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'm really Maths but used to teach a lot of ICT and Computing. My Y7 ICT groups used to set their own homework deadlines and sometimes the homework itself, depending on the project we were working on.
Sometimes a pupil would come to me very shamefaced to say they had missed their (self-imposed) deadline. I used to ask them to think about what the reason for missing the deadline was and then re-negotiate it with themselves. This generally resulted in better homework compliance than if I set all the homework and deadlines - wouldn't work for Maths though. For Maths I used to set 3 levels - everyone must do questions 1-10, for extra credit do 11-15, for a commendation 17 and 18 as well. This too worked well.
Would never set art/craft homeworks because so unfair on pupils without someone to help or if the child found such tasks difficult.

they're not making up an interpretive dance about fractions. and unless you were prepared to teach them interpretive dance - it would be ridiculous to expect them to be marked and improve on it - without the appropriate teaching and feedback!

noble You are going to have such fun when your DCs get to secondary. You will see your colleagues in other departments in a whole new light when you see their homeworks.

Oh I know, Teen! Thankfully, my DCs' primary school doesn't do any craft homework, just English, maths and spelling. But at secondary I've seen kids carefully carrying stuff and asked them what it is. 'An eye made out of jelly', something involving a bottle, a balloon and some elastic bands (no idea), various cakes and dioramas. You see them stacked up at the back of classrooms until they eventually get binned.

I and my children most certainly find craft homeworks miserable. It is so very rare to find a practical project that can be achieved without significant outlay AND that looks how one might want it to.

I'd also say it's a very different thing offering children the choice of diorama or essay in a lesson with the resources all laid out there and then compares with being asked to ho home and scare up the resources from somewhere.

Minecraft is the way forward for the castle homeworks. My son hates craft but happily spent several hours doing minecraft motte and bailey etc.

You could probably knock up a fairly passable cell too? (have reasonable knowledge of cells but limited knowledge of Minecraft).

I've been guilty of setting the "make a cell" homework in the past. Nobody has ever complained (to me! They might all be cursing at home...).

It seemed from the OP as if the students got a choice as to how to present their homework- so isn't this the ideal opportunity for students who figure out for themselves how they learn? The ones who think 3-dimensionally might learn more from making the cake (maybe linking it to one specific castle), the ones who would only be getting stuck in the pritt stick (that would be me) can choose the poster or powerpoint option instead. So nothing to complain about if you're not arty- just don't choose the arty option then.

As for powerpoint, surely the students can be shown how to do a powerpoint that isn't about words on a screen but about images that you can then talk around? I use powerpoints every week: they hardly have any words on them at all.

Interesting to get insight into this... I basically agree with everything Noble says (not unusual) and DTD will not be making a model/cake castle as that is not going to teach her about History. I'm going with labelled picture, as that will help consolidate what she's learning in class. Interestingly, other DTD is doing the same topic and her teacher has set her a writing task about it.

We had our fair share of craft/baking projects at primary school and none of it taught them any actual content. What's wrong with just telling them the stuff they need to know?

And whoever it was having a pop at me because they go to a grammar school - yes you are right - I am, in general, not a supporter of selective education. Never have been. But they wanted to have a go at the 11+ and so we let them. No tutors, no time spent preparing. They got in. They then had the choice of that school or the very decent local comp. They chose the grammar. It was relevant up thread because someone asked if it was a mixed ability class. I'm not suggesting that being at a grammar school should mean that homework is more challenging - all schools should only set homework that's useful IMO.

"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."

Exactly.

"Memory is the residue of thought." What we remember from any given length of time will depend primarily on what we thought about during that activity. If I spend three hours making a castle, I will probably spend about 6 minutes thinking about history and about 174 minutes thinking about glue, lolly sticks and paintbrushes. If this kind of thing takes up a lot of time in the history syllabus, that could explain why there has been a devastating collapse in teenagers' historical knowledge levels over the past few decades.

A Y7 student is not a small child. At secondary level, a history unit which touches on castles should be primarily about the role castles played in defense, the development of states and so on. A writing task which includes a well-labelled diagram would be appropriate.

MerryMarigold

So glad you said that.

Doing a poster of a eukaryotic cell is IMHO pointless, everyone goes on the internet and prints things out and do not learn.

My preferred cell model is done with pizza.

OP

Your children are both learning that they have to do homework. Alo the castle 'thing' I imagine started as a model of a castle but had some poor child in tears because they are not good at building models so it is now a 'thing'.

Pengwwyn the idea that some children learn better by doing has been largely debunked.

I guess DTD2 is just unlucky that she seems to have the teachers who set homework because it says on the homework timetable that they have to. Making a bookmark also taught her nothing about English (she learned that her English teacher hates it when people fold pages over and also that some of the DC in her class don’t use bookmarks) and drawing a picture of herself had little to do with French but there we go. I supppse if I didn’t have twins I’d be unable to make direct comparisons and so would be less

For the first time ever, I find myself disagreeing with noblegiraffe and Evil Twins.

