We've just had the beloved grandchildren for the weekend, we love having them but the quantity of homework......My grandson is almost 14 and he gets several pieces every night.It seems so pointless as like many of his classmates they just "get through it".They don't learn very much as because there is so much they rush to get it all done.I help him (that's a laugh for a start)as much as I can but the time it takes eats into the time we share doing the good stuff.His sister 8 gets one project each month, this month it was books and we enjoyed taking time learning all kinds of facts .Did you know the biggest library is the Library of Congress in the USA with 28 million books ! See what I mean if you have a smaller quantity you devote the time and really learn something.What do you folk think ? ???
They get too much and it is too hard, I can't do it, my daughter can't do it, grandchild looks at it, and after hours of trying it is not even marked or explained.
It is a no-win situation for all concerned... speaking as a teacher of 25 years experience... :-X
I was wondering what the DCSF had to say on homework policy and I found this:
http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/homework/index_more/
That's all fine and dandy but it wasn't my experience when my daughter was at school (fairly recently) nor in my school days in the dim and distant past.
G x
I have been thinking about this.
In the sixties I attended a comprehensive school and when I look back I realise what an awful education I had.
I was not the brightest kid on the block and neither were my class mates.We were not pushed in any way.
Who was this guy called shakespear?
What do they mean the classics??
These kind of things never came up >:(
Only after several years of listening to Radio 4 and being married to a guy with a university education did I found out the true value of a good education.
Luckily for me I have managed to hold down some good jobs over the years but doubt these days I would have been considered.
I can not explain to people how proud I was of myself for gaining a final exam distinction when I did a two year city and Guild course.
The feeling of achievement was mind blowing.
So my answer to this is yes,push your kids and get them learning .
Betula don't get me wrong I truly value learning and I wish I had more.However these kids aren't LEARNING they are just ploughing through endless paperwork ,lifting text from the internet-most of which they neither read or understand.I just feel they should have less that is marked and discussed (my grandson seldom gets any feedback on his homework :( )with them so that they actually gain from it.good for you gaining education after school I think it's something many people do and so very valuable :)
Quote from: macmac on November 29, 2009, 22:36:19
Betula don't get me wrong I truly value learning and I wish I had more.However these kids aren't LEARNING they are just ploughing through endless paperwork ,lifting text from the internet-most of which they neither read or understand.I just feel they should have less that is marked and discussed (my grandson seldom gets any feedback on his homework :( )with them so that they actually gain from it.good for you gaining education after school I think it's something many people do and so very valuable :)
I'm with you here, Macmac. I always thought the point of homework was to consolidate the day's lessons and as the children get older, expand on them. Good teachers do this of course but we all know that no child is blessed with good teachers in every subject throughout their time at school.
If my daughter was struggling with homework I'd check with her how it built on what she'd learnt that day. If she told me it had no relevance whatsoever - and believe me I quizzed her carefully - then I'd tell her not to bother with it and we'd do something else that was relevant and hand that in instead. I always added a note at the bottom which said something along the lines of neither of us understood this task so we did this. ;D
I reckon David Bowie had it right when he said (off the top of my head) 'and if your homework brings you down then we'll throw it on the fire and take the car down town'. Learning takes many guises.
G x
At its best homework is enormously useful. It allows the young person to reflect on what they have learnt, to understand more deeply or simply to realise that they haven't really understood and need the teacher to explain it again. Sometimes things "click" when you're doing homework and fall into place in a way that they don't always in the buzz of a busy classroom where confident clever kids can be shouting out answers while you are still trying to understand the concept. Homework is a chance to do the things you really can't do in the classroom, like memorising stuff or doing extra practice on stuff you find hard or researching a topic in depth.
All of this requires a huge level of organisation not only by individual classroom teachers but by all a child's teachers and at whole school level. Homework, like class work, also needs to be differentiated to suit the needs of individual learners. Most schools and teachers have neither the time nor the resources to let this happen as effectively as it should.
The important thing (for me) is that what was learnt in class should be reviewed at home. This can happen in discussion with an adult or sibling.It is also a chance to discuss the homework set. to plan doing it and to spend a realistic amount of time on it, depending on the age of the child. Maybe the internet stuff can wait till the learning, reading and exercises are done and even be planned to be spread over a few days.
If your child can't do the homework or it does not relate to what they are learning in class the school needs to be made aware of that. It is after all meant to be a partnership with the child at the centre.
