening throughout primary school I would do my token objection and the teacher would do their (token?) protest on behalf of the school 'lots of parents want it'.

DD's old head set up a scheme where they read books and answered a question sheet to earn them points towards a badge/certificate/bookmark/book token. It was designed to introduce them to a range of books they might not otherwise read.

DD's now in senior school. Still no 'home' work. 3 nights she stays til 5.30pm, 1 til 5pm, one comes home at 4.15pm and it's almost all done at school. Makes her school bag lighter and home time is home time iyswim. DH & I both prefer to WOH too, having both had WAH jobs in the past.

I would think, fair enough. Don't like primary homework

SueW - did you get my CAT or did you stumble across this thread by coincidence?

When you say you would like to see no homework in schools does that include reading?

Wonder if the homework was too hard for the kids or the parents? [I must admit I'm occasionally taxed by helping DD (yr 5) with comprehensible definitions for some of her spelling words ('Circumstances' is quite hard to define well). And I was quite flummoxed when in yr 3 she was supposed to come up with a sentence including the word 'literary'.

No, but comprehension questions on reading sound like good age-appropriate work.

If some don't want it, suggest teacher does sheets but its optional.

I think homework is generally a waste of time. Children who need extra input by doing work at home often don't do it; those who get lots of support at home anyway always complete it. Research has shown that homework does not have any particular educational value. On the other hand, some children enjoy doing project etc and sharing what they re doing at school and if the gov't keeps on adding new things which must be included in school, some things have to be pushed into homework, if the school day isn't to end up about 10 hours long.

I would think it was great that they had stopped it! I hate primary homework. You can easily do comprehension questions yourself, but as your DD is bright it seems a waste of time-much better for her to spend it with her imagination doing extra reading. Comprehension questions week after week would be as dull as ditchwater! Why not get her to keep her own reading diary at home with thoughts, poems, pictures etc, if she is keen?

nappyaddict Stumbled.

Don't have a CAT message from you unless you have name changed and it was something completely different some time ago - but all those are answered.

WRT reading: ideally I think there should be the support within school to allow children to develop the ability to read within school hours. At DD's school, every child was listened to every day, certainly in the early years, say up to Y3 or 4 - DD brought a reading card home every day that was signed by either her teacher, a TA or a gap student. Books were also changed every day if necessary. In Y6 she was probably heard once or twice a week either alone or through class reading i.e. whole class takes it in turns to read a section of a class storybook.

The school also has extra support for struggling readers who are taken out of class either one to one or in very small groups to read aloud. (They do this for maths too)

To rely on parental support for home work can make it difficult for lots of children e.g in split families where children spend some nights with dad, some with mum and so do 'quality stuff' and for families where support isn't forthcoming because of lack of time or inclination (and I'm fully aware this can happen in the full spectrum of class and wealth).

I don't have school age children yet, but am generally anti-homework at primary level I think - agree with what others have said about play/chill time being more important for children at this age.

But I have a question for anyone who knows - how much of the purpose of the hw is for children to spend some time discussing what they're studying with their parents? I guess it was very different in my day, when having one parent at home more or less full-time was the norm, so perhaps there was a bit more space to do this than there is nowadays (not in any way wishing to open a SAHM/WOHM discussion btw, just interested to know why they have to do hw).