I hate homework!

On Apr 8, 9:06�am, "Donna Metler" wrote:

Frankly, I'd be very suspicious
of a class which meets daily that COULD assign homework a week at a time,
simply because if you have it ready that far in advance, you're not
adjusting to what the students need.

A week in advance is far??? My son has a teacher who's giving many of
the same assignments she handed out four years ago! I'm pretty sure
she just has a batch of photocopy masters filed by week.

--Helen

toto wrote:
On 8 Apr 2008 09:53:54 -0700, Banty wrote:

The stuff about mainstreamed students (thought there would be persons present or
assitants assigned - even a class of non-IEP students have teacher assistants
present) has led you to rather inconsistent complaints. Which I take as a sign
of, although it may be a stressor, isn't the fundamental problem.

They do?

Many schools have very few aides. It is almost impossible to get an
aide for individual students here. Often classroom aides are shared
between 2 to 4 classrooms here.

Teacher aides are very uncommon here beyond kindergarten
or special ed. classes.

Best wishes,
Ericka

In article , toto says...

On 8 Apr 2008 09:53:54 -0700, Banty wrote:

The stuff about mainstreamed students (thought there would be persons present or
assitants assigned - even a class of non-IEP students have teacher assistants
present) has led you to rather inconsistent complaints. Which I take as a sign
of, although it may be a stressor, isn't the fundamental problem.

They do?

Many schools have very few aides. It is almost impossible to get an
aide for individual students here. Often classroom aides are shared
between 2 to 4 classrooms here.



I'm not saying they're sufficient, but they were not mentioned *at all* in
Donna's account.

Banty

In article ,
says...

On Apr 8, 9:06=EF=BF=BDam, "Donna Metler" wrote:

Frankly, I'd be very suspicious
of a class which meets daily that COULD assign homework a week at a time,
simply because if you have it ready that far in advance, you're not
adjusting to what the students need.

A week in advance is far??? My son has a teacher who's giving many of
the same assignments she handed out four years ago! I'm pretty sure
she just has a batch of photocopy masters filed by week.

--Helen

Especially if the assignment we're talking about a write xxx words this many
times Monday night; write the same xxx words in 20 sentences and do yyyy math
problems on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, have a written one page essay on zzz
subject due Friday.

So - truly - the teacher doesnt know to give me on Friday (like my son's third
grade teacher did):

which words are in the xxx list for the following week
what the zzz topic is for the following week
which math problems are yyyy in the book for the following week

That should hardly be a problem.

Banty

In article , Banty
wrote:

They're expected not only to know the tables; they're =A0to be able to
beat the
clock in *speed drills*. Which only much practice could get.

Do we really disagree? Even if the test measures speed as well as
accuracy, some students will need more practice than others to meet
the standard, and once a child does meet the standard, he should not
have to practice that task further. There are better things for him to
work on.

The standard is such that only a lot of drill gets success. So only a few
students would meet that standard. It would have very little effect on the
problem as a whole.

Of course the question is: why is there such emphasis on speed and drilling
when you can buy a cheap, accurate calculator anywhere these days? What
exactly is the purpose of all this drill? I don't disagree with the thorough
teaching of basic maths, but the overemphasis on drill, in this day and age,
seems a bit weird. It reminds me of my Mum's Catholic education in the 1950s.
Mum can tot up a column of figures faster than anyone I know, but while it was
still a marketable skill back then, it isn't now.

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

http://chookiesbackyard.blogspot.com/

In article ,
"Donna Metler" wrote:

One question. Does your school have any stated policy about homework limits
(5 or 10 minutes per grade level, plus 20-30 minutes of reading is pretty
common). If it does, ask the teacher how long the assignment should take a
7-8 yr old to do. It may be that your child works slower or faster than the
teacher expects, and usually it's that the child works slower, but so do ALL
children of the child's age.

There's no stated policy AFAIK, but the homework is set for the entire grade
at once -- the teachers take it in turns to write the sheet. As I mentioned,
the homework does vary for ability groups.

It may require addressing the problem at a higher level if you have a
teacher who honestly believes writing 20 sentences doesn't take very long
(and for an adult, it doesn't).

DS2's teacher is actually the one in charge of the Stage. What I will be
asking her is for any tips she has for the child to form sentences.

I agree with Banty that setting time limits only works if the teacher is the
one who does it and if it's understood that tasks are for practice, not for
completion. No child freaks out about stopping piano practice after 30
minutes because he hasn't played to the end of the page, book, or whatever,
because music practice is time limited, not task limited (although part of
what you try to teach a child in private study is how to use that time to
accomplish tasks). But a worksheet, or assignment to write 20 sentence is
task limited inherently.

Interesting -- DS1's music homework IS task-based! Play the left-hand part of
the new piece. Play each hand of a known piece in turn, then try it
hands-together. Is this unusual at age 7?

A better assignment would be "Look at the vocabulary words for the week.
Read them and define them mentally. Make up sentences for those you're
having trouble remembering, and write down at least 5 of them-task should
take no more than 10 minutes".

I'd like that -- it would mean no HW at all!

Or "Look at the math problems on page 102. Do as many as you can complete in
5 minutes, including problems 1, 7, 12, 12, and 20."

The reverse side of the HW sheet has maybe 10 problems (the front is literacy
work). DS1 does the sheet at after-school care, as a rule. It's the easy
part, and the kind of work you can do in a distracting environment -- filling
in blanks, drawing lines to indicate relationship, that sort of thing.

