first day of kindergarten and homework!

"Ericka Kammerer" wrote in message
. ..
frank megaweege wrote:
Ericka Kammerer wrote:
frank megaweege wrote:

In my opinion the o.p. overreacted to a couple of assignments the first
week of school. Most likely things will settle down into a reasonable
routine.
Why would you assume that when she had to sign
a homework policy that said kindergarteners were expected
to do a half hour a night and 3rd graders were expected
to do 1.5 hours a night? Sounds to me like they said
what they meant and meant what they said.

The signed agreement only makes the complaining worse. She knew going
in!

Apparently some people told her it wasn't going
to be as much as that in practice, but I agree, the agreement
was a red flag.

I am afraid I would be unlikely to sign an agreement like this in the first
place unless there was some way for teachers to assure that the homework
which could not be completed in the given length of time would not be held
against the child, either grade wise or other wise. That is just not
possible I am afraid

Here in the school district my children attend some of the schools have
started having weekly homework "contracts" which means that the learning
goals for the week to come are sent home on the Friday before. The entire
week's homework requirements are in the contract folder. The homework
contract folder is due back on Thursdays with a new one sent home on Friday.
Thus giving the child almost a full week to complete all of the assignments
and for the parent to make sure their children are reaching the goals. If
something extra comes up or there are problem areas, then supplementary work
is sent home for the parent and child to work on together throughout a
week's time.

My niece and nephew's teachers's utilized the contract system last year and
everyone was really pleased with the outcome. This does require that
teachers plan a great deal in advance but it has worked really well in the
schools using it.

Cindi


I'm all for research based best practices and I realize there are many
inefficiencies in the way most kids are educated. But some of the
scenarios being talked about (eg. a third grader with 1.5 hours of
homework every night that you mentioned) sound outlandish, to the point
that I have a hard time believing they're prevelant in real life.
Why would you say that? I've HAD 3rd graders with
that much homework, and the OP had to sign a statement
saying the expectation was that much homework. You may
be fortunate that this is not the case in your neck of
the woods, but I can assure you that it happens in other
places. Do you think we are lying about that?

Not lying. But the issue seems overblown.

Overblown, how? How would you deal with 1.5 hours
of homework with your 8yo?

Best wishes,
Ericka

"Ericka Kammerer" wrote in message
. ..
I think many of them have no idea how long it is
taking children to do the homework. Parents don't say
anything for fear of being labeled unsupportive (or
for fear of their children being labeled stupid or
uncooperative), so the teachers go on blithely assigning
more and more homework and perceive the few who speak
up as outliers.

I absolutely agree. My older daughter once had homework that exceeded the
limit by a ton. She hit the limit and was only half way there. We wrote a
note, and got back an apology sent to the whole class. Apparently the
teacher wrote down the wrong series of problems, and didn't realize it until
the kids started coming back with reams of homework. I can't even imagine
those kids who spent three hours working on just one subject. But I think
parents are afraid to speak up. Every teacher I've talked to at teacher
conferences asks how much time it takes for my child to do the homework. I
presume they ask every parent that, at every conference. At the beginning
of the year they say how much homework they expect to be giving out, and ASK
that we tell them if it's exceeding that amount. Yet when I hear parents
complaining about the amount of homework very few of them admit to sending a
note or contacting the teacher to tell them how long its taking. When so
few speak up they do look like outliers.

On the other hand, sometimes the problem is parental expectations. Our
school had a 5th grade year long project. It was called A to Z journal, and
each full week they'd get four words that started with that letter of the
alphabet. The words could be places, people, scientific words, verbs,
sports, quite a variety of things. Their assignment was to pick one or two
of the words and tell about them, with illustrations, stories, definitions,
etc. It was meant to expand their knowledge, but still let them pick
something that was of interest each week. It was expected that each letter
(not each word) would take about a page. Well, some parents got extremely
upset saying this was taking their child two or three hours a night.
Really, cutting out a map and looking up the definition of a word would take
15 hours. Obviously they weren't happy with picking one or two words, and
filling out a single page, they were going for more than that. Though I
remember the pages being graded more on a "yes" you did it or "no" you
didn't do it. If at the end of the year you had a page a letter you got an
A.) Because of the complaints the project was cancelled. The parents just
couldn't judge when their kids were going overboard, and couldn't live with
them turning in less than the best one.

Many project have been moved back to school. The California Missions had
become things of beauty, and the crowning glory was when a fourth grade
teacher realized a kid had turned in HER mission from when she was in fourth
grade that had been remodelled a dozen times. Now they are done during
class time. The science fair used to be optional. Now they are making it
required for 6th graders, but this first year, they realized many of the
winning entries were done entirely by the parents. The give away was the
interview, some students seemed surprised when the judges gave them the name
of their project, and not suprisingly, had no idea how the experiment
worked.

