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.

"I've never heard that it makes kids miserable and frustrated to be asked to do some arts and crafts. Most of them go 'yay!'"

We're talking about homework, though - how many kids really go 'yay!' when asked to spend their half term building a model castle? Honestly?

But it's not a doss, is it?

It's a nightmare for me because I'm crap at crafts. But ask a class if they want to write an essay about the causes of World War I or if they want to make a diorama of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, the vast majority of them will be over by the glitter and glue before you've finished. Cutting and sticking is far more of a doss than putting pen to paper.

Maybe they go 'yay' when it is set.

But when they are 2 hours in and it looks nothing like what they wanted to achieve, and they can see they've another 4 hours to go so this homework has taken 3x the amount of time that homeworks are meant to take, I bet they don't go 'yay' then.

And what quite a few parents are saying on this thread is that the learning purpose gets lost in the doing, or isn't time-effective.

Writing creatively makes you better at writing. In my experience writing did not make me better, we had little feedback and English for me was something I didn't excel at, the marking was an mystery to me - I had no idea how to improve. Unlike Maths and the sciences where I could quite easily see where I was going wrong and work to correct. English essay after English essay delivered a mark out of 10 or an "average" or "good" never told me how I could improve - I look at my dc's work and I see that valuable feedback is being given, my dcs know what they need to do to improve, they take the feedback very seriously and they work on improving. I am so pleased they have had English teachers who try to teach them, mine never did.

No, it's not okay! They might spend ages carefully crafting Franz Ferdinand out of playdoh, but if they've written an essay where they've actually mentioned his name more than once, they've got a better chance of remembering it.

I've never heard that it makes kids miserable and frustrated to be asked to do some arts and crafts. Most of them go 'yay!' Again not when it's weekend and holiday homework - it is quite simply, the most stressful homework!

I thought the attitude that it was OK to make children do X unpleasant [to them] and pointless thing because it's 'character-building' (or 'increases resilience' in modern terminology) was outdated, but clearly not!

Pengg As a matter of interest, what subject/age do you teach?

Long craft homeworks don't teach my children resilience, it makes them tired and frustrated and turns them off learning.
They have to practice resilience every day at school battling through their learning difficulties. If they are going to spend 6 hours on a homework, I'd like them to get more than 15 minutes proper useful learning from it.

Maybe you set better defined 'make a castle' homeworks than others on this thread have experienced. or maybe you are playing devils advocate with us all just for laughs

You don't need feedback on everything. Sometimes what you need is practise, practise and more practise. Sometimes teachers can't teach or they just can't be arsed, they like to blame the kids for not practicing enough or for being a bit crap, it's an easy cop out.

Just writing someone's name down is no indicator that they'll remember the name, but they've got a better shot at remembering the name than someone who is merely making a model of a person out of playdoh and sticking it in a shoebox. What do you want them to think the most about? Playdoh or the facts?

Just writing someone's name down is no indicator that they'll remember the name
Slightly off topic but a good trick for remembering a name is to associate the name with someone/something you know....I have a shit head for names and it works.

Mathematicians of the world unite.

I'm starting to think maybe it is a maths thing. Maths teachers learn very quickly that if you want kids to get good at stuff, you have to get them to do it, a lot. No arsing around, here's a big sheet of questions on fractions, now get on with it.

I know you disagree, Pengggwn, but you're not really explaining why.

Why would it be more effective to get pupils to remember about Franz Ferdinand by doing stuff that mostly doesn't involve writing or thinking about Franz Ferdinand?

No arsing around, here's a big sheet of questions on fractions, now get on with it. But surely you teach them how to do it - how to obtain full marks, you don't just get them to practice over and over again, in the hope that they will eventually figure out how to?

Of course I teach them how to do fractions, but when it's over to them they're doing fractions, they're not making up an interpretive dance about fractions.