I hate homework!

"Dave {Reply Address in.Sig}" wrote in message
I think it's far too young to have homework. I didn't have to do homework
until I was 11. What's happened to letting children be children?

IMO, it's mostly because of the parents wanting to have gifted kids. Most of
the parents I know insist upon homework.

--
Sue (mom to three girls)

Sue wrote:
"Dave {Reply Address in.Sig}" wrote in message
I think it's far too young to have homework. I didn't have to do homework
until I was 11. What's happened to letting children be children?

IMO, it's mostly because of the parents wanting to have gifted kids. Most of
the parents I know insist upon homework.

They don't really want gifted kids. They just want
bragging rights and want their kids to get into prestigious
colleges and be "successful" (as defined by them).

Best wishes,
Ericka

Sue wrote:
"Dave {Reply Address in.Sig}" wrote in message
I think it's far too young to have homework. I didn't have to do homework
until I was 11. What's happened to letting children be children?

IMO, it's mostly because of the parents wanting to have gifted kids. Most of
the parents I know insist upon homework.


Part of it is having parents helping kids with their skills (after all,
if every teacher spent 15 extra minutes with each of their twenty kids,
that's 300 minutes or 5 hours) that teachers don't have time to do. Part
of it is having students practice what they learn in class. Part of it
is kids learning discipline so that when they do get older, they know
how to do it.

Some of it is that for kids to finish projects and such, they need more
time than is available in school.

One of the major teacher organizations (I think either Amer. Federation
of Teachers or Nat'l Education Association) recommends about 10 minutes
per grade (10 minutes, in 1st grade, 60 in 6th grade, etc.).

Jeff

"Banty" wrote in message
...

Set a timer for 15 minutes. Encourage your son to concentrate for those
15 minutes. Let him work aloud if it helps him with the sentence
construction.

Considering homework took a few hours in kindergarten, 15 minutes would mean
not much of it would get done. Granted, the few hours was him complaining
it was too hard or him drifting off, but he would not concentrate any better
if I had set his timer for 15 minutes. It would just mean he may do 1/100
of his assignment.


1. The incomplete state of the homeworks is still of consequence! Even
after
the 15-minute time discussion with me, the parent! The lack of completion
would
still go into the ledger, AND - get this - homeworks were sometimes traded
between students for them to *grade each other*. Some kind of group
learning
hoo ha that the teachers believe in.

I agree with this. It does no good to say it's okay to turn it in
incomplete and then mark it in the ledger as incomplete and then lower the
homework grade on the report card.


2. My son's own internalized ethic that he was to finish it, and to it
well.
He would know that other students *were* finishing the homeworks. He'd
really
want to complete them, woudl *not* want to stop at 15 minutes, so there we
would
be back at square one.

This *did* *not* *work*. Undermined by the same teacher who recommended
it.

And anyway - why on earth would we want to be teaching our kids to time a
task,
and blow off the undone remainder?? That's not a good thing to teach.

Agreed again. I would not want to do the timer for that reason. I do not
want to teach my child it is okay not to complete homework. It ill only
make it very difficult later, when homework really does need to be completed
and the grade does begin to make a difference.




While he is working, do whatever you can to help him concentrate. Swing
on over occasionally to help him or praise him or re-focus him. Remind
him that his daily goal is FIVE sentences, not 20 at a time. (Five is
actually quite a lot for his age, but that's the teacher's problem.)

Make sure he first does the word(s) he's not already familiar with.
At another time, quiz him aloud on spelling and meanings of his words.

So - he's having problems getting going, and the solution is to start in
on the
*hardest* part?

Yes. Do the easiest stuff first. That way, when things get rough, at least
some of it is done.

DS used to want to do the hardest stuff first, but he'd get stuck and then
nothing got done.

"Chookie" wrote in message
news:ehrebeniuk-D22948.21014803042008@news...
I have never found making up sentences difficult, but I never had homework
at
his age (he is 7yo and in Year 2, third year of school). I have no
particular
enthusiasm for HW so young but feel that just dropping it would reward him
for
being lazy. His teacher might be amenable to some changes to his HW, but I
would prefer to give him some sort of framework for developing sentences.
He
is not finding sentence construction boring, just difficult; and I feel he
is
both easily distracted from it and over-thinking the sentences. I have
PLENTY
of things I would rather (or need to) be doing than standing over L for
three
hours, but plainly my cruise-past-frequently style is not working and the
situation is getting worse rather than better. OTOH I can't work out what
else I should do as I don't believe in doing the homework for him.
Plainly
the natural consequence of not having any playtime is an insufficient
deterrent.