It seems there is a lot of pressure not only on kids doing well in school,
but kids looking like they are doing well in school.

Cathy Kearns wrote:

On the other hand, sometimes the problem is parental expectations.
snip
The parents just
couldn't judge when their kids were going overboard, and couldn't live with
them turning in less than the best one.

This certainly happens sometimes.

Many project have been moved back to school. The California Missions had
become things of beauty, and the crowning glory was when a fourth grade
teacher realized a kid had turned in HER mission from when she was in fourth
grade that had been remodelled a dozen times. Now they are done during
class time. The science fair used to be optional. Now they are making it
required for 6th graders, but this first year, they realized many of the
winning entries were done entirely by the parents. The give away was the
interview, some students seemed surprised when the judges gave them the name
of their project, and not suprisingly, had no idea how the experiment
worked.

Yeah. Most of the time our science fair projects
have been done at home. I'm fine when they actually discuss
the project in school and teach the students how to do a
science fair project, even if much of the work is done at
home, but I get really cranky when they just send home a
packet explaining that the parents are supposed to guide
the kids through and teach them how to do a science fair
project and they don't do *anything* in class with it.
In 3rd grade, DS1 had a great situation. The project was
done at home, but there were interim deliverables in class
and the teacher went through the basic concepts along the
way, like hypotheses and methods and so on. In 4th grade,
DS1 came home with a packet and there was NOT ONE WORD
mentioned in class about it. He wasn't even sure for
a long time whether he was required to do it or not.
There was no teaching about how to conduct an experiment,
when there should have been some actual instructing
deepening his knowledge about how to do this. And then
to top it off, it was graded basically on a pass/fail
basis (you passed if you turned one it). I'm sorry,
but if they want him to spend that much time at home
on something on top of all his other work, then they
can bother to teach him something about it and take
the time to really go through the project and grade it
and give constructive feedback on it. In 5th grade,
they did the project in class (yay!). The whole class
had a coordinated project where they gathered a lot of
information as a class, discussed it, discussed experiments,
did research, and so on. Then, the class broke up into
groups with each group doing a specific project within
the realm of the class topic. They even built the displays
in class. I thought it was great. They learned a lot
and really got something out of it, both form-wise and
content-wise.

It seems there is a lot of pressure not only on kids doing well in school,
but kids looking like they are doing well in school.

Well, it's not surprising since that's the
example the school is setting for them, eh? ;-)

Best wishes,
Ericka

toypup wrote:
"frank megaweege" wrote in message
oups.com...

Ericka Kammerer wrote:
frank megaweege wrote:

In my opinion the o.p. overreacted to a couple of assignments the first
week of school. Most likely things will settle down into a reasonable
routine.

Why would you assume that when she had to sign
a homework policy that said kindergarteners were expected
to do a half hour a night and 3rd graders were expected
to do 1.5 hours a night? Sounds to me like they said
what they meant and meant what they said.

The signed agreement only makes the complaining worse. She knew going
in!

I knew he would have homework, but I didn't know it would be this intense.
I mean, I figured it would be half an hour of coloring or writing the letter
"A," not writing addresses and phone numbers, names of family and such *on
his first day* when many kindergarteners can't even write one letter. DS
spent numerous attempts making the letter "c." Imagine him doing the entire
assignment. I get the impression you were not the primary caretaker in your
home, considering your other posts. I think you don't have a clue what most
kindergarteners are like.

There are two primary cartakers in my home.
It's true I don't know what most kindergartners are like. I've only
spent significant time with one.
I agree that the assignment sounds like a bit much for the first day.
If it were me I wouldn't make an issue of it unless the assignments
were consistently overwhelming over the long run.
I don't advocate the position that more homework is better. My
position is to work as a partner with the teacher and school as much as
possible. There do have to be boundaries, and an excess of homework
could be one, but 'excess' has to be defined and my definition seems to
allow the teacher more leeway than many of yours does.

toto wrote:
On 11 Aug 2006 11:49:26 -0700, "frank megaweege"
wrote:

30 minutes of school assignments outside of the classroom
just does not seem like too much to ask.

In Kindergarten? These are 5 year olds, not older kids. The value of
homework in the lower grades has not been proven. I think a little
bit once in a while is fine, but not every night and not 30 minutes
worth for this age. Most 5 year olds still struggle with writing and
they need to get their fine motor skills up to par first.

