Re: I hate homework!

In article <IYrJj.99$V14.52@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Cathy Kearns says...


"Banty" <Banty_member@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:ft2k8n022nd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In article <47f4b7b3$0$294$b45e6eb0@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Beth
Kevles
says...
When the 15 minutes are over, so is homework. If he hasn't done enough,
so be it. If he wants to spend more time at it, let him have another
15-minute block later in the evening or before school in the morning,
but NOT right away. 15 minutes is the reasonable maximum for the work
he is doing, and certainly the right amount of time for his age.

I tried this. THe teacher would suggest it, and we DID it. And promptly
ran
into:

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.

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.

My daughters had about the same amount of homework in 2nd grade, including
the "use each spelling word in a sentence". One teacher was really fun, and
just said they needed to use all the words in a sentence, but if they could
get all 20 words in one sentence, go for it. There were many whimsical
sentences that year.

But my point is, it never took them more than an hour for all the weeks
homework. They easily finished it in less than 15 minutes a night. So, I'm
betting there are some number of students in his class for which this is the
perfect amount of homework. And probably an equal or larger number that
find it takes much longer. If the teacher suggests stopping at 15 minutes,
I'd take her word for it. She needs to find out whether she's giving to
much homework for most the class or not. If he's finishing the homework,
how is she to know? (Though your contact with her should do it.) As for
lack of completion going into the ledger, don't you want the teachers to
take that into account when assigning other stuff? Or deciding classes for
next year? And don't you want to know that he's not keeping up with some of
the kids in the class? Or alternately, if he got a perfect report card
would you know he's not keeping up with some of the students in the class?

It sounds like the teacher is trying to tailor the work for your child.

Would that. On what planet. Only one teacher *ever* did that. And it was in
giving the assignments the Friday before. Not a thing ever changed in the work
itself. Ever.

And
you would prefer she make all the children work at your child's level.



No, I don't care to make all the children work at my child's level just because.
But consider if, even if your daughters found it all reasonable (they're
*girls*, and they simply may be more verbal), does not even mean THEY were
getting much out of. The data simply aren't there.

The amount of homework is *mandated* by the curriculum. Each and every teacher
in our district is expected to follow this. And the frequent tests, such as the
Nova and ELA tests in these years, are considered to verify this.

All I got except for that one teacher was all these questions about homework
setting, TV habits, experiments in writing implement shapes. IOW, what was *I*
doing wrong or what little cheep fixes could be applied to the situation. Nada
about actually changing the amount or type of homework, as each and every
teacher is required to give it. Ericka hundreds of miles down the coast from me
describes it. Chookie an ocean away in another hemisphere describes it. Be
very grateful that either your district takes a differnt view, or the mode of
homeworks happen to suit your daughters.

One of the things I noticed - homework having to do with computational things
and buildign things, as opposed to writing and other verbal things, have been
watered down. Big projects are done in groups. The building or map part of it
is shared. My son would do a wonderful Tower of London with all his building
skills (he's a junior champion aircraft of sci-fi scale modeller now at 15),
because that's "hard" or "needs resources" and needs to be shared, but each and
every student needed to submit a research paper on the Tower of London. Where
he would struggle. And get a so-so grade, while the little girl who writes
tomes with little hearts over each i and j gets to share in the credit for his
Tower of London model. Same girl being able to pass off a boughten wooden
tomahawk painted with geometric designs to substitute for her 4th grade Iroqois
longhouse project, while my son actually built the longhouse.

This isn't about education. It's about the current laser-focus on writing and
verbals skills.

Also consider how many parents are doing what I did refuse to do - go ahead and
write and correct their kids' homeworks.

Banty

.

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