I think the problem isn't the homework, it's how easy it is to short-circuit it with the internet.... When I was at school I had to do a truly mind-numbing amount of homework for my biology A-level.... there was no internet as such back in the early eighties so I had to read it up and write it out by hand... end result was I ended up using my A-level notes through college...... I reckon that between my three subjects I had about 15-20 hours a week, 3 hours a night and not uncommon to spend a lot of Sunday on it.... and I had school Saturday mornings....
These days you wouldn't let my teacher from back then near a classroom, he was a bad-tempered tyrant with an alcohol problem, but he produced a non-stop stream of well-trained bio-scientists. For instance, I was easily the best dissectionist in my year at college to the point where I was helping demonstrate them, but I was nothing special in that class after two years and three rats.......
chrisc
I dont think schools should be allowed to set homework. It puts most kids off learning and nowadays its easy to cheat. Its very unfair to expect kids to work in the evening and weekends - how many adults would want to do two jobs?
It would be better if they extended the school day by an hour and had a couple of hours structured study time during the day, where projects could be supervised by teachers.
far to much home work these days kids need to play relax and socialise, not have their heads stuck in a book 24/7 that's what school is for most of it goes unmarked or it is rushed so for me i don't think they should do so much give the kids time to chill and enjoy life ,,,,,, i mean we did ok dint we and i never got much home work life is for living , i never forced my kids in fact i use to tell them to leave it and go and play had loads of stick from the school when they tried to give my kids (over time) detentions for not doing there home work i use to go and get them and bring them home , now they have all left did well with their exams no doctors, politicians, brain surgeons in my house but we have a plumber electrician and school teacher i am a joiner and the wife is a bloody good mother /nana :D
This has been splendid reading so many views and while I don't think the kids shouldn't do some homework it's the quantity and relevance I think needs looking at.
Chricross1966 your h/work was clearly valuable but you were obviously older,my grandson has been having this amount since he was 11 !!!
Shaun I love your response,while I think kids should follow school rules you've raised some brilliant people.As I said to my grandaughter when I was explaining why we give our bin men a drink every week.Valuable people come in all shapes and sizes and if the brain surgeon didn't have a bin man he'd never get passed his rubbish to get to the hospital :)
The ones I feel sorry for are the children who don't have access to computers out of school hours. Having seen some of the homework the grandchildren bring home (ages 8 &9) that the research couldn't be done without one. And some times it takes 3 generations to sort the answers out. My stepdaughter works full time and has to listen to 2 lots of reading and homework each evening. I also think that the school day should be longer and the summer holidays reduced and staggered.
Hi guys,
My son Thomas is 10 and gets home work once a week on a Friday and it has to be returned on the following Thursday. I think this is a fair amount and it gives me insight into what subjects he's covering at school.
However!!!!!
Tom's school are now handing out PDA's like little blackberrys to use in school and at home. All homework is now computerized they log into a server from home to retreive it, do it then send it back!
I have a few problems with this which i have brought up with the school are,
Children who don't have internet access have to do there homework during school hours normally during one of their break times.
Its far to easy to pull something off the net copy and paste without actually understanding it.
The work isn't marked and then sent back, So i as a parent i cant judge if Thomas is in fact understanding the homework or where he may need extra help with certain subjects.
The children cant see the marked work so how will they know how well they are doing? I don't know about all kids by mine love to see a little well done note or a smiley face to show that what they have done is good.
Most of all the thing that really gets my back up is the way the schools keep saying that handwriting is getting worse as is punctuation. Surely using computers all the time isn't going to help? Spell checks are really good at picking up spelling mistakes and correcting punctuation but would it not be better for him to pick them up himself?
Thomas now gets a normal home work book. He sits down and if he has any problems im there to help him work through it. The homework is clearer when its written down. I can judge whether he's trying or rushing. He then checks his spellings and punctuation. He gets it back clearly marked and can take on board any of the teachers comments. I have found that he has a keener interest in books now and i can also judge how he his doing at school. Also his hand writing has improved greatly which he is chuffed to bits about.
What do you think?
Lucy
A few points I guess.
Homework is important to consolidate what has been covered in class and to allow kids to develop relevant organisation and personal study skills. I do not think it is appropriate for primary aged children to be doing much homework (except basic reading, numeracy and writing practice). Secondary up to 14 an hour a night is okay and more from 14 onwards. Perhaps homework should really be for young people to realise that relying on being spoon-fed in the classroom isn't productive.