I agree with you completely. I was actually thinking about 3rd or 4th
graders when I wrote the response. For sure, 1/2 hour is too much at
that age. The core of my suggestion, however, is that whatever amount
is reasonable at different ages, it should be time, not content bound.


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

toypup wrote:
"KenG" wrote in message
oups.com...
I noticed your conversation and would like to chime in. I'm a
psychologist and have been studying this issue of homework policy for
quite a while. I'm co-authoring a book with Dr. Jay Kuder, an
educational professor from Rowan University, called The Homework Trap.
Our book should be out in 2007.

Dr. Kuder and I are critics of homework policy. You concerns are just
a tip of the iceberg. It's my opinion that homework policy is highly
flawed because it is content based, not time based, and because parents
do not have final say over what will happen. I have great respect for
teachers and defer to them completely in devising the curriculum. If
they think some homework is good for children in early grades, I don't
have a problem with that. The problem comes up when their ideas and
suggestions turn into mandates for the child and parents. In the end,
you as the parent are the only one who sees what happens, in your home,
when your child attempts the work. There may be children for whom the
assignment given proves fun and enriching and not a problem. But if
you, as a parent, start having problems getting your child to comply,
you will find yourself virtually trapped. While it may not show in
kindergarten, your child's grades will start going downhill as zeros
are given out for work not done. While this seems fair in one way, it
also places children who can't do the work quickly in a bind where
their only option for avoiding low grades is cutting deeply into their
personal time, and for you, into your family time.

It's important to keep in mind that the school day is fixed by the
clock. Regardless of what goes on in the school, it ends at a
designated time. If parents lack the authority to bring the homework
assignment to a close when time is up, this will actually create
conflict at home and destine the child for problems later on.

I apologize for any grammatical errors in this message. I certainly
take care to write more precisely when writing my book. But I'm kind
of crunched for time right now, but could not resist replying to your
conversation when it popped up in my email (I have Google send me any
conversations that have the word homework in them).

I would be happy to address this issue in more detail at a later time.
Feel free to contact me at . If you
like, Dr. Kuder and I are available to make presentations on this topic
in different communities.

Ken Goldberg, Ph.D.

I am glad someone is writing a book about this. Maybe it will wake some
people up and start a national trend back to something more reasonable. I
feel the reason for the homework is the parents who think it's so wonderful.

The parents who think homework is wonderful are the parents whose
children aren't having problems with it. For the kids who do the best,
they don't actually have homework in the early grades since they finish
it all at home. They get recognized as "good students" Even though
they did not cut into their play time to do the work, they still absorb
the image that they are great students. When they reach high school or
college and begin voluntarily taking on harder work, they rally to the
demand, not because they have developed good habits in elementary
school but because of their self esteem and how their identity is
attached to this idea they are good students.

For average students, it's still not a problem for their parents
because they can complete the work within a reasonable amount of time,
even if their grades are not the best. So there is no real conflict at
home over the issue. Then, you have this other group of kids, up to
25% of them, who have to labor unreasonably long periods of time to get
the work done. For these children, current policy teaches them to hate
school and actually prepares them to not do the work at all by the time
they get older. Their parents are frustrated to the hilt yet find no
support because the majority of parents don't understand the problem.


The schools here test well and they must think it's because of all the
homework. I'm sure it's because they teach to the test, but that's how our
whole district is, not just DS's school.

"KenG" wrote in message
ups.com...

The parents who think homework is wonderful are the parents whose
children aren't having problems with it.

I don't think this is true. My children never had problems with homework.
I still don't think it's wonderful. I think its unfair to those kids whose
parents don't understand what is being taught, so they can't get help at
home. I think many families have activities that they feel would make their
child a better person, and these activities suffer due to the time homework
takes. I think much of it is busy work. I think it would be interesting to
ask the teacher if they had an extra (10 minutes a year) added to the school
day, and couldn't assign homework, is this what you would have the students
spend time doing?

Cathy Kearns wrote:
"KenG" wrote in message
ups.com...

The parents who think homework is wonderful are the parents whose
children aren't having problems with it.


I don't think this is true. My children never had problems with homework.
I still don't think it's wonderful. I think its unfair to those kids whose
parents don't understand what is being taught, so they can't get help at
home. I think many families have activities that they feel would make their
child a better person, and these activities suffer due to the time homework
takes. I think much of it is busy work. I think it would be interesting to
ask the teacher if they had an extra (10 minutes a year) added to the school
day, and couldn't assign homework, is this what you would have the students
spend time doing?