For both vocabulary and math, often "bellringers", where the students are
asked one or two quick questions which came from the homework, is a better
choice to see who is mastering the material than grading homework anyway.

I think another Aussie merntioned that HW here is marked, but doesn't go
towards the final marks for the year. We have a competency-based system and
reports are written based on assessment tasks done at school. There is a spot
on the report where they tell you that HW is always/usually/rarely done, but
that's all.

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

http://chookiesbackyard.blogspot.com/

In article ,
(Beth Kevles) wrote:

As a teacher myself (slightly older children) and a parent of
distractable boys, let me suggest the following:

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.

When the 15 minutes are over, so is homework. If he hasn't done enough,
so be it.

I know Banty has mentioned this but how does limiting HW to 15 mins and
ditching the rest *discourage* a child from procrastinating/daydreaming?

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

http://chookiesbackyard.blogspot.com/

In article ,
(Beth Kevles) wrote:

I know it sounds odd, but YES, try doing the hardest work first when
your student is fresh. This has two positive effects: you get the hard
stuff out of the way, and you do it while you're best able to
concentrate. So you tell your student, "We're going to do this word
first, because that's the toughest one. I'll help you with it if you
need my help. And when you've done it, everything else will be easier!
So the more you work, the easier it will get!"

It's not that the WORDS are tough. It's that INVENTING SENTENCES is tough.
NO sentence is easier than another!

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

http://chookiesbackyard.blogspot.com/

Donna Metler wrote:
...

I'm not saying it's a good thing-not unless you DO shorten the school day!
But I am saying that kids doing work at school isn't nearly as efficient as
Jeff would like to believe,

It depends on the program. There are some programs where college
students tutor students in an after school program. There are others
that a just play time for the students.

Of course, if the parents don't read or write English, the kids are out
of luck at home, other than, if they're lucky, they have a place to work.

and the illusion of the teacher being able to
help often is not the case for the average child, because the teacher is so
occupied with the children who need her more.

Not all teachers are male.

Again, it depends on the school and the teachers. There are ways for
teachers to get more one on one time with students, like spending time
with students during individual assignments when going around the room,
and having kids keep journals and responding to the kids in the
journals. In addition, they can give kids different homework. Finally,
homework can be written in such a way that kids with different abilities
will be to answer the questions accordingly.

It's kind of like having a 6
yr old and a toilet training 2 yr old who is into everything. The 6 yr old
simply is NOT getting 50% of the time you can spend with the child. And if
you've got a child who can't focus in a chaotic situation, even if the
school doesn't assign homework for the sake of homework, and only sends home
unfinished assignments, the load can get ridiculous fast, as the child has
almost 6 hours of work they were unable to complete in school to finish. Add
the 10 minutes per grade per night (and realize that most teachers seem very
BAD at time estimates, forgetting that it takes a 6 yr old a LOT longer to
write than an adult!) and you quickly have hours of homework every
night-with most of it stuff that can't easily be assigned a week at a time
because it's coming from that day's lessons.

A teacher should know what (s)he will have covered a week in advance.
Obviously, things come up (like lunch and other illnesses), snow days,
assemblies and other unplanned events, but there should be no problem
planning homework a week ahead.

Frankly, I'd be very suspicious
of a class which meets daily that COULD assign homework a week at a time,
simply because if you have it ready that far in advance, you're not
adjusting to what the students need.

While this is a valid point, it is possible to know what vocabulary
words will be covered in history or science class and what the spelling
words will be a week in advance.

My feeling is that most schools are NOT an efficient way of learning for
most individuals-and that the excessive homework is a combination of that
lack of efficiency coupled with an increased workload and expectations. It's
unlikely that 2nd graders 20 years ago would have been writing 20 sentences
for one assignment even in class, because most 2nd graders had only learned
to read and write at all in 1st grade, and were still learning in 2nd. Now
they're expected to pretty much have those skills mastered by that point.

In article ehrebeniuk-473335.08301709042008@news, Chookie says...

In article , Banty
wrote:

They're expected not only to know the tables; they're =A0to be able to
beat the
clock in *speed drills*. Which only much practice could get.

Do we really disagree? Even if the test measures speed as well as
accuracy, some students will need more practice than others to meet
the standard, and once a child does meet the standard, he should not
have to practice that task further. There are better things for him to
work on.

The standard is such that only a lot of drill gets success. So only a few
students would meet that standard. It would have very little effect on the
problem as a whole.

Of course the question is: why is there such emphasis on speed and drilling
when you can buy a cheap, accurate calculator anywhere these days? What
exactly is the purpose of all this drill? I don't disagree with the thorough
teaching of basic maths, but the overemphasis on drill, in this day and age,
seems a bit weird. It reminds me of my Mum's Catholic education in the 1950s.
Mum can tot up a column of figures faster than anyone I know, but while it was
still a marketable skill back then, it isn't now.


The given reason for it I actually have some sympathy for - to have the basic
math facts at the fingertips is important to more advanced tasks, like
fractions, long division, multiplication of three-digit numbers, estimating
quantities. One can't begin to solve certain things unless one can quickly see
where a number lies, for example, between 8x6 and 8x7.

I have a bit of a problem in that, without the actual value of it in front of a
student, the drill seems meaningless.

My son always did poorly on the speed drills, and was dinged badly in his grades
for it. THey'd be graded on what portion of a math facts sheet was completed
correctly in a given length of time. But he's doing fairly well in high school
math now. Indeed, where he has a problem is when he speeds though stuff!

Banty