Today is a sad sad day

EvilTwins I am a Grammar School teacher (not a history teacher though!) and in both Grammars I have taught at, the castle making in history has been infamous-it is celebrated with a Show display and has always been thought of as a lovely thing to do.

It never occurred to me that some people would think that a homework other than writing something down on a piece of paper, would be pointless.

Just because some people are ‘not good at craft’ shouldn’t mean that automatically they should never do it. Surely the same as handwriting or writing essays or writing out maths equations? “Oh I’m not good still it so pointless for me!” A very convenient get-out clause...

If you want to know some of the reasons why those tasks are set from another teacher’s point of view:

Castle Making:
the research behind the different named components.
How they all fit together (such as a drawbridge) is basic engineering.
If a poster is created (they are not completely pointless) it can help label parts then be placed on the wall in the classroom to be seen daily.

Creating a PowerPoint:

If you knew the normally dire PowerPoints that are generated by students and some teachers alike (death by animation/copy and paste everything rather than bullet points/not embedding videos but using poor links etc.) then you would understand the need to practise this from a very early age.

Reading from a PowerPoint is a completely different skill than reading from a poem or story on a bit of paper. Sorry but it is. With a PowerPoint, you shouldn’t need to be holding paper and be reading from it or have your back to the classroom and just read out word for word what’s on the screen. I specifically teach students to be able to stand and face an audience and only briefly glance at the prompts in a PowerPoint to then speak out loud. Much much more different than just reading the exact words, in a line. This is easier to do when you have made the PowerPoint, rather than using someone else’s.

To dismiss a task as being pointless just because you don’t see a point in it, is extremely insulting to the teacher who has used their professional judgement to set a task.

My homework tasks, despite being a Computing teacher, are actually never using a computer (practical tasks are done in the lesson) but always handwritten as I need to be able to provide the practice for that as every test/public exam for the subject is on paper. However, I always get parents question why I never allow them to do a piece of homework on the computer to make it easier for them (far too easy to copy and paste!). You can’t win with everyone!

kitty I don’t think I explained the PowerPoint homework very well. They weren’t learning ICT skills or presenting with a PowerPoint - it was literally how to stand, how loudly to speak, where to look etc when addressing a group of people. I suspect the teacher shot herself in the foot by setting the homework to some extent because she would have ended up with a class who ignored all of the things they’d done in class and got hung up on reading the PowerPoints out.

I don’t think homework is pointless if it’s not written on a piece of paper, but I do think it’s pointless if it doesn’t involve any actual learning which is relevant to the subject. I can guarantee that no child making an edible castle will learn anything useful about castles. They might learn about engineering/problem solving/baking but nothing about history because you know, the Normans didn’t build castles out of cake.

Pengwyyn lots of research. Learning styles is a myth/fad/useless bit of pseudo-science.

And yes, I am comparing the two in terms of the lack of actual learning about the subject involved.

A creative homework doesn't have to be baking cakes etc.

I've had students do a creative reaponse to a literature text. Some of the responses included:
A piece of art inspired by the text with an accompanying commentary
A piece of blackout poetry from pages in the text, decorated to fit the themes
Key quotations written in beautiful calligraphy and areanged like a wordle
Decorated cupcakes one for each of the key themes with a commentary about their choices
A dramatic monologue from a minor character in the background of a key scene

They were y10. There was definitely a point to it. They were working with the text, consolodating knowledge and had to produce an explanation for their choices.

I don't think students should have them set regularly but I wouldn't dismiss them. They can be quite nice in between other more focussed skills homework (if they are well designed).

Can I just say this doesn't stop! Myy DS1 in sixth form had to produce n 'infographic'. It seems universities now assess everything via posters too.

DS spent two hours crying over the attachment which confused him more with its complex IT instructions (teachers assume much higher IT skills than many students often have). I spent an hour trying to help.We shouted at each other. he wrote about 5 lines on a pppt and will be assumed to have spent 5 mins in total on his homework..

sigh.

I do sometimes wonder f teachers could do the homework they set! And I am one!

This was a typical maximum effort/minimal marking homework... I guess the students should do more work that the teacher though!

I am very sensitive now as a teacher with a child of my own (two actually) who has TERRIBLE spatial skills and always set alternatives to creative homework and never judge effort on appearance of work.

That said, schools should be more alert to the fact that most GCSEs now have no coursework and everything will be handwritten in exams. I am not saying all homeworks should link to this but at DS2's school , hardly any of them do (lots of posters) and he is year 9. And there is far too much priority placed on IT skills and pretty presentation .

Just had Ofsted so may be speaking like one...

I do agree there is a place for creativity. In the case of DS1's infographic homework, I would in my old life as a comms A level teacher , have spent 3 weeks probably teaching them how to do one. It's throwing homework at students with no prior support that drives me mad.

"make a cell" homework in the past. Nobody has ever complained (to me! They might all be cursing at home...). Yep we were cursing the teacher at home.