Last year, when DS was in kindergarten, he had great difficulty completing
his homework. He'd spend hours just sitting there. One time, he had his
journal draft all written out and it took three hours just to copy it to a
final draft (just eight sentences).

DS's (now 6 yo) doing very well this year, even going straight to the office
to do it all without being told. I'm not sure if it's anything that I did
or just maturity, but I can tell you some of my strategies.

Have you tried planning something fun after homework if it gets completed in
a timely manner? Does that get him to concentrate better? I find that DS
can really get moving if he's motivated by an activity.

If I felt DS did not understand the work, I'd have him practice some more
with me until it became easier for him. I know that seems wrong making him
do more of what he didn't want to do in the first place, but it did have its
intended effect. If DS did not know the material, the reviews with me
helped him with his schoolwork and homework. If he did know the material
and just was wasting time, he'd have motivation to pick up the pace a
little.

I don't believe in too much homework for kids, but unlike others, I do not
think your child's load is too much. DS is in first grade now and is
writing his spelling words out three times each on Mondays, he has at least
one math page MTWTn, he has reading comprehension on Tuesdays, a book report
(two sentences and a picture) on Wednesdays and a journal (about 1 1/2 pages
large print) with full color picture on Thursdays, and a vocabulary test and
memory challenge to study for once a week. It does not take him very long
to finish -- less than 10 minutes a day and the journal might take half an
hour.

For the average second grader, I wouldn't expect 20 sentences a week to take
very long at all. Though your child can form complicated sentences
verbally, writing is a whole different beast, as many can attest. See if
the teacher has an strategies for teaching writing. Perhaps start with a
rigid structure and then then expand from there? Is he allowed, for
instance to write, "A dog is an animal. A bird is an animal. A lizard is
an animal." When that week's words are "dog," "bird," and "lizard"? Later,
you can work on expanding in complexity. Maybe for now, just get him to
write. Once the words start flowing, it might get rid of that writer's
block.

"Ericka Kammerer" wrote in message
...
Sue wrote:
"Dave {Reply Address in.Sig}" wrote in message
I think it's far too young to have homework. I didn't have to do
homework
until I was 11. What's happened to letting children be children?

IMO, it's mostly because of the parents wanting to have gifted kids. Most
of the parents I know insist upon homework.

They don't really want gifted kids. They just want
bragging rights and want their kids to get into prestigious
colleges and be "successful" (as defined by them).

Best wishes,
Ericka


You guys know people like this? This is kind of obscene if you ask me.

Stephanie wrote:
"Ericka Kammerer" wrote in message
...
Sue wrote:
"Dave {Reply Address in.Sig}" wrote in message
I think it's far too young to have homework. I didn't have to do
homework
until I was 11. What's happened to letting children be children?
IMO, it's mostly because of the parents wanting to have gifted kids. Most
of the parents I know insist upon homework.
They don't really want gifted kids. They just want
bragging rights and want their kids to get into prestigious
colleges and be "successful" (as defined by them).

You guys know people like this? This is kind of obscene if you ask me.

Sure. Obviously, they don't frame it to themselves
that way, and obviously it's not everyone, but there are
at least around here there are plenty of people who spend a
great deal of time and energy pushing, pushing, pushing
their kids to be gifted. They want them in the GT programs
regardless of their test scores (if their little darlings
aren't scoring high enough, it must be the test at fault).
They're the ones doing flash cards with their infants, sending
their perfectly normal preschoolers to academic prep programs,
piling on the outside work in early elementary to be sure that
their kids are advanced enough that they will at least appear
gifted enough to get into the GT program (because, you know,
average or normal isn't good enough for them). No matter how
many times they're told that the tests are ability tests, not
achievement tests, they still believe that with enough prep,
their kids will get in. (And since the tests aren't perfect,
it's true that enough prep probably does confer a small
advantage.) If the kids don't get in, they'll be the ones
raising hell up the chain of command in the school district
to get some kind of exception. If they had any clue, they
would accept and love and support their children *as they
are*, but to them, it's more important that their children
get all the right titles and accolades, even if that means
sacrificing their childhood.

