Parent would appreciate advice: benefits (or not) of homework in Y1

[SmaugMum]

Please forgive my intrusion on your dedicated board but I’d be very grateful for some guidance from real-life (anonymous) teachers before I contact my child’s school directly (and potentially make an idiot of myself).

I am a single parent to two children; my elder DD has just started Y9 in a super-selective grammar school but needs a lot of scaffolding as she is registered blind, while my younger DD is now in Y1.

Younger DD seems to be doing okay in school and she finished YR on orange reading books (if that has anything to do with the price of fish!)

Both of my children do a number of extra-curricular activities and they’re passionate about them after the inertia of the past 18 months.

So, here’s the rub, DD2 came home from school on Friday with a spellings ‘homework’ book and the plan is that she practises and learns eight new words, including writing a full sentence for each one in her book.

Now, please feel free to call me a slacker mum, but the nightly reading books are 24-pages long, and in between mugging up on Y9 maths 😱 to help DD1, serving as a taxi driver, oh, and caring for my newly-widowed CEV and frail mum, there simply isn’t the time to complete this task. I should add that I am also caring for my brother who is just home after spending the past two weeks seriously ill in hospital.

DD2 attends a different primary school but DD1 never had any formal homework in infants or juniors.

I’d really love to hear primary teachers’ opinions on the benefits or otherwise of homework at such an early age. I’m also more than happy to be told that my thinking that this is too much is seriously out of kilter with current educational guidance.

Most research I've encountered lately suggests homework doesn't actually serve any benefit, but I imagine the idea people hold is that it encourages parents to be active in their child's learning/reading/etc which we do know has a benefit. Your child will be smarter if you read to them and engage them at home, busy work homework does not necessarily need to be the way.

Are the spellings weekly?
Ours used to start y3 but ive seen y2 now have some easy ones.
If it's weekly i would just do it. Even with writing sentences it would take maybe 10-15min.
I certainly think maths homework helps as our school suddenly got much better ks2 results with using mathletics. Spellings probably helps less as it's easily forgotten. Also as you know soon you wont needto listen to as much reading

Homework is a waste of time for primary children, even more so in key stage 1.

The spelling homework is annoying (most teachers admit spelling homework has no impact on spelling in their writing) but it's pretty normal for KS1 - I say this as a KS1 teacher and parent of children in infants. I'd try to get her to do 2 sentences per day to split up the sentence writing.

With reading, you don't have to read the whole book in one evening. Once children are beyond the easiest phonetically decodable books, teachers will be completely used to it taking 2 or 3 nights or longer to read a book. If she's on orange, I'd do the book in 2 chunks but if it's too much, 8 pages a night would be absolutely normal. The teachers will probably just be pleased that she's actually reading at home!

If she's orange in y1 she's doing well. I personally wouldn't read every night, or if mandatory just a few pages and see if she can read silently to herself . Or get her to read out loud while you're doing other things.

Quality not quantity I'd go for at that stage, asking comp questions etc.

I personally disagree with homework in primary, certainly ks1, beyond reading.

Spellings in y1 if done shouldn't include sentences in my opinion.

In my experience and watching my boy, it really turns them off writing if it becomes laborious. There will be children in the class who will be really hating doing that.

I was a rubbish mum at that stage as had a small baby and a boy who hated reading. I think we managed twice a week. But he's bright and keen to please. He's an independent reader now in y4 and enjoys reading by himself (as long as it's history based!)

Homework in primary isn't mandatory at all.