Pointless homework - WWYD?

[EvilTwins]

DTDs are in yr 7. One gets endless amounts of homework (the other doesn’t) and much of it feels a bit pointless. Today, she told me she has a 3 week history project for which she has to “make something” to do with castles - she can make a cake or a model or a mood board with lots of pictures. I asked her what The actual learning in the project is and she doesn’t know. Last week, she was given a project where she had to do a presentation about herself. That’s for study skills, and they are focusing on the presentation aspect. Her sister does the same subjects (different teachers) and did not have the same homework - hers was to practise the presentation skills, rather than spend hours doing a pointless PowerPoint.

Homework should be to either consolidate learning, extend learning or prepare for a lesson (or test) Making a model of Lincoln Castle out of fudge does neither of those things.

WWYD? Contact School? DTD2 could be spending her time so much better.

We get better. Often we need not just practice but instruction and quality feedback - but my dcs never got this on the crafty projects - they only got instruction and feedback on only on their written work.

Pengggwn Well, at some point you cut your losses. Which is why not all children do GCSEs in everything.

But generally, I'd like homeworks to:

• help my daughter get better at the relevant subject

AND

• have the majority of the time spent be learning with only a small % of faff.

Craft homeworks in secondary for both my daughters meet neither of those objectives, except if they are a homework for a tech subject.

David Didau's blog about teaching Romeo and Juliet by making sock puppets has a quite good list of reasons to avoid making kids think about something other than the stuff you want them to learn:

www.learningspy.co.uk/learning/on-gimmicks/

Ah, the castle. My dds school extend the joy by making them do it in pairs during half term, so you have to hope that their chosen friend has time between flying to mauritius for half term and going back to school to come and make mess at your house for a minimum of two sessions, because year 7s are not super efficient at making castle models. And then you either have to give them a lift to school or they walk for half an hour carrying an unwieldy load. (Although cuedos to the teacher, doing it in pairs does actually mean they make it themselves, rather than parents making marvellous models for their offspring).

I agree with Noble - DS2 was set a GCSE PE HW to make a joint! To me this is tech HW and not appropriate for KS4 (unless studying tech of course!).

To do well you needed a parent with access to wood and carpentry sills to make a hinge joint or similar. Drawing and annotating an image of a joint would seem to me more productive, and more likely to embed learning about ball and socket etc.

That said, OP's DC HW sounds as tho it could be OK - I would just do a mood board of castles from different time periods and label it.

Well quite, I wouldn't have minded so much in year seven (he had to make a shield then for history and they used them to re enact a battle, so pretty good really 😀)

I'm not sure how this misconception has seeped into the mainstream in ds's case it's just my observation about what worked for him. He has aspergers and teachers had the same opinion about social skills - he should just pick them up - and he just couldn't, some students need to be taught...otherwise why would we need teachers!

Noble Interesting link, seemed eminently sensible.

I don't know what a mood board is but I would get her to draw a castle and label each part of the castle with the correct name and under each label write a description of what it was used for. Then, she will at least learn something. We have homework like this and it drives me batty. If you feel your dc has too much work and will learn nothing from the project, you could make a 3D castle yourself for her to hand in so she doesn't get into trouble. But in Y7 really you have to turn something in and not complain about minor things.

I don't understand what a Y7 pupil will learn about history from having to make a castle. At secondary learning about castles in history shouldn't just be 'learn the basics of how castles were built' - surely it should be about the wider role castles played in the history of the period. This is much more easily achieved by a writing task/labelled diagram than by spending hours painting toilet rolls and having a meltdown when they don't stay up.

(This thread has reminded me that one of the countless ways in which adulthood is better than childhood is never, ever having to do a pointless craft project)

will probably 'stick' more if you have to do something more practical with the information.

I'm unconvinced. You'd like to think that I'm understanding which features reflected rising standards of living, but actually I'm spending most of my time trying to figure out how to pritt stick a toilet roll tube to a bit of card.

Dd1 (year 7) had a craft homework over half term. I hovered a bit and offered resources, cups of tea and occasionally a suggestion. In the end what she produced was great; it was fun for her, encouraged her to think around the topic and do various bits of research (for instance she wanted to add a design so googled for it and spent ages looking at information on runes). But I like craft too so we enjoy a bit of hands on arty stuff on a regular basis.

My educational philosophy is that if you set a task that is going to take up a lot of time and effort and make a sizeable proportion of children (and their parents) miserable and frustrated, the learning value has to be demonstrably really significant. I remain unconvinced that this is the case here.

Well, I've assisted with two castle projects now and we (collectively) didn't get any of that learning.

Now, had the task been research the design of castles over 3 centuries and discuss how and why they changed covering at least 5 distinct changes, then that learning might have been achieved.

I'm with noble . Mathematicians of the world unite.

All these craft projects at home, is this mostly a state school thing? My friends whose children are in state primaries spend inordinate amounts of time "helping" with stuff like this. That and themed dressing up days.

Am I right in sensing it doesn't happen as much in private schools? I'm only at the nursery stage where thankfully we don't get "parents' homework".

Kids, IME, go 'yay' when they think something is going to be a bit of a doss, like having a supply teacher or a maths lesson in a computer room, so that's possibly not a good guide!