I tend to agree with this - as a parent, I think most of the homework
that comes home is unnecessary, busy work, and a waste of time, even
though my school age daughter is an excellent student and has no
problems completing her homework. It does nothing but take up valuable
time that kids need to play and have unstructured time. There should be
more than enough time in the structured setting/school day to complete
requisite tasks, in my opinion. I consider exceptions to be a)
encouraging leisure reading outside of school, b) practice spelling
words, and c) reinforcing math concepts, all of which should take a
reasonable amount of time, I like the 10 minutes per grade rule I've
seen on this thread. I'm not sure my daughter's school policy, but it
has been reasonable.

c.

c. wrote:
Cathy Kearns wrote:
"KenG" wrote in message
ups.com...

The parents who think homework is wonderful are the parents whose
children aren't having problems with it.


I don't think this is true. My children never had problems with
homework.
I still don't think it's wonderful. I think its unfair to those kids
whose
parents don't understand what is being taught, so they can't get help at
home. I think many families have activities that they feel would make
their
child a better person, and these activities suffer due to the time
homework
takes. I think much of it is busy work. I think it would be
interesting to
ask the teacher if they had an extra (10 minutes a year) added to the
school
day, and couldn't assign homework, is this what you would have the
students
spend time doing?

I tend to agree with this - as a parent, I think most of the homework
that comes home is unnecessary, busy work, and a waste of time, even
though my school age daughter is an excellent student and has no
problems completing her homework. It does nothing but take up valuable
time that kids need to play and have unstructured time. There should be
more than enough time in the structured setting/school day to complete
requisite tasks, in my opinion. I consider exceptions to be a)
encouraging leisure reading outside of school, b) practice spelling
words, and c) reinforcing math concepts, all of which should take a
reasonable amount of time, I like the 10 minutes per grade rule I've
seen on this thread. I'm not sure my daughter's school policy, but it
has been reasonable.

My kids haven't really had busy work for homework.
In general, the homework has been good, relevant homework.
My kids are also very good students. Frankly, sometimes I
long for busy work homework ;-) At least they'd be able
to blow through that quickly! All these interesting, creative
homework assignments take *TIME*. Often lots of it. I
think teachers are particularly bad at estimating how long
the "interesting" assignments will take.
Now, if there is a lot of busywork, I suppose
the more capable students will speed through it more
quickly and get more of it knocked out during class.
Other kinds of homework might impact students more
evenly across the board. In any case, when you get
down to brass tacks, if elementary school aged kids are
doing hours of homework a night, they're paying a price
somewhere. That's part of the reason we get all these prima
donnas whose families have to cater to them. School is
the top priority, and it takes most of their time, so
parents don't want to ask them to help around the house
or community because it seems unfair to have their nose
to the grindstone all the time. This creates some very
unrealistic expectations. I simply don't believe that
3rd graders require more time spent on schoolwork than
a 40 hour work week in order to learn what they
need to learn! It just doesn't pass the laugh test.
I think it's a reality that those who are
struggling in school will probably need to spend more
time outside of school working on their skills. It
seems obvious to me that the amount of homework should
be targeted to be doable by those who need it most,
not what can be breezed through by those who have already
mastered the material. Frankly, those kids don't need
to be doing it at all, for the most part.

Best wishes,
Ericka

"frank megaweege" wrote in
ups.com:


StephanieTheGoofy wrote:

[stayed away from the computer this weekend]

To be honest, I'm somewhat playing devil's advocate,
because my kindergartner didn't have 30 minutes of
homework every night. He had something most days,
probably averaging more like 10 or 15 minutes.
Occasionally it took 30 or more. My inclination is to
support the teacher and the school in their mission and
to accept that every policy may not be ideal for each
individual child. My peeve on this issue is the sense
that some parents seem antagonistic towards the role of
public education. To a certain extent, when you're
child enters school, you are giving him up to the
collective.


We've become The Borg?


society

this is another reason why my kid is not ever going to public
school...
kindergarteners should not have any homework. zero. zip.
nada. kindergarten should be an enjoyable introduction to the
joy of learning (which AFAICS, public schools drive out of a
kid as fast as possible), not something resembling boot camp
with additional work at home when a kid should be able to play
& be a kid.
first grade homework of 15 minutes or so of spelling, math or
science is fine. more than that is too much, IMO.
i didn't have real homework until 3rd or 4th grade & it
wasn't nightly. it was week long or forenightly projects. i
could not support a teacher or a school that expected my child
to give up his life outside school to homework, especially not
in kindergarten.

of course, i have no respect for "society" either
lee

--
Question with boldness even the existence of god; because if
there be
one, he must more approve the homage of reason than that of
blindfolded
fear. - Thomas Jefferson