answers and questions just doesn't work with DD almost 7yo

[joburg]

One of the exercises we got to do at home as home works, are when DD gets the answer and needs to find the right question. Like in 'This is a dog. -- is this?' She can't just get it, despite the fact that i spent time over time with her talking about it. Do you think this is too advanced for 7 yo (or year 1 where DD is right now)?????

We tried this exercise several times, she seems to get it (a little bit) one day, the next day she doesn't make sense of it at all. Do we need to worry about it?

Do they give you an example question so she see what she should be doing? If not,can you give her an example one? At our primary, they always give an example. At that age, the homework isn't supposed to be to test them - simply be additional work to compliment and consolidate their class learning. Ask the teacher if you think it's tricky. She might have not have explained it properly in class and that's why your DD is confused slightly.

We have been doing this for some time now. Not every day (she has other homeworks to do) but every time we try it, she is back to square one ... has no clue about it. There is always an example on each page, of course. I first go through all the sentences with her. Trying to give her clues, testing each of the W words to see which fits. We do this orally first then i let her try by herself then i work with her again. Works hard but she manages to find let's say 2 out of 10 (more of lucky guesses then really thinking, i'm afraid). Then the next time we get to do it .... nothing!!! It just seems to me like she just tries to memorize things and writes down whatever she remembers without thinking on her own. I just don't know how to help her THINK instead of trying to learn things by heart.

Why don't you ask the teacher to explain it again to your daughter and explain to you what she is learning from it.

If she still doesn't get it, it's going to become very boring and frustrating and affect her self-confidence so you can't just keep banging away at it.

If the teacher is able to tell you what is learned from this homework, perhaps you try to find another way to get that across. You might find humour helpful as a technique.

Otherwise I would just drop the whole thing and wait for a bit. My answer to your final question is: no, you don't need to worry one little bit. Maybe she'll get it in three months, six years, but she will get it at some point. If you keep hammering away without reprieve though it will have a very bad effect, make her fail like a failure and stop her wanting to try.

Just read the op again seriously, don't worry about it. Just drop it. It doesn't matter that much anyway, it's just a vague comprehension thing you can test her understanding in so many other ways.

It sounds as though your DD needs some more input at school on the question words before this kind of activity will make any sense to her.

The only thing I can think of to support her with her homework is to continue giving her all the options orally and let her choose the one she thinks sounds best e.g. Who is this, what is this, where is this, why is this, when is this, how is this etc. Does she understand the kind of answers that match the question words e.g. why needs a reason, who needs a person/animal, how needs an explanation? I'm sure it will all fall into place at some point but it's worth asking the teacher if s/he could perhaps model for you how they tackle this sort of activity in class so you can do something similar at home.

Thanks for the posts. I wound't worry about this specific task if there were not others that didn't work either. This was just one that hit me as really hard to complete and i was wondering if this might be too difficult for their age group.
I am worried if DD can't figure this one out, it might mean she has some issues, since what i noticed while doing homeworks with her, is that DD has problems applying concepts from one minute to another, but would rather try to memorize things instead of 'thinking'. Again, this was just one of the occasions i noticed this.