Year Nine Parents/Teachers

[hennipenni]

How much homework should a yr nine pupil be getting? My DD seems to get very, very little if any at all so, before I complain/query it again, I wondered what the general aqmount was/should be. TIA

How many minutes a week you spend on doing homework presumably also depends on various factors unrelated to the homework itself: how bright you are, how well organised you are, how attentive you are in class, how well you know the subject, how fast you write.

I am often horrified to hear how many hours my students spend doing their (very modest) prepared tasks: I sometimes wonder if they know how to concentrate at all. On the other hand, I am sure some of the brighter students sail through it.

45 minutes for a very bright very focused student might be the same amount of work as 5 hours for a student who struggles or wool- gathers.

Message withdrawn

Bagsforlife,

I don't disagree with you! (re homework amounts in different schools and not needing incessant homework), I was just reporting how this parent felt about it. I know of another family with girls at the same grammar who DO feel that they get far too much homework and HAVE complained.

FWIW, about half a term after my DD had started in Y7 at her comp, the Head of Year told all the Y7s they were spending far too much time on homework tasks.

bloss on Thu 12-Feb-09 15:03:12
"Our Year 9s do 2 hours a night."

How do you manage that? Does every student get individual homework? Or do you mean, they do a task that is estimated to take the average student 2 hours? Surely they won't all be spending the same amount of time? A project that would take dd's friend 2 hours would probably be a half hour job for dd.

I set two pieces a week - one finishing off classwork or learning/revising for a test, the other an extension piece to consolidate what has been done in lessons. It should take about 30 minutes per piece, but obviously depends a lot on the child.

Message withdrawn

Same in my school, Bloss.

Homework, like classwork, is differentiated. There will be different tasks or outcomes depending on the student.

The pupils know how much time they are supposed to take. If the task is open-ended and they are fast workers, they would be expected to produce more than a slower, weaker student.

If I know that they have just spent five minutes on their homework, I will get them to repeat it.

They soon learn the expectations.

Sometimes a teacher will get it wrong and give either too much or too little homework. If the homework is genuinely too much for a pupil, they should be allowed to stop at the end of the allocated time.

At my DSs school they get 3 subjects on 3 nights per week and 4 subjects the other 2 nights.I think the policy is that homework is 30 mins per subject but in reality is probably half that It is a grammar schiool