The bottom line is that GCSEs are easy and require very little subject knowledge. The end result is then when a student moves on to study post-16 the workload is quite a shock to the system.
Once in post-16 then I think 20 hours a week. Quite simply to cover the syllabus you have to move at such a pace that students must be learning information as you progress and practicing exam technique. You also have to bear in mind that a student is only in class 20ish hours a week at this point so another 20 hours is taking it up to fulltime working hours. That is if they wish to organise their time wisely.
Not supporting the school rules is not a good message to send to kids. If you send the child to the school, and sign the home-school agreement, you agree to the rules of the school. If you don't like it, then change schools. If a child is getting mixed messages between home and school then the end result is most often defiance in other areas whilst at school (whether the parent sees this or not).
I don't work in a school anymore (teach in a 6th form college). As for the comment about making the school day longer and the holidays shorter - LOL!! You would seriously have no teachers! It is a VERY stressful job, working long hours (outside school time and during "holidays"). The school is not there for childcare.
Sorry <rant over>
p.s am not trying to offend anyone directly here - maybe I have just had a bad day!
I think that homework should be marked. I had quite a set to with my childrens school about marking. I found the whole experience was very negative. If the children are set targets for completing work, I felt that the teachers should have similar targets for getting it marked. Both children and staff should be allowed a small number of unexplained delays, but both expected to produce an apology.
I think that children should receive an explanation not of what is wrong with work but what they needed to do to improve. It is very demoralising after doing some work to be told marked on mistakes rather than gaining points for successes.
There should not be so much homework that other activities are impossible. Children should be expected to have a range of skills. School work is not the be all and end all. As a child I did most of my homework in the public library, things being rather unsuitable at home. It is now possible to book slots on library computers.
Swindon is soon to get free broadband access for all.
Quote from: Digeroo on November 30, 2009, 20:26:02
I think that homework should be marked. I had quite a set to with my childrens school about marking. I found the whole experience was very negative. If the children are set targets for completing work, I felt that the teachers should have similar targets for getting it marked. Both children and staff should be allowed a small number of unexplained delays, but both expected to produce an apology
Is the work being peer- assessed or self-marked during class time? Sometimes it is not possible to mark every piece of work in a formal way. With my A level groups I do sometimes, although not very often, get the students to mark a piece of homework during class as a way of getting them used to exam markschemes. Doesn't really save time though as it takes time out of getting through the next topic!
I do 26 hours a week contact time with students, 2 hours in meetings, then I have to plan for those 26 hours and I have 6 classes of over 20 students in each. Even if I spend 15 minutes planning each lesson and 5 minutes marking a piece of work per student - do the maths!
I don't have any experience of primary teaching, but it could well be that schools have policies of setting the work, but staff simply run out of time to mark it. Not a good policy to have in that situation, but many senior management teams have very unrealistic expectations.
You can cut corners on many things, but marking isn't one of them. I seem to spend hours marking and writing feedback.
Perhaps your son/daughter is getting feedback on their work during class? I find it strange that kids are not getting homework marked.
I used to speak to training teachers (doing PGCE) about marking... a secondary Humanities teacher will see on average 240 pupils per week... if they do an hours lesson and 20 mins homework each... how long do you think the teacher can spend marking each pupils work...
If they get 10 mins each that is 30 hours... so 5 mins is more realistic, even 15 hours marking is 3 hours each "work" night... :-X
speaking as a retired teacher, I know that most teachers these days have an enormous work load. Not only do they have to deal with many more incidences of challenging behaviours, which disrupt lessons and therefore pupils' learning opportunities, but they have lessons to plan, work to mark, assessments to carry out and mark, and much of this has to be in the evenings, at weekends and yes, in those lovely long holidays! Teaching is not a job you can ever really switch off from. Even on a beautiful beach in France, I could be seen bending down collecting souvenirs and muttering to myself about how this or that would be "great for my next topic at school"!