Best wishes,
Ericka

toypup wrote:

For the average second grader, I wouldn't expect 20 sentences a week to
take very long at all. Though your child can form complicated sentences
verbally, writing is a whole different beast, as many can attest. See
if the teacher has an strategies for teaching writing. Perhaps start
with a rigid structure and then then expand from there? Is he allowed,
for instance to write, "A dog is an animal. A bird is an animal. A
lizard is an animal." When that week's words are "dog," "bird," and
"lizard"?

She said previously that every sentence must include
a conjunction, so there's a requirement for at least
compound sentences. I wouldn't be surprised if the teacher
also expects that the meaning of the word be obvious from
its use in the sentence (typical requirement for vocabulary
words). Still, even the requirement for the use of a
conjunction ups the ante substantially for a 2nd grader.

Best wishes,
Ericka

Most of the parents I know insist upon homework.

Strange, isn't it? I don't see the point of homework before secondary
school but other parents seem to like it, goodness knows why.

Actually, I have to chalk up a success on this to my son's school. The
school did a survey on what parents wanted, and it turned out that
what parents wanted (well not me of course, I despise homework, but
other parents!) was maths homework for the 7/8 year olds. So did the
school ask the P3/4 teachers to set and mark lots of maths worksheets?
No.

What the school did was to set up a games library. Each child could
take a maths-related game home for a week. They had a huge variety of
games at different levels - obvious ones like snakes and ladders,
specially designed games like the pizza game for fractions, logic and
puzzle games, and - very popular! - physical games like darts and
hopscotch mats. As well as the game rules, each game had instructions
for the parents with some activities and some maths-related language
to use, which had been designed at another school.

Since it was parents who asked for it, the library was run by parent
volunteers, with the maths specialist teacher in overall charge. Each
class used the games library for one term, with parents from that
class handling the withdrawals and returns for an hour each week.

I have to say it worked a treat. Of course my son - who likes maths -
enjoyed the games. But what made it worth the effort was hearing about
one of the other kids who is totally non-mathematical enthusiastically
playing snakes and ladders with her best friend. She wouldn't have
wanted to play if her parents had suggested it, but because the game
was *her* choice, well, there you go :-)

Cailleach

On Apr 4, 12:14*am, "Sue" wrote:
"Dave {Reply Address in.Sig}" wrote in message

I think it's far too young to have homework. I didn't have to do homework
until I was 11. What's happened to letting children be children?

IMO, it's mostly because of the parents wanting to have gifted kids. Most of
the parents I know insist upon homework.

--
Sue (mom to three girls)

"Ericka Kammerer" wrote in message
. ..
Stephanie wrote:
"Ericka Kammerer" wrote in message
...
Sue wrote:
"Dave {Reply Address in.Sig}" wrote in message
I think it's far too young to have homework. I didn't have to do
homework
until I was 11. What's happened to letting children be children?
IMO, it's mostly because of the parents wanting to have gifted kids.
Most of the parents I know insist upon homework.
They don't really want gifted kids. They just want
bragging rights and want their kids to get into prestigious
colleges and be "successful" (as defined by them).

You guys know people like this? This is kind of obscene if you ask me.

Sure. Obviously, they don't frame it to themselves
that way, and obviously it's not everyone, but there are
at least around here there are plenty of people who spend a
great deal of time and energy pushing, pushing, pushing
their kids to be gifted. They want them in the GT programs
regardless of their test scores (if their little darlings
aren't scoring high enough, it must be the test at fault).
They're the ones doing flash cards with their infants, sending
their perfectly normal preschoolers to academic prep programs,
piling on the outside work in early elementary to be sure that
their kids are advanced enough that they will at least appear
gifted enough to get into the GT program (because, you know,
average or normal isn't good enough for them).



You know *that* is the core of the problem for me. How will their kids NOT
know that average or normal (aka THEM) is not good enough? The behavior has
its impact on the school system to be sure. I don't know how prevelant it is
and how much impact compared to other factors. It may be geographical,
because you don't see it here so much. But the impact to the individual
kids bugs me more.


No matter how
many times they're told that the tests are ability tests, not
achievement tests, they still believe that with enough prep,
their kids will get in. (And since the tests aren't perfect,
it's true that enough prep probably does confer a small
advantage.) If the kids don't get in, they'll be the ones
raising hell up the chain of command in the school district
to get some kind of exception. If they had any clue, they
would accept and love and support their children *as they
are*,



As Golde (sp?) in Fiddler on the Roof once said "From your mouth to God's
ears!"



but to them, it's more important that their children
get all the right titles and accolades, even if that means
sacrificing their childhood.



What is the purpose of an unearned acolade?