How much do you help with homework in yr 7?

[weevilswobble]

DD gets on with her homework when she gets in from school while i cook tea. Should i be checking all her work? Or is it down to the teacher to tell them if its not good enough? I dont know what IS good enough.
Also, if your child has a project do you 'help'?

Personally, I used to look at her work, but not check it. It's important to show interest, but not to get her to change things on your advise. The teachers need to see her strengths and weaknesses, in order to give her the best help where she needs it.

Projects, I might help a little more, unless it's a controlled assessment.

Thanks maureen. Such a change from primary to secondary! I've just realised she really struggling with simple long subtraction and feel like i need to get some basics drummed in. But what the hell happened at primary so that she cant do take away with the whole borrow one from the tens etc etc. Or is teaching maths different these days?

As a teacher, it's always helpful to know that a parent has supported a child doing homework. Not to check it or anything, but just to be aware of what work is being done and that it is being done on time and effort is put into it. It sounds like DD is quite good and self-motivated, but setting down good routines before the dreaded teenage years is really important.

Secondly, the way maths is taught now is to teach the pupils a variety of methods for working things out and then they can use the one that they understand most. That may mean she's using methods you weren't taught at school, but if you look in her exercise book she should have some worked examples written down that you can look at to see if the method she's using is real or not! If she ever really struggles with something, I'd advise encouraging her to go back to the teacher for help (with a note from you if needed) rather than trying to persuade her to use a different method just because it's the one you know.

That makes sense baby, thanks. I just feel like such a crap mother when she says she hates maths and is slowest in the class. She is youngest in the class though, not that i want to use that as an excuse.

with general homework dd gets on with it herself when she gets home. She doesnt like me to have a look so I look when she gets it back instead and when she has targets or things to improve we might talk over how she is going to do that next time.
Projects she needs help with time keeping else she would spend huge amounts of time on research and forfeit the rest of life. She needs to learn how to plan out her time management better.