Homework - Parent feedback please.

Homework is a fantastic opportunity for parents to learn together with the children. A good teacher/syllabus will provide balanced amount of homework that will not overwhelm the child.

Hi MT

pls find responses to your query:-

Age of the child is 7 yrs

1. How long does your child spend on their homework at night? do you think this adequate, too long or too little?

1 hour

2. Do you prefer your child to have written homework, research based or active 'at home' learning activities? or a mixture of all?

Research based assignments, provided the school is able to equip them to do so.

3. Can homework generally be completed independently or does your child need a lot of support.

Support and motivation is required, as they see this to be another tiring thing for the day and they lack competitiveness when it comes to homework.

4. In your opinion, does your child benefit from the standard of homework given out?

well not really

Dev

Dear MT

these are personal observations about my child. In fact i am running a consultancy in Qatar (www.matmac.org) and am trying to introduce alternate thinking systems to children as well as encouraging them to be competitive and challenging themselves. this is a unique system and is unique because this is the only system that encourages participation from the teachers, the students, the parents and the school management alike. We hope to bring about a radical change to the system by our program known as the "EXCELLENCE" I would appreciate if you could share your observations on these kinds of unique research and we will be more than happy to discuss our findings as well.

Cheers

Dev

If all parents believed this oryx my workload would be cut down a bit!! Usually I get asked by some parents for even more! :)

Sometimes the homework can be pointless if the parent sits and basically does it for the child...which happens. Sometimes they actually write it themselves and think I won't notice the immaculate improvement in their handwriting!

For the reasons stated by Mandi I don't believe in homework - just a minimum if needs be. They have been at school all day and their free time should preferably be spent doing different activities.

Oh dear.....

No. Because then you extracted my statement (out of context) and wrote--

"parents must be prepared to do a great deal with children at home".

Very confusing.

As said above....

".....very busy, hard working teachers so there should not be a great deal of input for parents".

Comprende?

MT--so your plan is to have or not to have input from parents?

2020 - the word input is a word that sums up your sentence..."parents must be prepared to do a great deal with children at home".

Mandi - I understand what you are saying and I have had experiences back home with children that unfortunately do not have support at home and some with illiterate parents. However, I still feel homework is so important to consolidate the learning achieved in school and although these children will find it harder, I feel that it will benefit the child. Also, as a teachers we already have an idea about what each child's home life is like, through various factors and try differentiate when marking and assessing the homework. I feel it important not to penalise or jeopardise the other children's learning by not providing homework.

In saying that, I am very lucky over here as nearly all the children in my class do have the support of their families and either speak good English or pay for a tutor at home to help their child.

I'm such a contrarian when it comes to homework. IMHO, homework gives an enormous advantage to kids with stable homes and literate parents. Conversely it penalizes kids from chaotic homes with uninvolved families. Do we need to put any more pressure on these already disadvantaged kids?

Mandi

MT--what do you mean by "so there should not be a great deal of input for parents"?

Yes @2020...Im revising the home scheme/policy for high quality teaching in the classroom and very busy, hard working teachers so there should not be a great deal of input for parents. Homework should just be a consolidation of what the child has been learning in class.

Thanks again for all the feedback!! :)

Ooopsss...

Depends on the quality of instruction in the classroom and school. If the school is poor quality and class management is poor, then parents must be prepared to do a great deal with children at home. This is the case when teachers are lazy.

A good school would require maybe no more than 1 hour at home for older children (practicing or further learning rather than educating in the concept for the first time). For early years homework should be no more than reading practice and encouragement to practice reading and maths skills in the every day.

Yes I agree RatanDS....

This also applies to classwork at times. I schedule a few hours of active learning activities throughout the curriculum and until I explain the purpose of this some parents are concerned that their child has not been sitting working from a textbook.

There is plenty of textbook/workbook learning and teaching in my class. However, I have been taught from the new Scottish Curriculum which is highly based on active learning and inter-disciplinary teaching of topics.

Many parents seem to think that more homework means the child is learning a lot. Thats a wrong and traditional impression. Modern syllabus like CBSE-i make an attempt to induce research based education which is much different from 'mugging up' for exams. But this type of scientific teaching is not very popular among parents because parents want to see the children loaded with home work and be satisfied that child is 'doing a lot'.

What they dont see is how much of that homework actually helps the child's intellect.

Thank you everyone for the feedback so far...this will help me devise a homework schedule/method for the coming year. All parents input is greatly appreciated.

Wilsonp....

Homework consolidates what the children are learning in class and all the homework I provide is connected to the current topics being taught.

It also allows parents to be a part of their child's education. Parents are aware of what their child is learning and get an insight into what level of ability their child is at.

If you are happy with the 'homework' method at your child's school (presuming your child is at an Indian school) then whatever works best for you and your child.

From feedback from my own chilren's parents, they all insist on having homework for their child, some asking for extra.

Thanks again :)

homework is required. better to provide on the weekends rather than weekdays as children have only that much time after coming back from school.

which does not provide any homework at junior classes.

( the students are forced to sit at school and complete the homework at school itself )

is it not a better method ?

in my opinion, ideal homework duration is 30 - 40 minutes and it should be a variety of tasks for each day, sometimes a discussion with parents or any elder as a H.W brings novelty in their thoughts.

Ok here's my feedback:

1)Around 30 minutes. Since she is only seven years old and in the second grade, I'd say that's good enough.

2)A mixture of all three

3)With an exception to Arabic and Social Studies(also in Arabic)for which reason my daughter has additional tuition, all other homeworks are done completely independently.

4)Yes..to a great extent.

Hope I helped..and a happy weekend to you!

Thanks Brit.....also can everyone put what year you child is in. Thanks again.

1. About 50 minutes - It is adequate

2. A mixture of all

3. Does it on his own

4. Yes