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My son's second grade class has 26 kids with just one teacher and an assistant who is available for 3 hours each day. The teacher does not check his home work in detail each week she just makes sure that he has it completed in the format she requires. So I make sure that he does his home work each evening at the kitchen table and check it after he is done. My son is a bright boy but is a "tad lazy" so I am glad that he is getting used to the habit of doing homework every school day.I think it reinforces what they have been taught at school. I do not think that they have time to practice their math facts really well at school and its crucial that the children understand the fundamentals at this stage. So I do supplement some extra work of my own like Multiplication tables. There is no way that he could memorize them at school.
I think kids should be able to come home from kindergarten unencumbered. I don't care if it takes two minutes. That's too much to ask of 5 year olds. If they don't have homework in kindergarten, that doesn't mean they're not going to study in high school.
I think kids should be able to come home from kindergarten unencumbered. I don't care if it takes two minutes. That's too much to ask of 5 year olds. If they don't have homework in kindergarten, that doesn't mean they're not going to study in high school.
I disagree-in kindergarten our kids LOVED doing homework. It made them feel grown up. They were home before most of their friends and the little bit of homework they had did not hamper in any way their ability to play after school.
In response to an earlier comment, I said that I don't want the school telling my elementary-age child what to read OUTSIDE of school. I prefer to foster a love of learning through his own choice of books, not being forced to read the same thing that every other student is reading. Of course suggestions and guidance would always be appreciated, as teachers and school librarians will be aware of books that a child or parent might not otherwise discover. For the purpose of homework debate, though, there is a world of difference between a student reading something in school and outside of it, at least when trying to understand why a parent would be opposed to mandated reading outside of school hours but not within it (for the youngest kids; again, NOT talking about high school here).
I don't think all homework for the younger kids is bad, but think that it's a slippery slope (if 10 minutes is good, than 20 minutes must be better, and so on..). I've met parents who do think that more homework means more a more academically rigorous school experience. I think special projects are extremely valuable, teach time management skills, and do give kids a chance to get their families involved. It's the daily mandated worksheets that I think are pointless, and seem to be so often geared more to prove to parents that the kids are learning rather than furthering an educational goal. The reading logs (of self-selected materials, without too much focus on time) make a lot of sense; I don't consider that "homework" in the same way as worksheets, and while I still don't think it's going to necessarily make that much of a difference, it's not going to risk turning kids off of learning, either.
Many kids DO like do to homework; why can't they do homework-like activities without the school telling them to do it? As Katiana said, just because they don't do worksheets after school in kindergarten doesn't mean they're going to run into problems in high school. And if kids do need additional help, no one is stopping them from pursuing it.
Last edited by uptown_urbanist; 10-25-2010 at 03:43 PM..
If it's something that's a simple fix, I'll help them figure it out. If they can't or it's something that they'd get wrong if I did it my way, then back it goes into the folder with a note attached saying something like:
"He/She is not understanding what is being asked. He/She needs help."
In response to an earlier comment, I said that I don't want the school telling my elementary-age child what to read OUTSIDE of school. I prefer to foster a love of learning through his own choice of books, not being forced to read the same thing that every other student is reading. Of course suggestions and guidance would always be appreciated, as teachers and school librarians will be aware of books that a child or parent might not otherwise discover. For the purpose of homework debate, though, there is a world of difference between a student reading something in school and outside of it, at least when trying to understand why a parent would be opposed to mandated reading outside of school hours but not within it (for the youngest kids; again, NOT talking about high school here).
I don't think all homework for the younger kids is bad, but think that it's a slippery slope (if 10 minutes is good, than 20 minutes must be better, and so on..). I've met parents who do think that more homework means more a more academically rigorous school experience. I think special projects are extremely valuable, teach time management skills, and do give kids a chance to get their families involved. It's the daily mandated worksheets that I think are pointless, and seem to be so often geared more to prove to parents that the kids are learning rather than furthering an educational goal. The reading logs (of self-selected materials, without too much focus on time) make a lot of sense; I don't consider that "homework" in the same way as worksheets, and while I still don't think it's going to necessarily make that much of a difference, it's not going to risk turning kids off of learning, either.
Many kids DO like do to homework; why can't they do homework-like activities without the school telling them to do it? As Katiana said, just because they don't do worksheets after school in kindergarten doesn't mean they're going to run into problems in high school. And if kids do need additional help, no one is stopping them from pursuing it.
Again, you are going to be in for a LONG school career with your son if you don't like the idea of assigned reading-reading that WILL be done outside of school. It WILL happen and then what are you going to do. Heck, in kindergarten our kids brought home a book bag every so often that had a book in it that they were to read. They kept a running journal in the book bag for each kid that read the book-where they were when they read the book, what they liked best about the book, etc. The kids LOVED when they got selected to bring home a book bag.
Our oldest HATED reading, never read books unless he absolutely had to and even then didn't really read them. In 7th grade he had to read a book for his Language Arts class and for whatever reason he started to LOVE reading. He read about 100 books that year. In 11th grade at parent/teacher conferences his ENGLISH teacher told us, after saying he NEVER thought he would say this, that DS needed to stop reading so much. School doesn't crush the love of reading any more then parents can foster that love. It comes from the child. I HATED reading as a kid and now I read about a book every other day.
My problem is those darned projects they love to assign. Come on, it would take an art major to satisfy the requirements. they get plain ridiculous! We ended up helping our kids just to get the thing done. I don't see what they would have learned if they somehow managed to do it themselves, and it was obvious other parents were helping their kids. It became a matter of getting it done and turned in.
One project was particularly despised in TX. Its assigned every year, make a 3-d model of a Spanish mission. They are quite specific about what they want included, chuches, schools, people, doing various activities, such as artisians, farmers, workers, etc---did I mention this was in 4th grade? It was absurd!
We ended up ordering a kit to put it together, apparently its a standard project, kits are available online for $50+, not including the paper. Well, the kid put it together, we helped, I don't see where he learned anything from it. Oh, BTW, they assigned that thing the week before Thanksgiving, real nice timing!
Do I help with homework? What is homework, anyways? its supposed to be a reinforcement of what's learned in class. Not busy work to produce eye-candy for the classroom. I never did get out project back, probably to this day the teacher displays it as an example of what's expected. Well, that's future class's problems..............
I never had any help with my homework and still managed to get straight A's. English was not my parent's first language so they couldn't have helped me even if they wanted to. I had to rely on myself to get my homework done which gave me a great advantage.
I am a teacher and my son is lucky that he has me to help him with his homework. I don't give him the answers. I find a way to make him figure out the answers on his own.
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