Learning too is hard work, and ought to be thought of in a holistic way. Children, and adults, need to discover that the whole of life presents opportunities to discover new things. My four -year old grand-daughter has just started "big school" and she loves practising her "tricky words" and handwriting. She sees herself as a reader already and is gaining confidence as she develops these new skills. She also has plenty of time to play, go on family outings, talk with adults as she helps with ordinary family tasks such as baking or just around the meal table, and relax watching TV. As she gets older I daresay I may have a different view of the amount of homework she has to do, but, for now, I'm very happy when I hear her say, "Don't talk to me Grandma. I need to concentrate and do my work." I think that this is a great attitude to be nurtured and encouraged!
Quote from: macmac on November 30, 2009, 11:10:15
This has been splendid reading so many views and while I don't think the kids shouldn't do some homework it's the quantity and relevance I think needs looking at.
Chricross1966 your h/work was clearly valuable but you were obviously older,my grandson has been having this amount since he was 11 !!!
Shaun I love your response,while I think kids should follow school rules you've raised some brilliant people.As I said to my grandaughter when I was explaining why we give our bin men a drink every week.Valuable people come in all shapes and sizes and if the brain surgeon didn't have a bin man he'd never get passed his rubbish to get to the hospital :)
I was getting 2 hours a night plus at least 2-3 hours over the weekend from the age of 11..... I had a scholarship to the local public school and they just expected a lot of homework...
MummyBunny - I think the points you raised in your post are very valid, and I'd be interested to hear what the school said. I'm in IT and have witnessed the benefits of IT in all sorts of scenarios - but the one you describe does concern me, mostly around the issue of access to broadband and creating divisions in school between the kids who have and those that don't. And who actually owns the PDA's - and what happens if they are lost of damaged? I've dealt with adults using PDA's and that's been bad enough at times!!
Hi 1066,
Well this is the problem its a pilot scheme at his school. I just cant seem to get my head around it.
Firstly the parents were asked to make a contribution of £11 a month for what they call insurance purposes and when the children left the PDA would then be theirs to keep.
If the parents paid the child was allowed to take it home with them obviously there was some use of it without internet connection however not much help if you don't have wifi at home!.
As you can imagine some people paid and some didn't. Some people just couldn't afford it . We decided that we would pay as if it got damaged it was covered. This turned out not to be the case if it was damaged off school premises it wasn't covered!! As a few children found out so we stopped making payments. So basically some parents seemed to be paying towards the item to be insured in school!!
Yes they do get to keep it if they pay but if it gets damaged outside of school you would have to pay to fix it!!
Now the worst bit is my partner has just become a school governor and at his last meeting he was told that ALL the children would get to keep their PDA's when they left school!! Meaning that some parents have been paying for the last 3 years for a PDA at £11 a month while others haven't but they still get to keep it!
As for creating divisions in the school it has first there were the children who we able to take home and use with there internet access, then children that could take it home but have no internet access then the children who couldn't take it home because parents couldn't afford it. Thomas would come home complaining that it wasn't fair that he couldn't bring his home and I'm sure that there would have been other parents in the same situation as me.
I just couldn't validate bringing something home that could get damaged that i was paying £11 a month (to start with) that i would have to then pay again for if something did happen out side of school.
The PDA's were used in school for lessons however when Tom brought it home the first time i checked what he had been looking at in school seems you tube was a favorite site as was Google searches for silly things!!!! Looked at during lesson time.
Unfortunately the school wasn't very good at explaining what was going on which is one of the many reason's why my partner has become more involved with the school. We are not the only parents asking the same questions we just don't seem to be getting any answers!
A total mess if you ask me and now they are on about bringing Notebook computers into the school for the pupils. Don't get me wrong I'm not saying computers are bad just really are they needed at the age of 8 in junior schools?
What happened to just having IT lesson's during school. My son has a great understanding of computers however i don't think this is down to using a PDA!
Lucy x
thanks for the feedback. I did wonder if it was a "trial", seems like it's more of a trial for the parents!! And what a mess - to have so many variations on a theme.
And £11 a month isn't cheap - basically they wanted parents to fund their experiment and by running it for 3 years, at £11 a month - according to my maths that is nearly £400. I think I would be demanding a refund!! Besides by the time they leave the PDA will be kn***ered" and pretty worthless anyway.
As to what they use the PDA's for - no surprise about the searching, what do they expect kids to do? It must be frustrating for the teachers as well.
It all sounds so confusing and messy. If I ran a project like that I wouldn't be in work for very long....... and I wonder what the "official" reports will say?!
Well done to your hubby for getting involved, seems like a common sense approach is needed :)
1066