Just been thinking about ds's year 7 homework- interested in people's views.

[seeker]

Ds goes to a school where most of the children are middle to low ability- only 8-10% high ability. Humanities is taught in a mixed ability group. They have had no homework so far- but this weekend have been told to write a police report on a famous crime from history. Ds says (and I realise that 12 year olds are unreliable witnesses!) that they got no further guidance, and the homework was undifferentiated.
It strikes me that this is a very big ask for most middle and low ability children and would just be incredibly demotivating and end up not being done. Is there any good reason for setting homework like this?

I've been having a moan about a geog project

Here too the brief is too brief and The DCs were given no guidance as what to include, just told lots it's this half terms HW.

In this case it's set 1 rather than mixed Y7, but it's flummoxed my HA DD2.

Apart from the fact she hates craft, she has no idea how to move on from what would be acceptable level of write up in primary to what is suitable in Y7.

In fact I think LA DCs find these things easier because they don't worry about them. They either copy down the first thing they find on Wiki or forget about it.

DD2 worries if she's doing it right and gets in a tiz.

(DD1 is much happier to chatter and crash out a framework and hand something in, she's far more confident, she cares far less if it's exactly what the rest of the class have done. In fact she knows, being dyslexic it will be shorter, so original is good.)

Also the teacher may thing they have had guidance in class during a discussion on view points and bias, which unit I suspect this is part of.

Trouble is, if it isn't repeated on the HW sheet, the pupils may not make the connection.

Seeker, we get that sort of vague, unstructured homework set all the time. The most priceless one being: write about Scotland. DS2 had a total meltdown - he had no idea where to start without just cutting and pasting from Wiki. I had to get him to choose some topics and he panicked that they weren't what was required.

Ashamed to say I gave up on expecting anything clearer and just set my own guidelines for DS, as to how many paras, and helped him work out how to structure stuff. His English improved loads when he was given a bit of structure for it.

So, that's what I'd suggest as a mum, but admire you as a governor for wanting to investigate this further on behalf of the other children.

I agree with pp that you may be underestimating the abilities of the lower and middle ability children to do this homework. The class may also well be mixed ability in theory but in practice could actually be all working around the level 4 mark or above (fewer level 3 children in this group by coincidence rather than design); they should have no particular problem with it and do as much or as little as they want.

The issue I have with this kind of homework is the 'research' element. Without an explicit school policy - or very strict parents (me) or excellent primary school training - many year 7s will just cut and paste from t'internet, even the very high ability ones. It's the overall school policy on how to research that I would be interested in as a governor, rather than individual homeworks.

Dd1 is in year 7 of typical comprehensive. She's had very similar homework from history.

But what she also has is at the beginning of each term, each child is given information on what is expected to maintain their level in eache subject, and what is needed to improve their level. So she does her homework checking that she has maintained and preferably improved her level.

I don't know exactly what she has for history to improve, but the sort of thing is: "quote from an independant source", "use correct labels on a diagram".

That way this sort of homework they can all do on their own level.

In all honesty it sounds like an excellent homework for a mixed ability set because it has the potential to be done on all different levels. Ones who can just write a few notes, and those who can so a small project in the same time.

I think this sort of homework is asking for inauthenticity (is that a word?).

Which police force? The British force or the one the crime was committed in? A modern police report or one from the time of the crime, perhaps full of racism, prejudice (shall we imagine how the police would have described Jack the Ripper's victims, say?) and ignorance? What if the famous crime was committed before the police existed? Has the teacher read any police reports and seen how dry, uninformative and poorly written they are? It is no good setting homeworks that cannot be interpreted literally.

At least with the - equally inauthentic - standard yr 7 write a newspaper account of the Battle of Hastings or whatever they have got something to base it on and can play around with the familiar aspects of a modern newspaper - ads, headlines, the date and so on, and have a bit of fun with the idea of taking it back in time.

But in answer to your question, when my dc have been given the newspaper hw, which is the closest I can think of, they have been told roughly what to do to start them off (think about presentation, one main story or several short ones? what is your newspaper called? that sort of thing).

And if this is the first piece of humanities hw they have had, I think it is ridiculous to expect them to research, structure and write up what could be a substantial piece of work with such a vague brief.

As a historian it sounds good to me - what are facts what is opinion which is the most reliable source times dates etc, Primary literacy has covered different styles of writing, including report writing.

I think it's good homework- and I'm only a fan of homework that is useful or relevant. It was the lack of guidance that worried me. And the thought that some, particularly lower ability kids would be completely phased by it and give up before they started. There is a very wide "base of the triangle" at our school.

I think that the teachers like to be vague so they don't get 30 reports that exactly answer the questions in a frame work.

However, if they are being deliberately vague they should jolly well tell the pupils that they don't mind if they write as a modern policeman or a historical one etc. that they want the DCs just to go off and find what catches their imagination and go with it.

DD2, particularly gets paralysed by thinking she's doing the wrong thing.

DD1 got something very like this last term - write about the Norman Invasion in the style of a newspaper report. They'd covered the factual research in class and had a lot of notes to work from, it was very much an exercise in how to present the research in a particular format.

DD read some sample newspaper articles and went with a Daily Mail style 'Our Brave Saxon Boys versus The Dastardly Normans With Their Flat-Pack Castles' by Jingo sort of piece and did very well. It was also good to see how quickly she picked up the differences in writing styles between tabloids and broadsheets, and spotted political bias. I thought it was very good homework.

For something like this I'd be tempted to look at some really good historical fiction for children as suggesting they watch 'Ripper Street' really wouldn't do